CRISIS/PUERTO RICO: “The full scope of Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico began to emerge as many of the island’s 78 mayors, some of them cut off since the storm, met this weekend with Gov. Ricardo Rosselló for the first time bringing reports of ruined homes and destroyed infrastructure.
Four days after the storm, Mr. Rosselló said the number of refugees in government shelters around the island numbered around 15,000…
Government engineers continued to monitor a dam on Guanataca Lake in the northwestern part of the island which has suffered a breach. An unknown number of people among the 70,000 who live in the area have been evacuated, the governor said Sunday…
Throughout the island, Puerto Ricans struggled to cope with the absence of power that has plunged the island into almost total darkness. Mr. Rosselló said only about 25% of the island’s telecommunications system was working, most of that concentrated in the metropolitan area of San Juan…
Puerto Rico’s government doesn’t yet have a cost estimate for the reconstruction, but the governor said it would surely be ‘north of the $7 billion to $8 billion’ cost of repairing the damage brought by Hurricane Georges in 1998.”
-Jose de Cordoba, “Puerto Rico Tallies Up Devastation From Hurricane Maria,” The Wall Street Journal online, Sept. 24, 2017 07:08pm