Photos: Heartbreaking look at post-Maria Puerto Rico in ruin
Meteorologist
Wednesday, September 27, 2017, 12:19 PM - The overall picture grows bleaker as more images appear from the storm-ravaged island of Puerto Rico.
It's been a week since then-category 4 Hurricane Maria made a direct hit on the island, lashing it with winds of up to 240 km/h, and more than 1000 mm of rain in some areas.
The scope of the crisis is only beginning to emerge, however, as the U.S. territory has been almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world.
A Wednesday CBS news report says almost all of the island's 3.4 million residents remain without power, and that power may not be restored for more than a month. Worse, food and water supplies are dwindling. "It's life or death," San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz told the news agency. The mayor said some have been without food and water since Hurricane Irma clipped the island, two weeks before Maria. "There are people who've had no food and no water for 14 days," Yulin Cruz told CBS. "People are dying."
Maria was the most powerful storm to hit Puerto Rico in nearly 90 years. The U.S. government is reported to be considering waiving shipping restrictions to the island to expedite the delivery of aid.
Sources: Reuters | Mashable | CBS News |
Thumbnail courtesy: NASA Earth Observatory
Watch below: Puerto Rico government urges U.S. Congress to take action
