The 2017 Hurricane season that roiled the Caribbean and the SE United States has created unfathomable suffering for many Americans, particularly for those on the island of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. They are unable to drive to safety as the victims of Harvey in Texas and the Florida victims of Irma’s wrath have been able to do. Most people in Puerto Rico are stuck, because it is as Donald Trump says “an island surrounded by water, big water”. Though 10’s of thousands have evacuated to the US mainland primarily to Florida. The millions that remain are facing a humanitarian crisis that is only getting worse by the day due to the underwhelming response of the Trump regime. What we are witnessing is what collapse from climate change looks like when people are essentially left to fend on their own after a major natural disaster. I prefer to refer to it’s incredible cruelty and staggering lack of empathy as genocide.
One of the things all three of these storms have in common is that they create a lot of debris. The wreckage is pushed to the sides of the roads for pick up and deposited at a landfill. But in Puerto Rico, the landfills were already overflowing prior to Irma and Maria’s landfall, they were toxic too. In San Juan and other urbanized areas, street after street have debris piles consisting of destroyed homes and businesses, tree and brush debris, garbage, feces and decomposing animal carcasses. This sits in the baking tropical sun creating a stench so powerful it can make you gag, and creating the optimal incubation conditions for disease growth.
The Miami Herald reports that debris piles are creating yet another potential layer of crisis to a humanitarian disaster that continues to bring unabated misery, suffering and death to the people in the Caribbean.
You couldn’t make a better breeding ground for rats, roaches and all sorts of nasty diseases, the public health volunteer said. And every day the fetid piles stay there, the risk of an epidemic grows. “We’re already building the next disaster,” he said.
snip
But if the island’s debris and garbage aren’t dealt with quickly, those numbers will likely grow, experts fear.
Jose Vargas Vidot is a doctor and local senator who has spent more than two decades providing emergency medical services in places like Haiti, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Since Maria hit, his organization, Iniciativa Comunitaria, has been operating a free clinic in a school in Toa Baja.
The low-lying town, about 20 minutes from the capital, San Juan, was badly flooded during the storm. And now its narrow roads are piled with wet mattresses, mud-caked teddy bears and warped wood dressers.
Vidot said the storm had “unmasked” weaknesses in the island’s health care system and caught the government flat-footed.
“There’s no strategy for public hygiene,” he said. “It’s not just about clearing roads but picking up debris.”
The mountains of garbage, he said, are “rats’ nests and full of dead animals. ... And they’ll bring powerful contagious (diseases) when the rains return.”
In addition, puddles of muddy water are likely to become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and the illnesses they can carry — dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
And while the island is still water-logged, more than 1 million people don’t have water from their taps. That means that many are still living with the dirt and grime dragged in by the storm.
I came across this FB Post in my feed, and was quite alarmed at what the local residents maybe forced to do. That is, to start burning the debris piles as removal is clearly not going to be a reality anytime soon. In this particular case, firefighters were able to put out a street fire that came dangerously close to burning down a cell tower. If residents continue to burn debris will it spread like wildfire throughout San Juan and other areas of Puerto Rico? Is there even water pressure for fire fighters to hose down any flames? If anybody can talk me down on this please do. I can see this apocalyptic scenario playing out easily as there is too much fuel on the ground to not be worried. I continue to be mortified.