THE day after Hurricane Maria clobbered Puerto Rico, Governor Ricardo Rosselló put out a call for truck drivers to deliver emergency supplies. Aníbal Chárriez was one of several hundred who drove through knee-high water and dodged fallen power lines only to be told he was not needed. Ten days later, after thousands of containers had accumulated in the port, he tried again. This time, he filled out a form and was told to wait for a phone call. That presented a problem. In addition to stripping the island of vegetation and flooding hundreds of thousands of homes, the hurricane wiped out Puerto Rico’s electrical grid and many of its mobile-phone towers, leaving 3.5m already isolated American citizens even more in the dark.
“The power lines fell like dominoes,” said Robert Kadlec of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Like dominoes, the lack of electricity and communication set off a chain reaction that hindered the entire disaster-response effort, complicating everything...Continue reading
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