An American Horror

It’s almost impossible to overstate how dire the situation is on Puerto Rico:

After Maria blew threw the city, taking down trees and power lines, the flash floods came.

“The water had to be at least six, maybe seven feet high,” said Nelson Rodriguez, a Gulf Express employee. “It took everything. All the medicine in the pharmacy, all the food, it’s gone.”

Every home and business in this part of Arecibo was affected by the flooding. Two blocks away from the gas station, Eduardo Carraquillo, 45, helped his father, Ismael Freytes, 69, clean the mud out of their yellow, first-floor apartment. Inside, a film, rising six feet high on the walls, marked where water stagnated for much of a full day.

“The water just pushed through the door, as if it had been left open,” Carraquillo said. “We all evacuated the day after the storm, because we were warned about the flash flood that might come. Everyone left, just to be safe, except for two older men that lived a few houses away. They just didn’t want to leave. When we came back, we found out the flood had killed them right there in that apartment.”

Some Puerto Rico officials believe it could be months before the island recovers and that it will be at least a year before some sense of normalcy returns.

Officials estimate it will take three weeks for hospitals to regain power, and about six months for the rest of the island to have electricity. By Saturday, 25 percent of the population had telecommunications connections.

Suggested press question to Donald Trump: “does an American citizen need a passport to fly to Puerto Rico?”

…Maria has also essentially destroyed agriculture in Puerto Rico.