Puerto Rico: What It’s Really Like After the SHTF

by | Sep 28, 2017 | Headline News | 35 comments

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    This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

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    Things are dire in Puerto Rico. We haven’t heard much directly from people there since Hurricane Maria took out power for the entire island, but what we do know is that the situation is desperate. This is a shocking, real-life glimpse into what it’s really like when the S hits the fan.

    I saw a post from a friend of a friend who has family in Puerto Rico. I don’t have permission to share names, but here’s what she said:

    “My family has lost everything. My uncle with stage 4 cancer is in so much pain and stuck in the hospital. However conditions in the island are far worse than we imagined and my greatest fear has been made reality. The chaos has begun. The mosquitos have multiplied like the plague. Dead livestock are all over the island including in whatever fresh water supplies they have.
    My family has been robbed and have lost whatever little they had left. The gang members are robbing people at gun point and the island is in desperation. People are shooting each other at gas stations to get fuel.
    They’re telling us to rescue them and get them out of the island because they are scared for their lives. We’re talking about 3.5 million people on an island, with no food, no drinking water, no electricity, homes are gone. Family if you have the means to get your people out, do it. This is just the first week. Imagine the days and weeks to come. These are bad people doing bad things to our most vulnerable.
    Imagine a few weeks with no resources and the most vulnerable become desperate. What are you capable of doing if your children are sick and hungry? We have to help.”

    I decided to vet what I could, and I believe this horrible story is absolutely true. I confirmed that there is very little food, no fresh water, 97% are still without power, limited cell signals have stymied communications, and hospitals are struggling to keep people alive. There is no 911. Help is not on the way. If you have no cash, you can’t buy anything. As people get more desperate, violence increases.

    Never doubt that such an event could happen to any of us, no matter how carefully we prepare. Your best-laid plans could be swept away by a storm, flood, or fire. The immediate support most people have grown to expect might not be on the way.

    Here’s what I learned.

    Many homes were completely destroyed.

    In the town of Catano, more than 60% of the residents are homeless due to the storm. At the shelter in Catano, the bathrooms flooded and sewage backed up into the building. There is food, but no water. It’s hot, dark, and the stench is overwhelming. There is more than one person at the shelter who is diabetic, and there is no ice for their insulin. (source)

    Rivera Aviles, a Cataño city council member who set up the shelter with the help of her husband, found that her home was devastated, too.

    She and her husband evacuated before the storm because their house — made of wood — is close to the water’s edge. After Maria passed she returned home and was shocked that “the entire roof was blown off.”

    “Everything got wet — the beds, furniture, everything,” she says. The water damage has made it unlivable. (source)

    The homes that are still standing were horribly damaged. “Even in homes that remain standing on the island, water damage and power outages have destroyed most belongings, medicine, and food.” (source)

    An apartment building is missing a wall in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Monday, September 25, nearly a week after Hurricane Maria devastated the US commonwealth. Power is still out in most places, and communications remain almost nonexistent on the island of 3.4 million people.

    photo credit

    There is hardly any potable water.

    Nearly half the people in Puerto Rico are without potable drinking water. The tap water that is restored has to be boiled and filtered, and others are finding water where they can. You can expect a health crisis soon due to waterborne illnesses. When I researched my book about water preparedness, I learned that waterborne illness is one of the deadliest threats post-disaster. Although FEMA has delivered 6.5 million liters of water, on an island with 3.4 million people, it isn’t enough.

    Isabel Rullán is the co-founder and managing director of a non-profit group called ConPRmetidos. She is very concerned about the water situation. She said that even if people were able to acquire water “they may not have the power or means to boil or purify it.”

    She added that the problem went beyond access to drinking water — it was becoming a real public health concern.

    Compounding that issue was hospitals lacking diesel and being unable to take new patients, she said.

    “There’s so much contamination right now, there’s so many areas that are flooded and have oil, garbage in the water, there’s debris everywhere,” she said by phone.

    “We’re going to have a lot of people that are potentially and unfortunately going to get sick and may die,” she said. (source)

    According to the Department of Defense, 56% of the island has potable water, but in one town, Arecibo, the only fresh water comes from a single fire hydrant. (source)

    Hospitals are struggling to keep people alive.

    And speaking of hospitals, 59 of the 69 on the island were, according to the Department of Defense, “operating on unknown status.”

    Only 11 of 69 hospitals on Puerto Rico have power or are running on generators, FEMA reports. That means there’s limited access to X-ray machines and other diagnostic and life-saving equipment. Few operating rooms are open, which is scary, considering an influx of patients with storm-related injuries. (source)

    A hospital in San Juan reported that two people in intensive care died when the diesel fueling the generator ran out. The children’s hospital has 12 little ones who depend on ventilators to survive, and once they ran out of fuel, they have gotten by on donations. FEMA has delivered diesel fuel to 19 hospitals.

    But many darkened hospitals are unable to help patients who need it most.

    Without sufficient power, X-ray machines, CT scans, and machines for cardiac catheterization do not function, and generators are not powerful enough to make them work. Only one in five operating rooms is functioning. Diesel is hard to find. And with a shortage of fresh water, another concern looms: a possible public health crisis because of unsanitary conditions…

    The hospitals have been crippled by floods, damage and shortages of diesel. The governor said that 20 of the island’s hospitals are in working order. The rest are not operational, and health officials are now trying to determine whether it is because they lack generators, fuel or have suffered structural damage. All five of the hospitals in Arecibo, Puerto Rico’s largest city in terms of size, not population, are closed. (source)

    One emergency room director said, ““This is like in war: You work with what you have.”

    And it isn’t just the hospitals that are dealing with medical crises.

    “We are finding dialysis patients that haven’t been able to contact their providers, so we are having to transport them in near-death conditions,” Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said, recalling a group’s visit to two San Juan-area nursing homes this week. “We are finding people whose oxygen tanks are running out, because … small generators now don’t have any diesel.” (source)

    Residents of Puerto Rico are also having trouble getting necessary medications.

    A shortage of open pharmacies is another stressor, especially for the chronically ill and elderly residents. Most pharmacies in Puerto Rico remain closed, although they are slowly beginning to reopen. A CVS spokesman said that 21 out of 25 Puerto Rico-based CVS stores are now open, including 17 pharmacies. The first one reopened last Thursday. A Walgreens spokesman said about half of the island’s 120 stores are open and running on generators, but that hours vary. The stores are also receiving supplies of medication.

    But many pharmacies in Puerto Rico are independently owned. With so many people pleading for medication, some pharmacists who know their clients are dispensing drugs without the required prescriptions or refill bottles.

    Hospitals still have adequate supplies, and so do many of the open pharmacies, but there are concerns they may run out because suppliers are unable to get to them, said Dr. Victor M. Ramos Otero, the president of the College of Doctors and Surgeons of Puerto Rico.

    Even when people find the drugs, they often cannot pay for them. Without electricity, A.T.M.s do not work and stores cannot accept credit cards or process insurance plans. (source)

    The people who were already weakened by illness will fare the worst, shortly followed by those who become injured or ill in the aftermath.

    There isn’t much food.

    Much of the food on the island has spoiled or been contaminated.

    In the town of Utuado, Lydia Rivera has started to ration crackers and drink rainwater to keep her two grandchildren alive. “No water, no food,” Rivera told CNN. (source)
    The few markets that are open are rationing food with only 10 items per person allowed. People are standing in lines for hours to purchase their 10 items. There’s no way to keep perishables fresh. (source)
    And there won’t be food produced anytime soon. 80% of the crops were completely wiped out and it will take a long time to produce more.

    José A. Rivera, a farmer on the southeast coast of Puerto Rico, stood in the middle of his flattened plantain farm on Sunday and tried to tally how much Hurricane Maria had cost him.

    “How do you calculate everything?” Mr. Rivera said.

    For as far as he could see, every one of his 14,000 trees was down. Same for the yam and sweet pepper crops. His neighbor, Luis A. Pinto Cruz, known to everyone here as “Piña,” figures he is out about $300,000 worth of crops. The foreman down the street, Félix Ortiz Delgado, spent the afternoon scrounging up the scraps that were left of the farm he manages. He found about a dozen dried ears of corn that he could feed the chickens. The wind had claimed the rest.

    “There will be no food in Puerto Rico,” Mr. Rivera predicted. “There is no more agriculture in Puerto Rico. And there won’t be any for a year or longer.” (source)

    There is little communication.

    The lack of communications means that more remote areas have no idea what rescue operations are on the way, nor can they contact loved ones. And the lack of communication is vast:

    1,360 out of 1,600 cellphone towers on the island are out. Many communities have been isolated from the outside world for days, relying only on radios for news. The communications shortage means the full extent of the crisis has not been assessed. (source)

    photo credit

    Surprisingly, one of the most reliable ways to contact the outside world is with Facebook Messenger.

    In fact, Facebook has dispatched a “connectivity team” to help more people contact loved ones. AT&T is bringing giant floating antennas in an effort to restore cell service.

    It won’t be any surprise to preppers that ham radio operators are the only people still reliably able to communicate.

    When things went dark and quiet in Puerto Rico, a cadre of amateur radio operators became a lifeline on the island.

    About two dozen amateur radio operators on the island helped police and first responders communicate when their radio networks failed completely. Some of the radio operators, or hams traveled on trucks to provide communications to the power company, PREPA…

    Now the ranks of operator are about to get reinforcements.

    At the request of the Red Cross, the league planned to send 50 radio operators into Puerto Rico with “enormous” radio gear in water proof containers, their own power supplies, new generators and solar arrays. The crew and equipment were to leave Thursday from Atlanta.

    Their job, once set up and in place, will be to be the communication pipeline for the Red Cross Safe and Well program, helping people on the mainland trying to connect with loved ones on the island or get news of their status. (source)

    CNN offered the following links for those trying to check on loved ones.

    People are waiting four hours or longer for a gallon of gasoline and fights are breaking out in the lines as tensions run high.

    A curfew is in effect to try to squelch looting but success has been limited.

    Incidents … are common in the capital, where men carrying bats and clubs have been seen on the streets during curfew hours. The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, told WAPA Radio, “We highly advise everyone not to be on the streets at night. It is not safe,” warning that reports of looting are on the rise.

    “That is definitely something I don’t want to hear. Especially when the only lighting I have during the night is candlelight,” said Bianca Nevarez, who lives in Bayamon, where the scenario is much more tense since 13 prisoners escaped while they were being transferred to another criminal facility after the Category 5 storm caused severe damage in the prison. “We have captured eight of them, so five are still on the loose,” Ramon Rosario, secretary of Public Affairs of La Fortaleza told The Daily Beast.

    Rosario added that 21 arrests have been made across the metropolitan area as a result of those breaking the curfew, which now runs from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. No expiration date has been set.

    “We will leave it active until the emergency period that we are suffering settles,” said Governor Ricardo Rosselló, noting that anyone caught on the streets during curfew hours will face up to six months in prison. (source)

    Others talk about brazen crimes.

    “We heard about an apartment building where four people broke in,” Rullan said. “People are worried … and just trying to be really cautious. Someone told me today that a person went into a gas station with rifles and told everyone, ‘It’s our turn to fill our tanks.’” (source)

    OpsLens reports that the military is now joining forces with local police to curb the lawlessness.

    Despite the significant threat to life, those who prey on others during strife and otherwise weak states are lurking. As has been reported here on OpsLens, public safety assets from the US mainland and elsewhere are striving to get boots-on-the-ground reserves in place to join the Puerto Rico factions of police trying to quell these sinister sorts from exacerbating inexplicable circumstances. (source)

    Expect this to get even worse as the desperation increases.

    Why has help been so slow to arrive?

    Why is it that hardly any aid has arrived for this US territory? Geography and infrastructure damage are definite factors, and red tape and ridiculous laws are making matters even worse.

    Difficulty lies in the fact that harbors and airports were severely damaged by Hurricane Maria. Roads are blocked with debris and some areas are still flooded. Lack of communication also plays a part. Relief supplies are stranded in port because there isn’t a way to distribute them. (source)

    As always, bureaucracy is slowing things down. San Juan’s mayor said:

    “We need to get our s— together because people are dying,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said on CBSN. “People are really dying.”

    “It’s life or death,” Cruz said. “Every moment we spend planning in a meeting or every moment we spend just not getting the help we’re supposed to get, people are starting to die. This is not painting a picture. This is just the reality that we live in, the crude aftermath of a storm, a hurricane, that has left us technically paralyzed.” (source)

    This is a perfect example of the United States having far too many laws.  One, in particular, has slowed relief. The Jones Act is a law from the 1920s that makes it illegal to ship foreign goods on American ships with an American crew.

    The Jones Act, otherwise known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires goods shipped between American ports to be carried out exclusively by ships built primarily in the United States, and to have U.S. citizens as its owners and crews.

    Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson two years after World War I ended, the Jones Act was passed as a protective measure against foreign competition, particularly Germany. By restricting domestic trade to U.S.-flagged vessels with U.S. crews, America would always have a robust fleet of boats and sailors on hand in the event German submarines attacked the U.S. (source)

    President Trump immediately suspended the Jones Act to allow fuel to get through after Texas and Florida were hit by back to back hurricanes but last night, an entire week after Puerto Rico was cut off from the world, he was still “thinking” about it.

    “We’re thinking about that, but we have a lot of shippers and a lot of people, a lot of people who work in the shipping industry, that don’t want the Jones Act lifted.” (source)

    Mercifully, this morning, Trump finally made his decision and lifted the Jones Act. (source)

    To be fair, some aid has gotten through and FEMA says they have 10,000 people on the ground in Puerto Rico to help out with search, rescue, and recovery. President Trump also waived the legal requirement for a state to pay for one-fourth of the cost of the disaster since Puerto Rico is bankrupt. The military is airdropping food and supplies to more remote areas of Puerto Rico that are unable to be accessed by roads.

    Help is also coming from private sources. Musician Pitbull is using his private plane to fly cancer patients to the US for treatment, and Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks is sending a planeload of supplies. (source)

    Lessons from Puerto Rico

    It would be delusional to think that this kind of disaster could never happen to us. Of course, the size of our mainland means that disasters tend to be regional and that it is fairly easy logistically to get aid to different areas, but don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. There are some kinds of disasters that could affect the entire nation, like an EMP, just to name one chilling example.

    These lessons could save your life in such a situation:

    Having a plan is essential but it isn’t foolproof. No area is completely immune to disasters…earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes, floods…these can happen just about anywhere. It’s easy to say, “Oh, it’s their own fault for living on an island/not prepping/not evacuating” but this attitude belies the fact that a disaster could wipe out any of us at any time. Maybe it’s callousness, or maybe it’s really just denial.

    The terrible situation in Puerto Rico is proving true many theories about the aftermath of an all-out SHTF disaster. Particularly, it has proven that help is not always on the way, you have to know how to survive when absolutely everything is gone, and that desperate people do desperate things.

    These are lessons we should all take to heart.

    The Pantry Primer

    Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

    Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at [email protected]

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      35 Comments

      1. No matter who you are and where you live. anyone could find themselves in the same dire straights. YO YO. You are on your own.

        • coming SOON, to a theatre near YOU!

          • Re: “This is just the FIRST WEEK. Imagine the days and weeks to come.”

            How quickly things can break down.

            I have read that less than 100 years ago, Puerto Rico grew over 90% of their food. As of 2016, they grew only a small percent of their food.

            I wonder how many of the younger folks know how to grow and preserve food, have garden tools and seed.

            Here in the U.S., 2% of the population grow the food for the other 98%.

            A sobering thought…
            Think it would be any different in most cities?

            • putting this out there in case any know of a need:

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              Free Seeds To Hurricane Victims

              Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims of this record breaking hurricane season. Billions of dollars have been lost, but so have the intangible priceless things; like the joy of a well-tended garden. If you have been affected by any of these horrific storms, or know someone who has, we would like to help get your garden back on track. Please send us your story and contact information to [email protected], we want to do our part by sending you or your friend a home garden restart kit.

              If you belong to a non-profit, please contact us for a larger donation. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds has always been committed to partnering with nonprofit organizations whose mission is to make sure pure food is available to everyone.

              We are currently organizing a fundraiser to assist those who have been repeatedly hit by a consecutive string of deadly hurricanes in the Caribbean. It is going to take years to rebuild, but residents need immediate assistance. Stay tuned for more details coming in the next few days.

              God Bless,
              Jere Gettle and the Baker Creek family.

              • god bless u all seeds one of the best things to have ive always had a seed bank survival is more work than people anticipate i know cause im a farmer praying for rico venuzala and all sufering how can i donate seeds or money to buy folks some seeds like fast crops radish,greens spouts fast turn around crops

            • In fairness to Trump, he was probably being pressured “BIGLY” on the Jones act thing.

              I’ll pile on and say that PR was a dump before the hurricane. Probably similar to Haiti, the before pictures weren’t a whole lot worse.

              PR was waaay beyond broke before the hurricane. They’ll milk this for all they can.

              • 3.5M on an island. Puerto Ricans need to stop breeding and multiplying like rabbits.

            • I hate to say it, and I’m not being racist, but the entire Island has been pacified in recent decades by enormous welfare generosity. Also, a people’s ability to bounce from these events is the skills, such as carpentry, mechanical skills, plumbing, etc.. another words the basic blue collar skills. Welfare kills work ethics, makes people wait for help to come, rather than do-it-youself.

              Another factor here, and it’s irrelevant of skills, and that is materials supplies to fix stuff, even if if the populace is motivated. With this much destruction there are no lumber yards anymore. Workers are out of a job because their jobsites are destroyed. The lesson is that in SHTF, you’re screwed on an island.

              My guess is that the Left wants Trump to spend 50-100 billion to rebuild PR. It would drag the mainland economy down, the stats would show it. Think about it, if your house was destroyed and you had refused or couldn’t afford insurance, you would be screwed my friend, no big brother to bail us out, my friend. Most of these folks are in the same boat.

              If we don’t crank the money out, 2 million will move to Texas and Florida and turn both of them Blue. Give ’em the money, Let’s spend the money, and quick.

          • EXACTLY, BUTTCRACK!!! “soon darkness will cover the earth”. chaos. Lord, help us! the most important thing is a vehicle, good friends, water filters and organic seeds.. and even then, your chances of survival are close to nil… oh, and guns and ammo.

      2. With a basic rocket stove made from loose gravel and a paint can you can use small sticks to boil water. Cinder blocks also make good rocket stoves. Not much fuel is required and it is an easy way to boil water. Amazing that people lack the knowledge or skill to make such a simple, and possibly life saving, device!

        • If you let a small part of your yard go to privet hedge (which grows like a weed), you will have a never-ending supply of small fuel for a rocket stove. I have a ton of it already cut and dried just in case.

        • PD–
          Much easier to sit on your ass with your hand out.

          I remember video from Haiti showing three people trying to dig somebody out of the rubble and 1000 more in the same frame just standing around.

          If we want to help PR, send them boatloads of building supplies

      3. Good job Daisy Luther!

      4. “…some pharmacists who know their clients are dispensing drugs without the required prescriptions or refill bottles…”

        That’s why I always use the same locally owned drug store. They know almost everyone by name. They can stretch rules if necessary.

        • our small town USA pharmacist is my back door neighbor.

          they know us as well as the who town

          they are very generous about stretching the rules, something walmart would never do.

          we don’t mind paying a little extra for blessings they provide.

      5. I,m sure the drugs business is doing great must be moving lots of drug since police are stretched thin no lights radar to track planes speed boats people more drugs headed to Miami us shores now well we all know why the war on drugs is about the CIA is top supplier and don’t,t want other to take business away drug bring cash into our country good for business and keeps the number of people down by killing off many hundred thousands every year less money for gov,the to pay out

      6. What’s it like in Puerto Rico now? Kind of like Humbolt Park on the near north side of Chicago. Puerto Rican ‘hood. After dark the MLD and LK shoot it out over drug turf. Sometimes in the day light, too. But without the flood water. Unless they turn on the fire hydrant.

      7. Experts say an EMP would take down the power grid and about 90% of the population would die off because it would take about a year to restore power.

        I read that it will take about 6 months for Puerto Rico to have the electric grid up and running again… so I guess that means about 40% of their population won’t survive this situation?

        That’s really horrible but even if we tried to prepare– we could have access to potable water if we had water filters but what about food? A hurricane could destroy all your food supplies– who can store enough food for a year and expect to keep it? I dunno.

        It seems the best thing to do would be to have a bug-out-bag with you at all times (in your vehicle/home) with water filter, etc. but a hurricane/earthquake would destroy all your food supplies– perhaps they would land in someone else’s yard… scary crap!

      8. Brothers PR wife has lot of relatives there and they used to live there a couple years ago. Was expensive hellhole of corruption and crime for them and natives there, covered up by govt, media, press to keep tourists coming to resorts. Gangs now running amok more than usual. Messages received from relatives there so dire, most just want to leave to mainland.

        Saw a couple 737’s come & go yesterday there in PR on FlightRadar24 app, DOJ prisoner transports. At least they’ll have food/water.

        • Here come the planeloads of “refugees” who never leave.

      9. Years ago in Hawaii there was a typhoon and the power grid went down. The US Navy pulled a nuke sub up and connected the island to its reactor and the city had power.

      10. They said it could be a year before some crops recover or start producing. Beans, wheat and certain other seed types can be sprouted in in just days to produce edible green sprouts,

        If you grow the beans/seed to maturity, you can get more seed, but for immediate food requirements they are a high quality fresh vegetable.

        Worst thing I heard is there are dead animals everywhere. They are contaminating all open and shallow well water supplies. It’s going to be very shortly before deadly diseases like cholera appears. People are burying dead relatives in their front yards.

        The total breakdown in communications has resulted in PR government workers and first responders being out of touch and unable to help even themselves. There is aid sitting in new trucks with full fuel tanks on the docks with no one to drive them. I saw video of FBI agents fresh off a plane being used to direct traffic and keep people from killing each other at one of the few working gas stations.

        So far 10,000 aid workers, including military, have arrived. That’s one aid worker for every 350 Puerto Rican storm victims.

        • And NOBODY in PR can drive? Somebody on that island should grab the bull by the horns.

          What about the schmuck in the picture sitting in his apartment? Get off your ass and help yourself. Outsiders shouldn’t have to take the aid past the docks. The storm has passed.

          • PR is a monster, 30% of the working people are employed by the government. There are layers of corrupt bureaucracy in PR we have never dreamed of. Apparently, to drive any kind of truck and make deliveries in PR requires a special commercial license. With all communications out, they can’t even locate or ask for people to step up assuming they knew who could drive a truck. All the driving records were on computers that are sleeping soundly with no power, so they can’t even locate them.

      11. This is a perfect example to use to evaluate your home, retreat, or where ever you plan to survive. How well is it built? How high is it? Will all of your supplies be ruined or destroyed by flooding? Irma passed almost directly over my house when it moved through Florida, but because we had a well built structure on very high ground, we had almost no damage. While others near us lost a lot of their roofs and other structures, we lost two pieces of trim and had a little water seep in through soffit vents. Others not far from us lost everything, because they built in low areas that flooded days after the storm passed. Check you location and make sure you can really survive there.

        • The 50 year old concrete block houses on stilts did pretty well. Maybe the old pre-Federal Flood Insurance residents were onto something.

          • Maybe. I suspect a lot of people buying a house don’t give it a thought as to what will happen during a storm. We passed up a lot of houses that you drove down hill into the garage. We settled on a single story, concrete block house that was built in 2003, post Andrew. We are 125 feet above sea level and 30 feet above everything around us.

            • Wow. I guess i shouldn’t complain about living in the hills when winter comes. I am 1,557 ft above sea level. Winter is the worse going up and down hills. I stay in a lot. But you being 125 above sea level sounds safe enough. Lucky you to see the beautiful ocean. All i got here is a tiny brook enough to just dip my feet in. I envy people who live by the beach.

      12. When a tornado rips thru a trailer park, Puerto Ricans say, ” Ah. Just a bunch of racist,
        Kentucky-fried rednecks. ” My fellow Americanos, nobody’s safe. Take your lumps, and
        press on.

      13. FEMA has a multi-million or even billion dollar budget. They should have supplies, men, diesel, food, and water on ships and arriving daily. If FEMA can’t do it, then FEMA should be defunded.

        • Even our Liberal Never Trunp media is reporting thru multiple sources the Resources are stacking up on the Dock.. At some point the people themselves need to stand up and even if their local authorities are incompetent which they increasingly appear to be.. The People need push the process of aid distribution with or without the assistance of their local authorities.

      14. Humans breed like rats and will breed until the environment cannot support them and they begin starving (ex: Africa, Haiti) or a disaster hits that would be manageable if the population was 1/10 what it is. All we see is “how do we make it such that more humans can be packed into places!” Not a thought as to if it is wise to do so. When a truly big disaster happens we will see BILLIONS of people swarming across the planet looking for the last places of refuge. I’m glad I’m old! Go make a few more babies. You will enjoy seeing them starve! Who really gives a shi_. (sic)

        • Ronna
          You said exactly the truth!
          When I see a pregnant woman, a young child or a young adult, I feel sorry for them because I know that they’ll die young.
          The main reason why the millenials are being aggressively dumbed-down is because the controllers want them “productive” until the very last breath…

          • Gee, according to the man on the geoengineeringwatch.org the ozone is going fast and the earth has like less then 15 yrs left which means the young ones won’t live long. I don’t know how true this all is., but it’s an interesting site.

      15. Here is a link to NOAA where you can zoom in on satellite imagery of the current situation. http://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/maria/index.html#8/18.188/-64.221

        Lots of disturbing views but gives an unbiased insight to the extent of the damage. Not everything was leveled, of course, but much damage.

        There is also a Puerto Rico Maria Updates page on Facebook.

        It sure does give new meaning to prepping.

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