Hurricanes, Generators, and the Two Questions We Forgot to Ask

Within a day of arriving at our beautiful rental in Dorado in 2019, our whole family — three generations, including our eighty-year-old mother — was showering at the community pool in our swimsuits. The five-year-old thought it was an adventure. The eighty-year-old was a very good sport. The dog was appalled.

Nobody had told us that here, when the power goes out, so does the water in your taps. We had toured that house and admired the view. It had not occurred to us to ask the two questions that matter most on this island: where is the generator, and where is the cistern? The house had neither. We ate protein bars, rationed phone batteries, and walked to the pool with towels over our shoulders, laughing, mostly, because the only other option was to cry — and crying doesn't fill a water tank.

We tell you this not to scare you. We love this island more than we can put into words, and we are still here, all these years later, by choice and with our whole hearts. We tell you because we were smart, capable people who did almost everything wrong on the way in — and nearly all of it was avoidable. Consider this the class we took so you don't have to.

Honestly: season runs June 1 through November 30, with peak risk from late August through mid-October, and the vast majority of seasons pass without a major storm making a direct hit. Many years bring only tropical weather — heavy rain, gusty stretches, low-area flooding — without a hurricane at all.

But living through a significant event, or even a serious near-miss, permanently changes your relationship with preparedness. During the peak, serious residents keep a weather app open, know the names of developing Atlantic systems, and hold their preparations at continuous readiness rather than scrambling at the last minute. You will never again feel casual about a named storm in the Atlantic. That's appropriate.

And it's impossible to understand this island's relationship with weather without saying the name María. Hurricane María made landfall on September 20, 2017, as a Category 4 storm. The destruction was catastrophic — a near-total, island-wide power loss that lasted months in many areas, the longest blackout in U.S. history. Everyone who lived through it carries that experience, and everyone who has moved here since has arrived into a community shaped by it. The fueled generators, the tanks above half, the cash on hand — this is not irrational fear. It is hard-won wisdom. And it is also part of understanding the resilience of this place: Puerto Rico rebuilt, the social fabric held, and in some ways emerged stronger. Newcomers who arrive with genuine respect for what that resilience has cost are welcomed into it.

The grid has improved since María but remains vulnerable. Outages happen — after storms, after infrastructure events, sometimes without obvious cause. So most established Dorado residents have backup power, ranging from a portable unit for essentials to a whole-house standby generator with an automatic transfer switch. For a high-value home, whole-house standby with adequate fuel capacity is simply the standard, and many families pair it with battery storage and, increasingly, solar.

The practical rules we now live by, and press on every friend who moves here: if you rent, ask specifically about backup power before signing — and about the cistern, learn from our towels. If you buy, evaluate the generator as part of the decision; a home with one properly installed is worth materially more, in dollars and in peace of mind. Know your unit's consumption rate, keep enough fuel to run several days minimum during peak season, and use fuel stabilizer.

Here's what the disaster stories leave out, though. When power drops and your generator hums to life, an outage is an inconvenience rather than a crisis. And something happens during an outage here that doesn't happen the same way in more anonymous places: people come together. They check on neighbors, share generators and ice, fill the WhatsApp groups with updates and offers of help. An outage that might feel isolating elsewhere becomes, here, a reminder of the community you belong to. It does not make the outage pleasant. It makes it meaningful.

When we look at any property on this island now — and when you tour one, you should too — we verify specifically: generator capacity and transfer-switch installation; water cistern and pressure system; roof age and condition; documented flood-zone status and any storm-damage history; and, for communities, HOA financial reserves and pending special assessments. These are the basic infrastructure of resilient island ownership, not afterthoughts.

The good news is that Puerto Rican homes are built for this reality: concrete construction, tile rather than hardwood, deep overhangs, architecture engineered for hurricanes and breezes both. The thick walls keep interiors remarkably cool.

One more layer the remote workers among you will care about: connectivity deserves the same redundancy as power. The combination most serious professionals here settle on is Liberty — the main wired provider — as primary, with Starlink as failover; paired with a battery or generator, that dish is what keeps your video calls alive on the day the neighborhood loses cable. T-Mobile's 5G Home Internet is a strong third option. Build in the redundancy on day one and you'll never think about it again.

Build it before the season, not during a warning: water at one gallon per person per day, fourteen-day minimum, pets included. Fourteen days of non-perishables you'll actually eat. Medications thirty days beyond your normal supply. Three to five hundred dollars in small bills, because card readers stop working when the grid goes down. Fuel for the generator, with stabilizer. Charged battery banks, a hand-crank or solar radio, important documents in a waterproof container, and a real first-aid kit.

That's the whole class. It costs a weekend and a Costco run, and it buys you the thing this island teaches everyone eventually: the difference between weathering a storm and being flattened by one is almost entirely decided before the sky darkens. Come prepared, and take the preparedness culture seriously. Then enjoy the other 350 days of the year — which, we can report, are glorious.

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Drawn from The Dorado Beach Insider by Tim & Julie Harris — including every rookie mistake we made so you don't have to. Get the book at doradobeachinsider.com.