By Adam Voiland 28 September 2017 (NASA) – After Hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico, it quickly became clear that the destruction would pose daunting challenges for first responders. Most of the electric power grid and telecommunications network was knocked offline. Flooding, downed trees, and toppled power lines made many roads impassable.In circumstances like this, […]
By Madhura Chakraborty and Amol Lalzare 15 September 2017(Video Volunteers) – “They don’t touch us because our hands and feet are dirty. They say we stink. They yell at us, hit us, ask us to go away.” Nana Kale recounts how he is treated after working at his job: cleaning the sewers of Mumbai, before […]
SOUFRIERE, Dominica, 1 October 2017 (SSCS): In Dominica, every village, every person, every street, was impacted by the hurricane. The island’s government officials call the damage “unprecedented.” The once picturesque village of Soufriere, with a population of about 1400, was one of the hardest hit, as evidenced by the photos taken by Sea Shepherd on […]
By Omaya Sosa Pascual [translation by Google] 28 September 2017 (Centro de Periodismo Investigativo) – Leovigildo Cotté died in the middle of desperation for not getting the oxygen that sustained his life in the only shelter that exists in the town of Lajas which has been without electricity since the passage of Hurricane Maria a […]
By Jenny Marder 30 September 2017 (PBS) – Lt. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, the Department of Defense’s primary military liaison with FEMA, toured the damage in Puerto Rico for the first time Saturday during a helicopter ride from San Juan to Ceiba. After landing at a hangar in Ceiba with no power, internet or cellular […]
By Michelle Fox 29 September 2017 (CNBC) – When Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, it took down 80 percent of the transmission and distribution power lines, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority CEO Ricardo Ramos told CNBC on Friday.Power went down across the entire island after the hurricane made landfall as a Category 4 storm […]
By Juliette Kayyem 30 September 2017 (CNN) – It is a difficult task to turn the memory of Hurricane Katrina into a quaint story of well-meaning government actors unable to save a city from destruction.President Donald Trump managed to do that on Saturday morning when he essentially blamed Puerto Rico and its mayor, in a […]
By Brandon Carter 30 September 2017 (The Hill) – Retired Lt. General Russel Honoré, who oversaw the U.S. military response to Hurricane Katrina, fired back at President Trump over his early morning tweets attacking Puerto Rican leaders. “The mayor’s living on a cot, and I hope the president has a good day at golf,” Honoré […]
By Matt Ruby and Rumsey Taylor 30 September 2017 (The New York Times) – 6 a.m. Near Corozal: The sun rose Wednesday morning in the low mountains of north-central Puerto Rico, near the town of Corozal, to reveal the world that Hurricane Maria has made: shattered trees, traffic lights dangling precipitously from broken poles, and, […]
By Eric Holthaus 20 September 2017 (Grist) – After multiple intense hurricane landfalls this month, the scenes from the Caribbean have been horrific — trees stripped bare, houses flattened, million-dollar yachts strewn like toys. Category 5 hurricanes, like Irma and Maria, are the pinnacle of nature’s fury. There is simply no weather event on Earth […]
