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posted by martyb on Saturday September 23 2017, @12:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the head-for-the-hills dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 24 2017, @01:00PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 24 2017, @01:00PM (#572303) Journal

    khallow won't admit that he knows that it can look a lot like one is moving up, when, in fact, what he is doing is keeping someone else down.

    There's never been a reason here to "admit" that. Sure, I agree that your statement is correct (so now, I've admitted it, we can move on to relevant stuff, right?). But conversely that statement works against you as well. Moving up can look a lot like keeping someone else down, particularly, if you peer at the behavior through a warped, envious ideological lens with beliefs which don't accept that such things can happen.

    What's particularly bizarre about your previous post is that you brought up three countries without a reason for bringing them up. We were speaking of Puerto Rico and the US's response there. Now suddenly, it's about Cuba, Vietnam, and Venezuela, only one of which has been affected by hurricanes this year. What's going on? Should the US be sending disaster relief to Vietnam or Venezuela for hurricanes that they didn't experience?

    There's a single trait common to these three countries, anti-democratic "state capitalism". I already stated what I think is going on here. You have ideological blinders on. And one wonders just how much of your claims to advocate socialism are lip service as a result. If you can gloss over the rampant failure of these three countries so readily, then are you really for socialism (as you define socialism, with democracy, etc) or are you really for state capitalism (again as you define the term)?