Hurricane Maria completely destroyed Puerto Rico’s fragile power grid, leaving all 3.6 million residents without electricity. At the largest private hospital in San Juan, Auxilio Mutuo, when the power went down, the standby power switched on. The hospital’s standby Cat® generator sets ran continuously, for 13 straight days.
“When warnings were issued that Hurricane Maria was going to hit us, we knew that all of our generators were going to be pressed into service to ensure the continued operation of the hospital.” said hospital utility director Wilson Colon. Immediately after the hurricane, they called their Cat dealer for help.
Knowing who to call
Rimco Cat sent two technicians to assist with both the operation and maintenance of the generator sets for the duration of the crisis. “We always had two technicians here helping us to maintain these generator sets and keep them running. They changed filters and performed other maintenance while the engines were still running,” said Colon. “We don’t want any other power generation equipment except Cat gensets in our hospital.”
Marpor Corporation’s Denny’s restaurants in Puerto Rico had enough Cat standby power to keep their power on through hurricane Maria and to help out their community by handing out 4,000 breakfasts to people in need.
Link to storyPharmaceutical company Neolpharma Puerto Rico maintains its own standby power generation system but stood to lose a substantial amount of inventory when Hurricane Maria devastated the island. To ensure continuous power, they rented a Cat XQ 2000 generator set.
Link to storyWith dire warnings of the approach of Hurricane Maria, Mendez & Company required a backup generator to support its own standby power at a refrigerated warehouse facility. Rimco Cat was able to provide an 800 kW genset in advance of the storm.
Link to storyThree months after the longest blackout in U.S. history, nearly half of the island’s residents remained without power from the utility grid. Caterpillar, the Cat® dealer network, and RIMCO responded in force when Category 5 hurricane Maria caused complete failure of the power grid in Puerto Rico.
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