Rosenworcel is having an impact: soon after she started slamming her own agency for not doing enough, the FCC has been issuing daily status reports on Hurricane Maria, the most recent of which notes that 38.4 per cent of cell sites remain out of service and that 37 of Puerto Rico's 78 counties have more than 50 per cent of their cell sites out of service.
Despite the extremely slow recovery, so far the FCC and its chair Pai have resisted the calls for hearings.
It's not entirely clear why but part of it may be that Puerto Rico has increasingly become the center of a political storm, particularly over the provision of contracts in which seemingly unqualified US companies have won huge deals for getting the infrastructure back up and working and have been criticized for charging far above even emergency rates for their services.
Though Puerto Rico's immediate future remains uncertain, we do know the measures that could be taken to minimize recovery time following any future disasters. With the correct lighting solutions and smart grid initiatives, catastrophic conditions may have a faster recovery rate in the years to come.