Getting to the heart of the damage

Ahumada, Tatum, Raj and Pontes are part of a team of UW engineers and public health scientists who are assessing the long-term impact of Puerto Rico’s power loss on the health of rural residents.

Over four days in late March 2018, the researchers crisscrossed this 39-square-mile region on single-lane switchbacks, some of which have narrowed sharply since Hurricane Maria struck the U.S. territory last September. Jayuya is home to the highest peaks in Puerto Rico — and 17,000 people.

Lilo Pozzo instructs Juan on using the nanogrid that will power his mother’s refrigerator. Marvi Matos (center) presents the next day’s schedule to the UW team. A UW team member rests after interviewing a family in Jayuya. Mareldi Ahumada Parás helps install a donated solar/battery nanogrid.

The team visited homes and community centers, interviewing dozens of caregivers and residents who use electronic medical devices, as part of a long-term field study on the impact of power loss on public health. They also donated and installed 17 solar/battery nanogrid systems — prototypes of a sustainable, clean energy infrastructure that can buoy public health in rural areas when power grids fail.

Their work is supported by the UW’s Clean Energy Institute and the Global Innovation Fund, and it aligns with the Population Health Initiative, a University-wide effort to eliminate health disparities around the world. Like many natural disasters, Hurricane Maria had a disproportionate effect on those with the fewest resources: low- and fixed-income families, the elderly, the sick and rural residents in places like Jayuya.

Thousands have remained disconnected from the electrical grid since Maria sliced through. The UW team hopes that the storm’s lessons will help engineers develop better microgrids — like the prototypes they’ve installed — for an infrastructure that meets the needs of the most vulnerable communities.

As the team has learned in their two trips here, the current infrastructure’s shortcomings have left deeper scars than downed utility poles and darkened homes.

“It is invisible suffering,” says Lilo Pozzo, associate professor of chemical engineering, who has led both trips. “You don’t know what the situation is until you go into homes and see exactly how people are getting by.”