In Puerto Rico, acute shortages plunge the masses into survival struggle
Source: Reuters
#U.S.OCTOBER 1, 2017 / 3:29 PM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
Robin Respaut, Nick Brown
FAJARDO, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Brian Jimenez had burned through dwindling supplies of scarce gasoline on a 45-minute drive in search of somewhere to fill his grandmother’s blood thinner prescription. He ended up in Fajardo, a scruffy town of strip malls on Puerto Rico’s northeastern tip, where a line of 400 waited outside a Walmart.
The store had drawn desperate crowds of storm victims who had heard it took credit or debit cards and offered customers $20 cash back – a lifeline in an increasingly cashless society. Store employees allowed customers in, one by one, for rationed shopping trips of 15 minutes each.
Then, at noon, the store closed after its generator croaked and before Jimenez could get inside to buy his grandmother’s medicine.
“Every day we say, ‘What’s the thing that we need the most today?’ and then we wait in a line for that,” said Jimenez, a 24-year-old medical student from Ponce, on the island’s southern coast.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-puertorico-survival/in-puerto-rico-acute-shortages-plunge-the-masses-into-survival-struggle-idUSKCN1C61SZ
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