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House in Gamla Stan, the Old Town of Stockholm, built in the 1600s

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Outside of his little business on the side of the road in a small town in Loiza, Puerto Rico, Santiago Quiñones adjusts a small solar panel.

It’s charging a floodlight, to illuminate the cramped space at night. He takes it down and demonstrates how it works. “You can’t see right now because it’s daylight, but it’s already charged,” he says in Spanish.

Like everyone else in Puerto Rico, 73-year-old Quiñones has lost access to the power grid. His house was also badly damaged by floodwaters when Hurricane Maria swept over the island.

So he and his wife are living across the street, using a bed set up in his shop, which survived the storm with relatively minor damage. They have a generator powering, among other things, a TV in their makeshift bedroom. And to help see at night there’s the solar panel and some rechargeable battery-powered lights.

They bought the light three months ago “for the storms,” Quiñones says. They’d heard it could be a dangerous hurricane season this year.

All over the island, people are facing the challenging task of recovering from the damage wrought by Maria — and simultaneously grappling with a power outage that won’t be over for weeks at the least.

‘You Have To Try’: Puerto Ricans, Without Power, Find Ways Forward

Inspirational penthouse apartment at the top of the Holmenkollen Ski Jump in Oslo, Norway

WINTER IN OSLO

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