“It has upended the lives of 3.4 million people. It has cut off entire towns from each other. It has left residents without water to drink or bathe in. Enough aid has not come for many. The gravity of the recovery time is starting to set in”. Leyla Santiago, CNN
It’s important to many of us to keep the dire situation Puerto Rico in the news. That it has taken a few notches down since the storm is not surprising with a chaos regime, but we all know the situation has barely improved since Hurricane Maria barreled over the island a month ago. News does continue to trickle out and it all points to a humanitarian crisis looming for the millions of Americans that live there. Please see Donation links at the bottom, if you are able to help or continue to help.
And please, use this diary as on open thread on PR. Tweets, videos, thoughts, sadness, fear most welcome. We all are feeling a range of emotions and so much frustration.
Milton Carrero Galarza writes for the Los Angeles Times, the excerpts below are just a sample in the riveting piece titled “Foraging for food, water and hope: Puerto Ricans cope with lingering devastation of Hurricane Maria”.
Food, water, medicine, electricity and shelter all remain desperately scarce on the island. The hurricane wiped out thousands of homes, decimated agriculture and cut power and phone lines, making it difficult for most of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents to communicate with family or aid services.
Some roads in mountainous regions contort and contract with mudslides that expose precipices on each side. In some cases, people have been left isolated by collapsed bridges in communities that already were off the beaten path.
The number of deaths associated with the hurricane rose to at least 49, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said Friday, and that number was expected to go up again. Officials said dozens of people are still missing.
snip
“For everybody who hears we are OK, that means we are alive. But there has not been a day when I have not come home crying because I am thinking of a mother who came to me saying that we have no food,” she said.
Quiñones said she feels hopeful when she sees members of her community working to rebuild neighborhoods with their own hands. She has a child with special needs who has taken to working on their vegetable garden, which they replanted days after the storm hit.
Marinilda Rivera Diaz, a social worker in Rio Piedras, is part of an interdisciplinary team of professionals working at one of the “Stop and Go” centers, a government initiative where residents go for food, medical care and help filling out paperwork for federal aid.
“I am worried about the people who have bedridden family members living in their homes who depend on a respirator,” she said. “Can you imagine what it is like to need to breathe and not have oxygen?”
Among those recently at the Jose Celso Barbosa school where Rivera Diaz works was Roberto Bonilla, who sought physical and emotional care. He was grateful for the warm plate of food he received.
“I am 60 years old, and I need food,” he said, kissing the plate.
In Puerto Rico, a Hopeful Sight: Endangered Parrot Spotted After Hurricane Maria
Suzanne Gamboa writes for NBC news on the worry that endangered Puerto Rican Parrots may not have survived the storm.
Their habitat stripped of foIiage by Hurricane Maria, the parrots, both wild and those released after being bred in captivity, went quiet.
“Hurricane Maria seems to be a major setback for recovery of the parrot,” said Jafet Veléz-Valentín, a wildlife biology/aviculturalist for the Iguaca Aviary, formerly the Luquillo Aviary.
On Wednesday, 28 days after Maria, there was “a new hope,” as Veléz-Valentín described it in a string of texts from the island. Someone spotted a cotorra, the Spanish word for parrot, with a radio collar and an orange leg band in Barrio Caguitas in Aguas Buenas.
The person notified the aviary through Facebook. The collar and band mean the parrot is part of a population bred during the 2016 season, Veléz-Valentín said.
“One of our biologists, Gabriel Benítez Soto, contacted the person who saw and photographed the parrot,” he said, adding that another search is on in the forest and vicinity for more parrots.
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Before the hurricane, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had counted 56 to 60 parrots, the highest number of the parrots since 1967, thanks to a program to restore the species.
But then Irma hit and about 30 to 35 parrots were surveyed. Then came María.
A breeding population of 240 Puerto Rican Parrots in two aviaries were moved to safety before the hurricane; they all survived. They will produce more birds next year in captivity and later be introduced to the wild. Four wild Puerto Rican Parrots flew to the aviary after Hurricane Maria in search of food and have been staying in the surrounding area.
DONATION LINKS
Here’s some great agencies with aid-workers hard at work on the ground in PR right now:
You can donate right to the José Andrés’s Chef’s group at https://www.worldcentralkitchen.org
Hispanic Federation
Americares
Hurricane Maria Community Recovery Fund
Catholic Relief Services Hurricane Relief (Caribbean-wide)
Here is a GoFundMe we can get behind as well. To help those in the most need, celebrities and others started sending their private planes to pick up cancer patients, elderly, people needing medical care, etc.
More donation sites worthy of contributions. Thanks for posting them bfitzinAR
DK ACT BLUE (and other) DISASTER RELIEF DONATION LINKS:
Here’s a link from Bill McKibben for an org to help Puerto Rico:
From Vetwife, Former Presidents Working for All Americans:
Another choice, from Denise Oliver Velez:
- Unidos Fund, from the Hispanic Federation (After you click the orange DONATE button on the Unidos page, you’ll see a dropdown below your name & address. You can choose to donate to hurricane relief for PR, and also to Mexican earthquake relief.)
And of course, h/t TexMex: