As many of you know, I lived and worked in Puerto Rico for about a year in the early 1970s, and I am very concerned about how the island will fare in the aftermath of the latest hurricanes.
No doubt the island has changed much in the years since I lived there, but the fact remains that it is small (approx 30×100 miles) and densely populated (about 3.5 million people). The interior is mostly jungle and very mountainous and motor transport, even under the best of circumstances, is very difficult. I drove a mini-van there over almost every paved road in the interior, visiting almost every town, and I can attest that it fulfills every cliche about driving in third world countries. The roads were highly congested, but well-maintained when I drove them, but many had been built by the Spaniards over a century ago, and I shudder to think what condition they are in now. Flooding, landslides, and debris must have made many of them impassable, and many of the small towns I visited are probably cut off and only heavy equipment can restore communication with the outside world.
The island is almost entirely without electric power and other utilities such as gasoline, cell service, sewage, and garbage collection; potable water and telephone are severely damaged. Worse, the means to correct these deficiencies is severely crippled; there are no banking services, seaports and air fields are operating at minimum capacity if at all, hospitals are without power, and I could go on. TV and radio broadcasting are almost totally knocked out, so many people have no idea what is going on or when they can expect help. Thousands of homes and businesses are destroyed, and many more damaged. Even areas in the interior that are untouched are entirely cut off.
In S Florida, I was out of electricity for just a few days after Wilma, and I was severely uncomfortable in spite of the fact my house was intact, and I had access to stockpiles of food and water, clean clothes, battery radio bulletins and full gas tanks in my cars. I can only guess what it must be like for most of the Puerto Rican population. I cannot imagine how much longer it will be before civil unrest, and then hunger, and then disease, breaks out.
Although I am sure that philanthropic and aid groups will respond heroically, and the nation’s military will contribute its massive logistic resources, this is a problem of massive proportions, an order of magnitude above Houston after Harvey or even New Orleans after Katrina. Remember, Puerto Rico is not linked by hundreds of roads leading to well-stocked neighboring towns. It is an island a thousand miles away from the rest of the nation. The facilities needed to move supplies there and the infrastructure required to distribute it, are all gone. Just feeding the population will be an enormous task, repair and reconstruction is simply inconceivable.
I don’t doubt the authorities will do their best, but this is an enormous problem, even our military’s enormous sea- and airlift capability will have to be jump-started and improvised. In wartime, they usually have a long time to pre-position supplies and build the facilities needed to bring in and distribute the million items needed to just maintain the people. Rebuilding will be something else again.
Puerto Rico is not Haiti or Africa, the people there are poorer than on the mainland, but they have electricity, running water, cars, telephones and TV. They are used to going to the ATM to get cash for their shopping, and going to work Monday morning, and watching the evening news. All that is over now. I fear for them.