Crisis in Puerto Rico: Hurricane Maria

As many of you know, this hurricane season has been the worst in decades. With Harvey hitting Texas and Louisiana, Irma hitting Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, Jose hitting Florida, and then Maria slamming into Puerto Rico just days after Irma. Hello, I am Dylan and I will be giving you a crash course on the devastation and relief efforts in Puerto Rico.

Two weeks ago Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. According to NASA, the wind speeds were over 155 miles per hour. It made landfall on September 20th, 2017. It was the strongest hurricane since the 1800’s. About 97% of the island’s 3.4 million inhabitants are in the dark. One week after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, Governor Ricardo Rosselló said that about half of the residents still do not have running water.

Since Puerto Rico is an island there is no where to go to escape the devastation because the power is out. As I mentioned before there is no running water and many people are getting their water from fresh mountain streams. The relief efforts have even tremendous, with major celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda starting donation funds for the island. Major news outlets like CNN are sending tons of water, Rosa Flores (a CNN reporter) posted on twitter, “3500 pounds of supplies headed to Puerto Rico on a DASH 8 CBP plane…”. The Army is also pitching in with FEMA (The Federal Emergency Management Agency) sending 10,000 federal staff members to help with relief efforts.

This week President Trump visited Puerto Rico to oversee the relief efforts. He talked to civilians, met with officials, and helped give out supplies. To give out supplies Trump threw paper towels into a crowd of civilians.Trump met with San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz about the relief help, after attacking her on Twitter. After this he held a press conferences and he said, “Every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here and what is your death count? Sixteen people,”( now 34), “versus in the thousands,” Trump said, “You can be very proud. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people.”

Skip to toolbar