. Earth Science News .
DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Displaced Puerto Ricans find refuge in New York
By Laura BONILLA
New York (AFP) Oct 31, 2017


After Whitefish, U.N. frets over Puerto Rico reconstruction
Washington (UPI) Oct 29, 2017 - A day after a Puerto Rico utility stepped away from a controversial restoration contract, the United Nations said it was worried by the pace of reconstruction.

Leilani Farha, a U.N. special envoy on the right to housing, joined several others in saying the U.S. federal response to Hurricane Maria, which swept over the region as a Category 5 hurricane in mid September, has been skewed toward territorial states. As of Monday, more than 80 percent of the population on the federal territory, or close to 2.8 million people, are without electricity, more than a month after the storm made landfall.

By comparison, power was out for about 12 to 14 days across New York after Hurricane Sandy, a superstorm that hit the U.S. east coast in 2012.

With winter approaching, the U.N. envoys said time was of the essence.

"We call on the United States and Puerto Rican authorities to remove regulatory and financial barriers to reconstruction and recovery," the envoys said.

The concern came one day after the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority said it would cancel a $300 million power restoration contract with Whitefish Energy Holdings.

Whitefish Energy formed two years ago and had two employees when Maria struck Puerto Rico. U.S. federal investigators have opened lines of questioning into the contract for the small Montana-based company, located in U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown.

"Even before Hurricane Maria struck, Puerto Rico's human rights were already being massively undermined by the economic and financial crisis and austerity policies, affecting the rights to health, food, education, housing, water and social security," Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, a U.N. envoy on debt and human rights, said in an emailed statement.

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said he aims to restore electricity to half of the island by Nov. 15 and to 95 percent of the island by the end of the year. In the wake of the Whitefish contract, the governor said he reached out to Florida Gov. Rick Scott and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to discuss the task of restoring Puerto Rico's power.

Technology and automotive company Tesla said the "first of many solar and storage projects" had started on the U.S. territory last week. The company used its Powerpack energy storage batteries in combination with solar cells to first restore power to Hospital del Niño in San Juan, the island territory's capital city.

Francisco Gonzalez, 79, and his wife Marisel arrived in New York nearly a month ago to live with their student son after Hurricane Maria. US citizens, they nonetheless feel like foreign refugees in their own country.

Uprooted from the island they love, they are angry at corruption and the political system in Puerto Rico, and its complicated ties to the United States, which they believe hindered the response to the Category Four storm.

Flying to New York to join their children, they initially planned to find refuge for a couple of weeks. Now they're planning to stay a couple of years, Gonzalez told AFP at a new aid center for hurricane victims in Harlem.

They are sharing a studio apartment with their 22-year-old son and their three dogs. Their daughter, his twin, lives in the same building.

"I feel like a refugee," says Gonzalez, a US Army veteran who sold insurance for more than 40 years and who lived in Bayamon, west of San Juan. "Although I am an American citizen, I think of Puerto Rico as a separate country."

"The weather is not the same, the system is not the same, I have to get used to everything," he said. "It's as if I had come to China," he added. "I left because I was forced to, because God knows what would have happened if I stayed."

Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans have fled to the mainland since Maria struck on September 20, devastating the island, just two weeks after Hurricane Irma tore through the Caribbean.

The vast majority went to Florida and New York, which already had around one million Puerto Ricans each. Around 700,000 Puerto Ricans live in New York City.

Overall there are five million Puerto Ricans on the mainland, compared to 3.4 million on the island.

The Trump administration has come under fire from all quarters for its sluggish response to the humanitarian catastrophe in Puerto Rico, where more than five weeks after Hurricane Maria struck, 75 percent of the island remains without power.

But in New York, a beacon of diversity opposed to Trump, Democrats have been eager to pick up the slack.

The city's mayor Bill de Blasio is eyeing re-election next month, and the state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, is a rumored presidential hopeful for 2020.

- 'Lived a lie' -

Cuomo has visited the island twice since Maria struck. The state and city have sent supplies and hundreds of police and rescue workers to Puerto Rico.

The city opened an assistance center 10 days ago, where nearly 65 families come every day, says Johanna Conroy of the city's emergency management team.

Pleas for housing before the onset of the freezing winter, medical assistance, food stamps and school supplies are the most common requests, Conroy said.

"The constant labor of having to look for food, stand in line, it was very difficult," remembers Gonzalez. "We couldn't continue like that," he added.

"In addition, prices skyrocketed. A packet of 24 bottles of water used to cost $14 and now costs $40. We could not cook, the gas ran out."

For days they were without water or power, living as if in a century past.

If the Gonzalez couple find New York "terribly expensive," they are grateful for assistance they have received in navigating their requests for subsidized housing, medical help, an additional veteran's pension and a disability pension.

"I'm calmer now I know they are safe and they're not sick because they had to bathe or drink dirty water, or going hungry," says their daughter Maria, who lives in another studio with her boyfriend.

The problem, says Marisel, is not the hurricane but the system of government on Puerto Rico "and our colonial status."

Puerto Ricans do not have political representation in Congress, nor the right to vote for US president as long as they live on the island, although they do when they reside in the continental United States.

"We had a power system left over from the 1940s, and the government instead of renewing it, time goes by and that old system remains," she said.

"Where is the money? The money is in the corrupt government. And that has been very frustrating," she said with tears in her eyes.

"You realize that you have lived a lie," she said. "That the government failed you... that we were living in a country that isn't what we thought."

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Munich Re expecting Q3 losses after costly hurricane season
Frankfurt Am Main (AFP) Oct 26, 2017
German reinsurance giant Munich Re issued a profit warning for the third quarter Thursday following a damaging hurricane season in the Americas, saying it now expects to report a massive loss. The group now forecasts a loss of 1.4 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in the third quarter, saying that hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria had inflicted some 2.7 billion euros of losses. Other natural ... read more

Related Links
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
A world of storm and tempest
When the Earth Quakes


Thanks for being here;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5 Billed Monthly


paypal only


Comment using your Disqus, Facebook, Google or Twitter login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Fighting to farming: New life for Colombia's ex-rebels

Puerto Rico 'heartbreaking' five weeks post-storm

Munich Re expecting Q3 losses after costly hurricane season

17 climbers dead after avalanche in Mongolia

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Turning a material upside down can sometimes make it softer

Selective memory makes data caches 50 percent more efficient

Electrode materials from the microwave oven

A quantum spin liquid

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Among 'green' energy, hydropower is the most dangerous

Nanoparticles remove cadmium toxicity from a freshwater system

Paleogenomic analysis sheds light on Easter Island mysteries

Marine snowfall at the equator

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Hopes dashed for giant new Antarctic marine sanctuary

'Scars' left by icebergs record West Antarctic ice retreat

Secrets of hidden ice canyons revealed

Ice stream retreats under a cold climate

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Watching plant photosynthesis...from space

Crops evolving 10 millennia before experts thought

Study exposes the dark side of coffee cultivation in Uganda

Breeding salt-tolerant plants

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Yellowstone spawned twin super-eruptions that altered global climate

Typhoon Saola brings heavy rain in southern Japan

Fifty simulations show how a mega Cascadia earthquake could play out

New magma pathways after giant lateral volcano collapses

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Death of soldiers highlights US military presence in Niger

Pentagon looks at stepped-up Africa role to counter IS

US military to pursue Niger operations after deadly attack

Niger raid highlights US forces' growing Africa role

DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Older Neandertal survived with a little help from his friends

How small-world networks occur within bigger and more complex structures

Tribe sharpens arrows against Amazon invaders

How Neanderthals influenced human genetics at the crossroads of Asia and Europe









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.