After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico several months ago, thousands of home across the island needed new roofs. But, as it turns out, much of the work has yet to be completed.
The US Army Corps of Engineers has told the press about a government contract dispute which has delayed the construction of these new roofs. In many cases, the workers use fiber-reinforced sheeting to cover the damaged areas until complete re-builds and replacements can happen. Rubber roof repair techniques are employed in other cases.
“Operation Blue Roof” is the program the Army Corps of Engineers has been running to provide temporary roofing for structures that need it. 66,906 applications came in to the program after Hurricane Maria, and so far, less than 18,000 new roofs are installed – 26% of the application requests have been fulfilled.
As of December 2017, the Army Corps of Engineers is installing about 400 of these “blue roofs” each day, but the hopes are to double that number to 800 per day. The Army Corps of Engineers has tried to hire new roofing contractors to fill these orders, but the awards were disputed and challenged, and the new contractors were not allowed to begin work.
A few weeks ago, the US Army announced that new contracts had been awarded, to the tune of $93 million worth of desperately needed roof work. The two companies award the contracts are Ceres Caribe and Power & Instrumentation Services Inc. Recently, though, some of the contractors who were not awarded the work are challenging the decision, and delaying the necessary repairs.
Ceres Environment claims that it is hiring close to 90 percent local workers, of the 1,300 people they have working on the program. This is a victory for Ceres, as we all want to see as many local roofers making these fixes as possible.
Our hearts are with the people in Puerto Rico, and we will continue to follow the story as it develops.