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Puerto Rico "Destroyed" by Hurricane Maria

posted by takyon on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-time-to-implement-strict-building-codes dept.

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

At 9PM ET September 20, ABC News reported

The island of Puerto Rico has been "destroyed" after Hurricane Maria made landfall there as a Category 4 storm Wednesday morning, according to emergency officials.

Puerto Rico's office of emergency management confirmed that 100 percent of the U.S. territory had lost power, noting that anyone with electricity was using a generator.

Multiple transmission lines sustained damage from the storm, said Ricardo Ramos, director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. Ramos said he hopes to begin launching helicopters by this weekends to begin inspecting the transmission lines.

Telecommunications throughout the island have "collapsed", Abner Gomez Cortes, executive director of Puerto Rico's office of emergency management and disaster administration agency, told ABC News.

[...] Cortes described Maria as an unprecedented storm, adding that the island had not seen a storm of that strength since 1928.

[...] Puerto Rico was still experiencing tropical-storm force winds Wednesday afternoon, forcing emergency services and search and rescue teams to wait before heading out to assess the damage, Cortes said.

More than 12,000 people are currently in shelters, and hospitals are now running on generators, Cortes said. Two hospitals--one in Caguas and one in Bayamon--have been damaged.

No deaths have been reported so far, but catastrophic flooding is currently taking place on the island. Multiple rain gauges have reported between 18 and 24 inches of rain, with some approaching the 30-inch mark over the last 24 hours.

Flooding is the danger "that will take lives", Cortes said, advising residents not to venture out of their homes until Thursday because "it is not safe to go out and observe".

[...] As of 8 p.m. ET, Maria had weakened to a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained wind of 110 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

[...] Some strengthening is possible now that the storm is back over the ocean, so Maria has potential to become a Category 3 hurricane again.

National Hurricane Center graphics for Maria.
Map of Caribbean Islands.

At 15:20 UTC, Mashable reported

Clips shot in the [cities] of Farjado, San Juan, and Guyama show buildings experiencing extreme structural damage. Doors are being ripped right off their hinges, and windows, walls, and roofs of homes, restaurants, and hotels are being stripped away by the storm's incredible power.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:00PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 21 2017, @07:00PM (#571326) Journal

    PR should, by all indications, be a tourist hotspot.

    The problem [reuters.com] is high labor and energy costs.

    Del Peon said AMResorts chose not to invest in Puerto Rico four to five years ago after seeing weak potential for returns on investment because of the high costs and middling room rates.

    The total cost to develop a room in Puerto Rico would run about 30 percent higher than the $200,000 to $250,000 AMResorts spends on average in other parts of the Caribbean, Del Peon said. And labor costs - judging by the financials from a resort the company runs in another territory with the U.S. minimum wage, St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands - can eat up 45 percent of revenue against 18-20 percent elsewhere in the region.

    “The return on investment with additional operational costs is really challenging unless the market is willing to pay more,” he said.

    Employers are also obligated to pay workers in Puerto Rico perks such as mandatory Christmas bonuses up to a maximum of $600, while they are banned from asking them to work split shifts, important in hospitality when employees may only be needed during meal times, said labor attorney Radames Torruella of Puerto Rico-based McConnell Valdes.

    and

    Still, it isn’t only more cost-efficient competition from the Caribbean that Puerto Rico has to worry about. Electricity rates in Puerto Rico are among the highest in the U.S., putting the island at a disadvantage to a place like Florida, where they are much lower. That is largely because the government-controlled Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority is reliant on imported oil.

    When oil spikes, “you basically operate in negative numbers,” the hotel owner and operator Newman said, forcing him to cut costs, including staff, whose ranks have fallen to about 130 from 165 in the past five-to-six years.

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