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As if the onslaught of hurricanes Irma and Maria were not enough, the National Weather Service in San Juan is reporting that a major dam is failing in Puerto Rico and that 70,000 people are being evacuated by bus. From CBS:
The National Weather Service in San Juan said Friday that the northwestern municipalities of Isabela and Quebradillas, home to some 70,000 people, were being evacuated with buses because the nearby Guajataca Dam was failing after Hurricane Maria hit the U.S. territory.
Maria poured more than 15 inches of rain on the mountains surrounding the dam, swelling the reservoir behind it.
Details remained slim about the evacuation with communications hampered after the storm, but operators of the dam reported that the failure was causing flash-flooding downstream. The 345-yard dam holds back a man-made lake covering about 2 square miles and was built decades ago, U.S. government records show.
"Move to higher ground now," the weather service said in a statement. "This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order."
"Act quickly to protect your life," it added. "Buses will be evacuating people from these areas."
Wikipedia has a page about Guajataca Dam
NWS report on Twitter; also at Al Jazeera and BBC.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday September 23 2017, @01:29AM (2 children)
There is no functioning infrastructure remaining. They have to get a port, airport, something up and going. Even then it is a lot easier to roll a convoy of ulility trucks from Mississippi to Texas than to PR. Same goes for fleets of rigs from Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, etc. You can't just load up some trucks at warehouses that are still working and start rolling in as soon as the trees are cleared from the roads. Any sea transport is probably too slow for the short term relief efforts, only a massive airlift can help right now. And it is doubtful the supplies would do much more than pile up at the airport at the moment.
Due to decades of misrule their government, infrastructure, everything is at Detroit levels of failure with third world attitudes to everything. Look at pictures of their electrical grid from before. You see those sort of random wires stealing electricity in the third world. They ain't getting that sorted out anytime soon. It is doubtful anything but the big modern buildings in the cities had any insurance, nobody had a pot to piss in before and even if they had a job most of them won't be back for some time. The only jobs will be reconstruction, thankfully those will be in good supply IF the money comes from somewhere.
And the only reason we aren't hearing about widespread looting yet is the collapsed communication infrastructure combined with there being so little left to steal.
The only positive is they don't have to worry about winter. Given food, water and basic sanitation the only hard requirement from the modern world will be getting hospitals back up soon. Advantages of living in a tropical paradise. Even those basics will be a massive undertaking though, Trump and his people better get tehir A game on because it is a certainty they will be blamed, not the generations of incompetence that lead to this disaster. Hurricanes are a natural occurrence in the tropics, the fact they were this ill prepared is entirely on them.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by urza9814 on Saturday September 23 2017, @01:48AM (1 child)
Or maybe we're actually hearing reality and nobody is bothering to invent and exaggerate such reports. Studies show that there is no "widespread looting" after disasters, the media just chooses to push that narrative because it drives ratings. It can significantly harm relief efforts, but they don't care as long as they're getting paid. Probably not enough people give a damn about PR, and they're getting enough mileage out of the looting narrative from the gulf. Not that looting doesn't ever happen of course...but in general the crime rate goes down after disasters like this, not up.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-harvey-looting-20170901-story.html [chicagotribune.com]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2496928/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 23 2017, @02:33AM
That second link is especially informative, Urza. Thank you!