Three weeks since Hurricane Maria, much of Puerto Rico still dark, dry, frustrated
Source: The Washington Post
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Arelis R. Hernández October 11 at 11:31 AM
-snip-
It has been three weeks since Hurricane Maria savaged Puerto Rico, and life in the capital city of San Juan inches toward something that remotely resembles a new, uncomfortable form of normalcy. Families once again loll on the shaded steps of the Mercado de Santurce traditional market on a Sunday afternoon, and a smattering of restaurants and stores open their doors along sidewalks still thick with debris and tangled power lines. But much of the rest of the island lies in the chokehold of a turgid, frustrating and perilous slog toward recovery.
When night comes, the vast majority of this 100-mile long, 35-mile wide island plunges into profound darkness, exposing the impotence of a long-troubled power grid that was tattered by Marias winds and rains. Eighty-four percent of the island is still without power, according to the governors office, and local officials in many areas are steeling themselves with a sense of anger and dread for six months or more without electricity.
Roughly half of Puerto Ricans have no working cellphone service, creating islands of isolation within the island and cutting off hundreds of thousands of people in regions outside the largest metropolitan areas from regular contact with their families, aid groups, medical care and the central government. Christine Enid Nieves Rodriguez, who has set up a community kitchen near the southeastern city of Humacao, has dubbed the new reality Puerto Ricos dystopian future.
Attendant with that future are worries about outbreaks of waterborne diseases, such as scabies or Zika, which is transmitted by mosquitoes breeding in standing water. Just 63 percent of the islands residents have access to clean drinking water, and just 60 percent of wastewater treatment plants are working, according to figures released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In poorer communities, such as the San Juan neighborhood of Carolina and the mountain town of Canovanas, doctors are seeing worrying numbers of patients with conjunctivitis and gastritis brought on by contaminated water and poor hygiene.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/three-weeks-since-hurricane-maria-much-of-puerto-rico-still-dark-dry-frustrated/2017/10/11/3a263b22-ade7-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_maria-puertorico-12pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.15b0b85135b5
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