Public Works Subdirector Ramon Mendez, in hard hat, works with locals who are municipal workers as they install a new post to return electricity to a home, four months after Hurricane Maria hit the El Ortiz sector of Coamo, Puerto Rico. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)

It took only minutes for Hurricane Maria to kill power to the Puerto Rican town of Coamo, cracking wooden poles, snapping power lines and hurling transformers to the ground.

For months, residents begged Puerto Rico's power company and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to bring back their electricity, with few results.

So the people of this town of 40,000 high in the mountains of southern Puerto Rico have started restoring power on their own, pulling power lines from undergrowth and digging holes for wooden posts in a do-it-yourself effort to solve a small part of the United States' longest-running power outage.