Audio Transcript

Rebounding Takes Longer in Remote Areas: Audio Transcript

Hey, this is Phil Palin. My work focuses mostly on supply chain resilience in catastrophe. I’ve spent considerable time in Puerto Rico.

Immediately following 2017’s Hurricane Maria, the regular flow of food, fuel, and much more was seriously disrupted by lack of electricity, lack of communication, debris in the road, bridges out, complications with fuel distribution, and all the myriad challenges of immediate recovery. Some places were entirely cut off. 

One of the grocery stores that I visited is located at a rural crossroads in the mountainous center of Puerto Rico. It’s less than 20 miles to the wholesalers in suburban San Juan. But in the first few weeks after Hurricane Maria, those 20 miles seemed more like 200.

For the first two weeks after the hurricane, trucks could not get up the mountain because of landslides and all sorts of other problems. But customers certainly came to the store. They mostly purchased canned goods and ice. The store limited each family to purchasing three cans and no more than two bags of ice. Still, by the day after the hurricane, the ice was gone. The store had frozen meat to sell until in the second week, the store owner was unable to refuel his generator for two days and lost over $30,000 worth of meat and other perishables.

When fuel was available, the grocer’s generators supplied power. The cash register kept track of sales. But for the first month, only cash could be used in making transactions. Both the ATM machine in the store and the point-of-sale terminal at the checkout depended on a rooftop tower to send EBT and other digital signals to a cell tower. And from the cell tower it would cut across into the financial network. The antenna had blown down in the storm. It was erected again. But the relay tower did not respond to the antenna signals. Still the customers kept coming and depending on the little store at the crossroads.

Two weeks after the hurricane landfall, Rene, the store’s owner, was finally able to drive out of the mountains to place orders and bring back cases of essential products in his own truck. He continued this process of personal pick-up and self-delivery for several more weeks.

Customers paid in cash. But over 60 percent of Rene’s customers usually pay for groceries with their PAN EBT card. Many of these customers quickly ran out of cash. In some of the most desperate cases, Rene resurrected the practice of “fiao” or sometimes “Don Fiao,” or store credit. He knew his customers. They were his neighbors. He wanted to do this. It was still a risk. And he certainly still had to pay for what he was purchasing and bringing back to the store. But finally, four weeks after the hurricane, Rene’s store and his customers were finally reconnected to the digital network, and EBT cards, debit cards, credit cards could be used again.