CVN’s have been hooked up to the Manhattan grid during several major outages to supply electricity to critical infrastructure such as hospitals, Police & Civil Government facilities, etc.

it would be worth having an old CVN that is dedicated just to this one purpose - emergency assistance, emergency electrical power, and drinking water. It could be a lifesaver. It could be run by a "skeleton crew" of Navy personnel, with help from trained volunteers.

Was post circulating that two nuclear submarines had been sent to provide electricity. Seems that is false.

Though the idea has been planned by Naval and civil engineers in a previous disaster, it has never been tried.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/29/us/navy-seeks-to-return-power-to-stricken-hawaii-island.html

Amazed that PR is still without many infrastructure repairs -- power clean water, jobs.

They have really suffered. The impact on PR will probably last for years.

Wildman800: I put great store in you posts and opinions. But forgive my surprise when you say that CVNs have hooked up to Manhattan Island to supply power to hospitals etc. I’ve lived in the area my whole long life and I’ve been engaged in emergency services almost all my adult life, so I have intimate familiarity.

The only place you could dock a CVN , off Manhattan ,is at a midtown , Westside dock, on the Hudson River, neart the Intrepid. Intrepid is now NYC,s Emergency Ops HQ. I never remember seeing a CVN docked in that area in any blackout. I m including in my recollection all the way back to the 1965 Blackout. I drive within sight of that area several times a week.

I would love to be wrong in my skepticism. Please feel free to correct and educate me. It sounds like a great story or stories. I’d like to read-up on the history.

Pete: Recommissionlng an old CVN as a disaster relief airport/ hospital/ stores ship and emergency ops center , staffed as you describe , is a brilliant, very doable idea. With a flight wing of a mix of Grumman C-2 Greyhounds, perhaps V-22 Tilt Rotor Ospreys, as well as heavy and light helos, it would be a formidable weapon in disaster relief.

Another and somewhat smaller additions to such a disaster relief fleet would be retired Landig Ship Platforms (LPD) and Landing Ship Docks (LSD). Albeit, their aircraft decks are too small for the Greyhounds to operate, the V-22s and helos would work well, although in smaller numbers than a CVN can house. In addition the LPDs & LPHs could deploy small landing craft for delivery of relief workers, goods & services to beachs or small docks. Casualties & refugees could be evavacuated in reverse. Those ships are designed to house hundreds of troop and their vehicles. They are also designed to treat hundreds of medical trauma casualties. Their value is obvious.

It is always difficult to get an accurate toll of fatalities from natural disasters. In a hurricane do you only count people who died directly from wind and flooding? Or do you also count those who died because they could not get adequate medical care due to disruption of power and transportation? If so, how do you quantify that. NY Times has an interesting approach to the problem.

Official Toll in Puerto Rico: 64. Actual Deaths May Be 1,052.

As an engineer I would not mix a count of direct fatalities and an estimate, which I would expect to be not very accurate.
However the estimate can be useful to indentify potential risks and needs for the aftermath and help to plan for them. Keeping the data separate may make it more readily available for use in planning for other disasters and maybe even humanitary crisis.
Adding the figures up to a total may make some people feel better or provide arguments when asking for support as it illustrates how hard they were hit. That can be a value in itself.

They are still recovering; most have power.