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CAGUAS, PUERTO RICO — At least 4,645 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria and its devastation across Puerto Rico last year, according to a new Harvard study released Tuesday, an estimate that far exceeds the official government death toll, which stands at 64. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that health-care disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts across the U.S. territory, which was thrown into chaos after the September hurricane wiped out the electrical grid and had widespread impacts on infrastructure....

Now that the hoopla about the Trump Administration’s “poor response” to the hurricanes that hit the U.S. Territories in the Caribbean last September has died down considerably, and since my life has now almost returned to normal, I’d like to share my experiences during the storms and their aftermath. I do this to set some things straight about what actually happened, to share the practical things we did to deal and cope with the disaster in the hope that someone will find the information useful for their own preparedness, and also as a kind of mental dump of all the...

An ‘irregular’ house not built according to Puerto Rico codes in Villa Esperanza. It was damaged by Hurricane Maria. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Gladys Peña built a home the way many thousands of people in Puerto Rico, maybe most, did for decades: in makeshift fashion. Every week for years, Peña, a cafeteria cook, set money aside until she had enough to buy a vacant wooden shack in a densely packed working-class barrio, a one-time squatters’ community a short stroll from the towers of San Juan’s Golden Mile financial district. She knocked down most of the flimsy...

MOROVIS, Puerto Rico – Three days before Christmas, Doris Martinez and daughter Miriam Narvaez joined their neighbors in a line outside city hall in Morovis, a town of 30,000 people still living without electricity in the mountains of central Puerto Rico a month after Hurricane Maria battered the U.S. island. They waited two hours under the searing sun for their twice-a-week handout — 24 bottles of water and a cardboard box filled with basic foods such as tortillas, canned vegetables and cereal. Martinez, a 73-year-old cancer survivor, balanced the water atop the food and picked her way up a steep...

Self-explanatory video at link: http://digg.com/video/puerto-rico-power-restored

Vacations are not supposed to go like this. Never did I imagine that instead of swimming in the Caribbean, we would be trudging through sewage-contaminated water in a desperate attempt to reach the airport. The airport, like everything else in Puerto Rico, was crippled. No electricity, no flights. This was the reality that my wife and I, along with six of our closest friends, were facing days after Maria paid visit to Puerto Rico. It was at the airport hotel that our fate would change. A member of our group, desperately searching for answers, located someone from FEMA. We were...

President Trump gets briefed on the conditions on the ground in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

With much of Puerto Rico destroyed, the Trump administration is in a pitched battle against time and the fallout from the devastating Hurricane Maria. And like clockwork, Democrats and their media giddily look to blame the whole thing on the president. As George W. Bush was made to pay for the 2000 election squeaker, the Iraq War and the 2004 re-election while bearing full blame for Hurricane Katrina, so Trump must be made to pay for the 2016 election — an abhorrent and shocking event to progressives everywhere — and the ongoing mass hysteria.

Col. Valle is a firsthand witness of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) response supporting FEMA in Puerto Rico, and as a Puerto Rican himself with family members living in the devastation, his passion for the people is second to none. “It’s just not true,” Col. Valle says of the major disconnect today between the perception of a lack of response from Washington verses what is really going on on the ground. “I have family here. My parents’ home is here. My uncles, aunts, cousins, are all here. As a Puerto Rican, I can tell you that the problem has...

... Use Hurricane Maria as Contract Leverage… Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts, has the following comment: …They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed. “It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the...

The White House has approved a request to waive the Jones Act for Puerto Rico, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday. "At @ricardorossello request, @POTUS has authorized the Jones Act be waived for Puerto Rico. It will go into effect immediately," Sanders tweeted Thursday. Puerto Rico's governor, Ricardo Rossello, said he asked the White House on Wednesday to waive the Jones Act for Puerto Rico. "Jones Act waived for Puerto Rico. Thank you, @POTUS," the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration tweeted Thursday. Waiving the Jones Act will allow foreign ships to deliver supplies to Puerto Rico. The Jones...

UPDATE - PUERTO RICO: No ATMs, no Cash, no Credit Cards working, No Power (75% of the Island), No Running Water (60% of the Island), No Gasoline, No Diesel. The US presence and aid is here, and there's a lot of personnel and US agencies involved, but unable to move from the ports & piers. Three (3) gasoline trucks were stolen yesterday. When President Trump arrives in Puerto Rico on Tuesday, Oct. 3rd, he needs to bring with him around 10,000 soldiers with him. This image would be seared in people's minds and it would be akin to Teddy Roosevelt's...

Don't believe anything negative that the mainstream media tells you about President's Trump's response to Puerto Rico! My parents live on the island. They've been without power since Sept. 20th. The response from the US government has been phenomenal. First, President Trump declared Puerto Rico a "State of Emergency" BEFORE Maria hit. He was scheduled to visit the island last week (due to Hurricane Irma), but his plans changed because Hurricane Maria was barreling down the islands last Tuesday & Wednesday. He has re-scheduled his visit for Tues., Oct. 3rd. My father, who lives across the street from Isla Grande...

Trump acknowledged on Twitter late Monday Puerto Rico was 'in deep trouble'. He also wrote that the US unincorporated territory has 'billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks'. Hurricanes Maria & Irma killed 13 people with Maria almost completely destroying telecommunication networks. 'Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble,' Trump tweeted. 'It's old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly,...

Puerto Rico's iconic Arecibo Observatory has sustained some significant damage from Hurricane Maria, officials reported today (Sept. 22). The storm hit the island as a Category 4 hurricane Wednesday (Sept. 20) and left widespread destruction in its wake. Without power, phones or internet service, the Arecibo Observatory has been offline since the storm hit. The Arecibo Observatory houses the world's second-largest radio telescope. While the overall structure of the telescope is still standing, it sustained some pretty serious damage from Hurricane Maria, according to an update from the Universities Space Research Organization (USRA), which helps to operate the Arecibo Observatory. One telescope operator at Arecibo managed...

YouGov, Rasmussen, and NBC all put him at 43 percent now and Monmouth has him just six points underwater at 42/48. What’s driving it? A good job by him and the feds on handling hurricanes, almost certainly Sixty-four percent told CNN that they approve of how the administration has handled the recent storms, including 66 percent of independents. Democrats were split evenly at 44 percent, which is all but unheard of on anything Trump-related. Morning Consult has also picked up an uptick among indies Wisely, he’s going to try to keep the good nonpartisan vibes going by visiting Puerto Rico...

The National Science Foundation has not heard from staff at the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria roared over the island. A spokeswoman for NSF, which owns the observatory, said the agency hadn't received any official communications from Arecibo since 8 a.m. Wednesday — before the eye of the storm passed over the telescope. Two of the groups that helps manage the observatory, SRI International and the Universities Space Research Association, also hadn't heard from their staff on site. One observatory staff member who weathered the storm in the town of Arecibo contacted the association via shortwave...

Hi all. Puerto Rico WAS NOT blown back to the middle ages, Matt Drudge. Most of our buildings are built of reinforced concrete. The rest is claen up, restore services, and let nature heal itself. There are no riots, no looting, roads are being cleaned. It will take a long time to restore everything, but we should be back real soon. I mean. Old San Juan is still there, the beaches are still there. The Rainforest will restore itself after many years of overgrowth. We will be back real soon. JUST SEND ICE! I don't care what anyone says, we...

Hurricane Jose has been hanging around, waiting for attention in the wake of Hurricane Irma. Newcomer Maria threatens to impact the Caribbean Islands already devastated by Hurricane Irma, and brushed by Jose. Hurricane Jose threatens to brush or impact New England. Lee appears to be a fish storm at this time. Mash images for larger or more info! All info updates automatically Jose Maria > > Public Advisories Public Advisories Forecast Discussions Forecast Discussions

I just want to say "welcome" to Maria Bartiromo, to Fox Business News. She's starting there today. On right now in fact. Welcome aboard.