Posted on 08/28/2018 9:13:33 AM PDT by cll
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Hurricane Maria killed far more people in Puerto Rico than initially thought, accounting for an estimated 2,975 deaths on the island from September 2017 through February 2018, according to a new analysis. The study found that those in low-income areas, and elderly men, were at greatest risk of dying.
The independent analysis was commissioned by the governor of Puerto Rico and conducted by researchers at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health. CBS News obtained a report on the findings from Carlos Mercader, executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration.
To arrive at the 2,975 figure, the study looked at historical death patterns from 2010 to 2017 to estimate how many people would have died had Hurricane Maria not hit the island. That figure was then compared to the actual number of deaths from September 2017 through February 2018 — obtained in records provided by the Puerto Rico Vital Statistics Records division of the Puerto Rico Department of Health — to determine what the report describes as the "estimate of excess mortality due to the hurricane."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
After reading “One Second After”, I would venture that most of the deaths can be attributed to lack of electricity.
Dialysis machines not working, no refrigeration for insulin, no power for oxygen generators. Think of all the serious, chronic, medical conditions that are only kept in check because of a reliable supply of electricity.
When the electrical device that is keeping you alive no longer has electricity...
The book makes clear that there will always be a surge in deaths when there is a power outage of long duration.
I live in Puerto Rico and went through the storms.
Plan 1 - Yes, I have a reinforced concrete home with storm windows. That did very well. No inside damage except some pressure water that seeped through the old window seals. Afterwards, my gasoline generator was out of service (my bad) and I couldn’t get it repaired until one week after Maria. In the meantime, we kept food refrigerated with ice provided by a niece who had a working generator and ice maker. We were without power for 40 days, which was nothing compared to the rest of the island. Still miserable, as September is the hottest, most humid time of the year down here.
Your plan 2 - Our island is 100 x 35 miles. Can’t run very far, and the people up on the mountains fared FAR WORSE than us in San Juan. Mud slides took out bridges which isolated countless communities. Crops were decimated. Farm animals gone. It was really hell up there.
“I would venture that most of the deaths can be attributed to lack of electricity...Dialysis machines not working, no refrigeration for insulin, no power for oxygen generators. Think of all the serious, chronic, medical conditions that are only kept in check because of a reliable supply of electricity”.
Exactly what happened. Not sure why is that so hard to believe. I’ll check out that book. Thanks.
It was hell.
And just why should I care?
I hope this never happens to you, your family, your community, or wherever the hell you live.
Hey cll, you can get the book on Amazon:
I’ve got family in Rio Piedras, Bayamon, Ramey, and San Sebastian. It seems like at least for them, things are pretty much back to normal. I hope things are going well for you and yours.
Thanks, I already ordered it.
I’m glad your family it’s fine. I’m good. Just struggling to keep my business alive. It’s just that we’ve had too many blows in succession: the 2008 financial crisis, Puerto Rico’s never-ending recession, the 2015 drought, the 2016 Zika virus fiasco, the 2017 storms and the 2018 Sargasso event. None good for my industry, which is travel and leisure. But, as we say down here, a lot more was lost in WWII (”más se perdió en la guerra”).
Do you have a natural gas line in front of your house or propane available? You might consider a propane or natural gas standby generator instead of gasoline. The problem I have experienced here in New Hampshire with ice storms was tying to obtain gasoline when electricity goes out. Most people only have a 1-2 day storage capacity for electricity. I assume they were rationing gasoline in PR after the storm. I remember here passing 5 gas stations after one storm before I found one that had electricity to run their pumps. Then I stood in line for almost an hour to fill my 4 cans.
As an alternative, my daughter has a propane fired generator. They have an underground 500+ gallon propane tank. They can run their whole house generator for 2-3 weeks before it will run out. They cost more, but it might be worth it in the long run. Plus, they turn on once a week to lubricate and the system for 15 minutes.
I have one of those Generac propane/natural gas generators in my business. It was truly a life saver.
You are right. There was an immediate shortage of gasoline and diesel for the first couple of weeks, but propane and natural gas were widely available.
I’m thinking of installing one at home, but the whole purchase/installation runs about $10K, which I can’t afford right now.
Either way, any of these generators, gasoline, diesel or gas, are designed for emergencies or relatively short blackouts not for extended outages like ours. People were running the hell out of their gen sets 24/7 and they started failing fast, with no hope for repair parts.
The one in the office we only ran from 8 - 5, Mondays to Fridays. Changing the oil every 100 hours. We were without power 50 days there.
At home I ran gasoline generator # 1 (a Yamaha 2600) from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM just to keep the fridge running. I even got the ice maker going great on each of those runs. We were able to distribute some ice to elderly neighbors or those who didn’t have a generator. Then at night I ran gasoline generator # 2, a little Yamaha inverter 2000 for the fans and to recharge cell phones, watch TV and what not. We didn’t open the fridge from 9:00 PM until the next day, when we cranked # 1 again. All this worked out for us. We were “only” 40 days without power at home.
“You’re right, Sir, but our governemnt didn’t have the resources for any of that. It is flat broke, which is our own fault. And I’ll also grant you this much: As a society, Puerto Rico had become complacent since we hadn’t been hit this bad since 1932. The usual run-of-the-mill hurricanes don’t faze us. We’re usually back to normal in a few days. But these two storms, Irma and María, were totally different animals. Believe me, as our glorious President is fond of saying.”
I understand and I hope PR recovers fully and that it is a very long time before this happens again.
Too bad you can’t just print more money like the US government does.
I would love to visit your business the next time I’m on the island. I’ll PM you and maybe we can meet. Good luck with the business, or as we say, salud, dinero, y amor.
You got it.
But if the federal government help was abundant in materiel and personnel, it lacked in coordination and structure,
People being responsible for their own stuff tends to work better - even if they are getting aid from others.
...and the trucker’s using the disaster to give their strike leverage is beyond reprehensible. ...as well as additional varieties of opportunism.
The situation really, really sucked, but there were a lot of bad decisions locally each before, during and after. You are correct, of course, that there was a lot that was just too rough to reasonably plan for in a gross sense - like all the bridges down a river being gone, and all of the communications, fiber, and power that used to ride under them gone as well each in parallel and with repeated breaks along the path. There were, however some basic elements of planning which failed to even happen, like not putting ALL of the power plants on the ocean-front, and not having organizations set up to haul the goods that completely clogged the docks so that off-loading completely stopped.
On the other hand, I seem to remember a statistic that at one point most of the portable power units in the world were in PR by early this year.
Yamaha makes very good gasoline generators.
I have a Honda 7000 invertor generator. They are also very good quality. The ones that fail are typically the cheaper gasoline models. Like always, it is usually due to poor maintenance. When you change the oil, always use the synthetic.
I remember after Super storm Sandy seeing people in New Jersey and Staten Island standing in line for hours just to fill up their 1 gasoline can they were allowed.
The other thing that happens EVERYTIME we lose power here is somebody kills themselves with carbon monoxide from their gasoline generator. I picked up one of my coworkers at his house before work during a power outage once. He had his generator about 4’ outside of his garage door. The garage door was about 3’ off the ground. He fired it up with the exhaust side pointed right back toward the garage. I told him to turn that thing around BEFORE you kill everyone in your house. This guy is a very intelligent person who just wasn’t thinking for a second.
That alone is another good reason to have a whole house gas generator.
You don’t care anymore for me than I care for you. Or them.
I had acquaintances who only had power (and running water) at work, as late as May of this year. They had jobs rebuilding the infrastructure.
Well, stop following this thread then.
You are the one who is unhappy, not I.
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