CUSA Consulting was awarded a contract to deal with a hurricane, not a pandemic. But it turned into a Covid-related contract, though the Federal Aviation Administration said that the actual funds didn’t come through the CARES Act.

It was Covid that sent the Hampton-based firm packing from Naguabo, Puerto Rico, on March 15, where it had a crew trying to restore power knocked out by Hurricane Maria in 2017. The airport had been using an emergency generator ever since.

“We had the whole contract already funded,” said CUSA President Mark Thurston. “Then, bang, we had to leave and leave all our stuff.”

Indeed when Covid hit, the FAA shut down all nonessential work. CUSA needed a PPP loan (somewhere between $350,000 to $1 million) to keep 38 people on the payroll.

But Puerto Rico eventually became one of the few places — Maine and Alaska the others — where Thurston has been able to continue work, thanks, he said, to the intervention of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

So on April 12, CUSA got another contract, for $180,000, to finish the work, and his crew finally made it back out there. The project was classified Covid-19 because the “contractor had to temporarily leave rental equipment at the worksite when the project was suspended due to Covid-19. The contract funds rental equipment costs during the three-month suspension and restarting the project after the hiatus,” said the FAA in a statement.

“I don’t know where the money came from,” said Thurston. “Maybe they have some kind of a slush fund. But I think it is justified. Now we can finish our work like any other construction company,” he said.