By Abby Hamblin 29 September 2017 (San Diego Tribune) – Puerto Rico Mayor Yulín Cruz is begging for help with Hurricane Maria relief for the island of more than 3.4 million people suffering without power and other basic necessities. “I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying,” she said […]
By Frances Robles and Luis Ferré-Sadurní 24 September 2017 YABUCOA, P.R. (The New York Times) – José A. Rivera, a farmer on the southeast coast of Puerto Rico, stood in the middle of his flattened plantain farm on Sunday and tried to tally how much Hurricane Maria had cost him.“How do you calculate everything?” Mr. […]
By Samantha Schmidt and Joel Achenbach 24 September 2017 JUNCOS, Puerto Rico (The Washington Post) – In the heat and humidity here in the central mountains, Meryanne Aldea fanned her bedridden mother with a piece of cardboard Sunday as the ailing woman lay on her side, relieving a large ulcer in her back. The 63-year-old […]
By Danica Coto 24 September 2017 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Associated Press) – Puerto Rico’s nonvoting representative in the U.S. Congress said Sunday that Hurricane Maria’s destruction has set the island back decades, even as authorities worked to assess the extent of the damage. “The devastation in Puerto Rico has set us back nearly 20 […]
By Mike Gaworecki 20 September 2017 (Mongabay) – A team of researchers based in Australia and the United States have used historical nautical maps to determine that coral reef loss in the Florida Keys is much more extensive than previously understood.The British empire began mapping its overseas territories in the 18th century, and coral reefs […]
23 September 2017 (United Nations) – Pleading with all countries in the United Nations General Assembly – large and small, rich and poor – to come together to save our planet, the Prime Minister of Dominica, where the landscape, ravaged by back-to-back hurricanes “resembles a warzone,” said his and other islands in the Caribbean need […]
By Samantha Schmidt and Daniel Cassady 23 September 2017 SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO (The Washington Post) – In the northern Puerto Rican town of Vega Baja, the floodwaters reached more than 10 feet. Stranded residents screamed “save me, save me,” using the lights in their cellphones to help rescue teams find them in the darkness, […]
By Rick Jervis 23 September 2017 TOA BAJA, Puerto Rico (USA TODAY) – People in this storm-torn town waded though muddy water, swept thick mud out of living rooms or drove through thigh-high water crossings in cars that sputtered, stalled, and started again. Nearby, a FEMA response team, with specialists from Indiana, California, Florida and […]
By Anthony Faiola 12 September 2017 CRUZ BAY, U.S. Virgin Islands (The Washington Post) – The Asolare restaurant is gone, practically blown off its cliff, along with its world-famous carrot ginger soup. The facade of Margarita Phil’s is a junkyard of yellow and vermilion planks. Multimillion-dollar homes and aluminum huts alike lie in ruins.On the […]
By Jon Schuppe 23 September 2017 (NBC News) – A team of New York electricity-transmission workers and a pair of drone operators arrived in San Juan Friday to help the reeling government of Puerto Rico begin to measure the damage to the U.S. territory’s power grid. The entire island remained without electricity into the weekend, […]
