boltonblue

After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico is in some pretty dire straights.
The electrical grid is basically destroyed island wide.
There is virtually no fuel on the island.
Food is very restricted and fields and farming have been decimated.
The communication grid is all but totally inoperable.
One of the major dams on the island is at risk of failure.

In short it's a huge mess.

Legal Bill

Yeah, it's on the news.
We all know what is going to happen. We've seen it all before. We'll see it again in ten years somewhere else.

dwb993

Catastrophic.

The airport in San Juan is on emergency power. Until they can get a reliable power source up and running, they cannot resume operations on anything like a "normal" basis, much less for relief.

Apparently, the military has pivoted resources from Florida to Puerto Rico. I read that USS Kearsarge (Amphibious/Helicopter Assault ship) and a Navy aircraft carrier and USNS Comfort are enroute, as well.

According to friends on Facebook, many bridges and roads are out. Even if supplies could be flown in, many people cannot get to the airports to get them.

Its just absolutely terrible. Would be nice if people were talking more about this and less about kneeling.

Chuck S

Would be nice if the millionaire kneelers were helping rather than protesting whatever it is they're protesting.

-- Chuck

MarcusDubya77

Amen, to that!

MsPerky

It is very bad, but the people in the USVI are concerned that all of the help is going to PR and they have been forgotten. St Croix was the staging area for St Thomas and St John after Irma hit, then Maria came along and destroyed St Croix.

Scooterboy

The infrastructure in PR was a mess before Maria and Irma. They will need to almost start from scratch.

Legal Bill

I see this all the time with insurance claims. A piece of junk gets destroyed and a nice, code compliant, brand new structure takes its place. The problem here is that the US taxpayer will be paying to rebuild the island, not an insurance company. But since all the money we spend is borrowed, I guess we don't have to worry about it, right?

boltonblue

I would not be surprised if this does not result in an acceleration of statehood adoption by PR.

But the Island infrastructure is at the point of starting over, at least the power grid from the images I've seen.
Communications aren't far behind.
A coworker made the observation that this is almost good for them in some twisted respect.
They have been doing so much debt service for years that they haven't been re-investing in infrastructure.

freq

I'm just glad I don't have to figure out how to fix it.

Sadly, I'll likely have to help pay for it to some degree.