Reports coming in now of Family members being buried in their front Yard in Puerto Rico
One reporter at White House mentioned reports of people beginning to bury their dead in their front yards because no help came in time because roads were blocked and no cell phone or phone or electricity. This would make sense regarding older people especially or people addicted to electronic devices getting hysterical without that input into their lives. Those of us who lived 50 years or more without cell phones or home computers or Ipads or Ipods don't have this problem because we remember what it was like when life was a lot more boring than now. You just wait it out as long as you have enough water and food. And even if you have a headache in places like the deserts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas and other places a headache with no air conditioning or swamp coolers most of the summer places was just "Normal". Some died from these heat headaches and some lived through it. That was the way it was in the 1950s and before always. I remember having headaches that lasted days sometimes after traveling without an air conditioner with my father across Arizona, New Mexico and California deserts and the only relief was to put wet a rag on my face and stick my face outside the car window and let it get chapped sometimes for days afterwards. And often for 2 or 3 days I would have a headache from the heat after this during the 1950s without car or house air conditioning. Often the most you had even at home was a fan blowing over ice cubes (at the most). And sometimes people died from the heat. This was just life in the U.S. and the rest of the world. And it's still that way in most of the world today. If you get hot enough you just die and that 's all. This is just life in hot places thousands of years back now. The cold for most people is actually easier to survive than the heat. Getting too hot and flooding kills the most people in the end. That's why you don't see many people in real deserts.
Also, we didn't have anti-freeze for cars then so they boiled over a lot so we kept a Canvas bag on hot days tied to the grill of the car so the evaporation through the canvas of water kept it cool for both drinking it in emergencies but also for water for the radiator in emergencies. It was a way to stay alive while driving through 110 to 130 degrees across deserts in a car then.
3 days ago - Five days after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, bisecting the ... crisis, with humanitarian aid getting in far more slowly than is needed. ... Family members collect belongings after hurricane force winds ... There are few hospitals with running generators, CNN reports, and fewer with running water.
Sep 20, 2017 - All regions of Puerto Rico battled floodwaters as Hurricane Maria regained ... of Puerto Rico, where at least one death had been reported. ... refuge with three family members in her concrete home in Bayamón, ... “We have a big one going right now — I've never seen winds like this — in Puerto Rico,” he ...
Missing: buried front yard
“Hysteria is starting to spread”: Puerto Rico is devastated in the wake of Hurricane Maria
No power, little access to water, dwindling food: the situation in Puerto Rico right now.
A man rides his bicycle through a damaged road in Toa Alta, west of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on September 24, 2017.
RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images
Five days after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico,
bisecting the entire island, the US territory is in the grips of a
serious, life-threatening crisis, with humanitarian aid getting in far
more slowly than is needed.
The island is running short on food, fuel, and access to
clean water and there’s limited communications, which means some
communities have received no information about the rescue efforts
underway.
Among the greatest threats is the continuing lack of
power throughout much of the island, after nearly the entire power grid
was knocked offline during the storm (about 80 percent of the
transmission infrastructure was destroyed). The New York Times reports
it could be four to six months before power is restored on the island.
That’s half a year with Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents relying on
generators, half a year without air conditioning in the tropical
climate, half a year where electric pumps can’t bring running water into
homes, half a year where even the most basic tasks of modern life are
made difficult.
“The devastation is vast,” Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said in a statement Monday. “Make no mistake — this is a humanitarian disaster involving 3.4 million U.S. citizens.”
The storm has claimed at least 16 lives in Puerto Rico so far, according to the Associated Press. But John Mutter,
a Columbia University professor who specializes in natural disasters
and studied the death toll from Hurricane Katrina, expects in the coming
days it could reach into the hundreds.
“Being without power is huge,” says Mutter. “Just how
quickly they can get it back is still an unknown thing. But it’s
extremely important they get it going to suppress the chances of illness
following the storm.”
“Hysteria is starting to spread”
Family members collect belongings after hurricane
force winds destroyed their house in Toa Baja, west of San Juan, Puerto
Rico, on September 24, 2017.
RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images
Other islands -- including Dominica
and the US Virgin islands — were devastated by Maria too. And the whole
Eastern Caribbean region is also still reeling from the effects of
Hurricane Irma.
Puerto
Rico is the most populated island Maria hit. And the crisis there is
particularly intense. For one, it’s exacerbated by lack of
communications. (1,360 out of 1,600 cellphone towers on the island are out.)
Many communities have been isolated from the outside world for days,
relying only on radios for news. The communications shortage means the
full extent of the crisis has not been assessed.
"The devastation in Puerto Rico has set us back nearly 20 to 30 years," Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez told
CBS News. "I can't deny that the Puerto Rico of now is different from
that of a week ago. The destruction of properties, of flattened
structures, of families without homes, of debris everywhere. The
island's greenery is gone."
But over the weekend, a handful of journalists were able to make it in to communities that have been isolated.
The Washington Post reported
from Juncos, Puerto Rico, a municipality in the Central Eastern region
of the island. There, they found a diabetic woman afraid that the
refrigeration that keeps her insulin preserved will soon run out,
people living in homes missing roofs or whole second floors, and where
the villagers asked journalists upon their arrival, “Are you FEMA?”
There are few hospitals with running generators, CNN reports, and fewer with running water. Reuters reports
that hospitals are scrambling to find diesel fuels to power generators,
and that food supplies are running low. A cardiovascular surgeon the
newswire spoke with explained:
…without air conditioning, the walls of the
operating room were dripping with condensation and floors were slippery.
... Most patients had been discharged or evacuated to other facilities,
but some patients remained because their families could not be reached
by phone.
USA Today made
it to the town Arecibo on the Northern shore of the island, where
residents hadn’t heard any news from the outside world for four days,
and the only source of fresh water is from a single fire hydrant.
“Hysteria is starting to spread,” Jose Sanchez Gonzalez, mayor of Manati, a town on the North shore, told the Associated Press. “The hospital is about to collapse. It’s at capacity. … We need someone to help us immediately.”
But the list of woes is much longer. An untold number of
homes are irreparably damaged. Infrastructure is badly damaged. People
aren’t working. The storm was particularly costly for the agriculture
industry: “In a matter of hours, Hurricane Maria wiped out about 80
percent of the crop value in Puerto Rico,” the New York Times reports.
Even the National Weather Services Doppler weather radar station on the island has been destroyed.
That’s the radar that helps meteorologist see where thunderstorms and
other weather systems are moving in real time. “Not having radar does
make future storms more hazardous,” says Jeff Weber, a meteorologist
with the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Meanwhile,
new crises keep forming in the wake of the storm. On Friday, the
National Weather Service issued a dire warning about the Guajataca Dam
in the Northwestern corner of Puerto Rico, threatening downstream areas
with deadly floods. Seventy thousand people — enough to fill a small
city — have been asked to evacuate areas that could be flooded by the nearly11 billion gallons of water the dam holds back.
And leaving is not an option, at least for now.
“Travelers at the airport on Sunday were told that passengers who do not
already have tickets may not be able to secure flights out until
October 4,” Reuters reports.
Relief operations have begun, slowly
Puerto Rico's Governor Ricardo Rossello speaks to
the media during a press conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on
September 24, 2017.
RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images)
Puerto Rico is an island, which complicates recovery
efforts. Supplies have to be flown in or arrive via ship. Most of the
sick and elderly haven’t been able to evacuate.
On Saturday, the island’s main port in San Juan reopened
and 11 ships arrived, the AP reports, bringing 1.6 million gallons of
water, 23,000 cots, food, and electrical generators. More than 2,500 National
Guard members have been deployed to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin
Islands. The Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers are working to
reopen more ports on the islands. (FEMA is keeping a running list of federal resources deployed to Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.)
Still, the relief efforts will take time to make their
way to communities across the island. “We need more resources from the
Department of Defense so we can get helicopters and resources,” Puerto
Rico Gov. Rossello told Politico Sunday. He also implored Congress to pass a special aid and relief package for the US territory.
“Whatever relief package we have, whatever impact we
have, we are U.S. citizens," Rossello said. Puerto Rico’s finances are
already strapped. The territory filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
The island’s finances are now controlled by a federal board, which made
just $1 billion available for relief, the AP reports.
“Given Puerto Rico’s fragile economic recovery prior to
the storms, we ask the Trump Administration and the U.S. Congress to
take swift action to help Puerto Rico rebuild,” Rossello said in his
Monday statement.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has not mentioned Puerto Rico in his Twitter feed since the day after the storm hit.
Trump approved a disaster declaration for the island that day too,
freeing up federal resources for the recovery. This past weekend, as the
situation on the ground in Puerto Rico came into better focus, Trump
took to Twitter to call out professional athletes for kneeling down
during the National Anthem.
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