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Lee este artículo en español.

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Secretary of State Noelia García announced Monday that public school classes will not start tomorrow, Tuesday. Governor Pedro Pierluisi issued an executive order activating the National Guard to respond to any emergencies related to the tropical storm watch for Puerto Rico.

In addition, Pierluisi has already activated the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and requested access to the Emergency Fund from the Fiscal Oversight Board (FOMB), García informed. These were among other precautionary measures adopted following a meeting this morning with the heads of key government agencies.

At the moment, the Emergency Fund has $1.3 billion, according to Juan Carlos Blanco, Executive Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“We are ready because we know what we have to do. That interagency communication engine is greased and we have the resources to be able to execute,” the secretary of the governor’s office said.

“Tomorrow the school system will not officially start classes, and after this system is developed and we see what the impact is, then we will identify the day on which the school year will restart,” Garcia added, not before indicating that public employees will have work tomorrow.

Education Secretary Yanira Raices or an agency spokesperson was not present at the press conference.

Meanwhile, the commissioner of the Bureau of Emergency Management and Disaster Administration, Nino Correa, urged citizens to take shelter and activate their respective emergency plans.

The director of the National Weather Service, Ernesto Morales, said that the system that threatens to reach the island “is not yet a tropical cyclone. It is not even a depression yet”.

“But in the next few hours it could be turning into a tropical storm and it will be moving, quite fast, at about 26 miles per hour toward our region,” Morales said.

He warned that the island could receive between 6 to 8 inches of rain and did not rule out that some areas could receive a greater amount.

García also informed that the Department of Consumer Affairs (DACO) will issue an order freezing the prices of basic necessities starting at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday. He also informed that the maritime transportation service system will be interrupted starting tomorrow at noon.

The Cesco centers, offices of the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTOP) where motor vehicle transactions are made, will be closed, said agency secretary Eileen Vélez Vega.

For his part, the president of LUMA Energy, Juan Siaca, acknowledged that there will be interruptions in the energy system and that its reestablishment will depend on “the intensity of the event”.

“It is important that we understand that if we have 50 mph winds, that is going to affect the system and it is going to mean that there are going to be service interruptions. That’s a reality. We have the reality of the vegetation that is still inside the lines. As we discussed a few weeks ago, the vegetation clearing project under the lines has already started in San Juan, but that’s going to take some time. So with 50 mph winds, there are definitely going to be power outages that we are going to take care of,” Siaca said.

The 16,000-mile clearing project will take more than a year to complete, Siaca had said when a massive power outage occurred in June.

Siaca said they have more than $200 million in materials distributed in eleven locations throughout the island.

We have 1,100 colleagues who are ready to go to the field and in addition to them, we can join another 250,” he said.

When asked how long it will take to restore power service, Siaca indicated that first he had to do an evacuation that could take between 24 to 48 hours.

The director of the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority, Doriel Pagán, acknowledged that the drinking water service is affected by the loss of electricity. He said that they have been replenishing the 1,622 generators with diesel.

However, Pagán admitted that La Plata, which supplies drinking water to thousands of Puerto Ricans, does not have generators and today there is an auction to buy them.

A tropical storm warning means that in the next 36 hours Puerto Rico, including the island municipalities of Vieques and Culebra, could receive storm conditions such as rain, thunderstorms and winds of up to 45 miles per hour (mph) or more.

According to the 11:00 a.m. advisory from the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the atmospheric system was located at latitude 15.1 north, longitude 55.6 west. The system’s sustained winds increased to 35 mph with stronger gusts. At that time, the system remained a powerful tropical wave, but it is expected to become a tropical depression or storm by Monday night.

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This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.