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danicacoto9 karma

Ha! More like the famous "salchichas" that everyone keeps joking about. Prior to the storm, Puerto Ricans stocked up on canned food including sausages (salchichas), tuna, beans, etc. Personally, I stocked up on canned raviolis and spaghetti and meatballs, which I was already tired of given the previous coverage of Hurricane Irma. The other day I ran into my 89-year-old neighbor. She said she wasn't eating a lot and I gave her several cans of tuna and told her she needed to eat more protein. She asked me how she was supposed to eat the tuna. I said, 'well, the only option is straight out fo the can for now.'

danicacoto9 karma

There's so many! People who live near gas stations have been handing out apple juice, sandwiches made with ham spread and little packets of cookies to those waiting and sweating in their cars for five to six hours. One remarkable story is a man who lives in the central town of Morovis who made a makeshift raft with a plastic pallet buoyed by empty soda bottles attached to the bottom. He helped dozens of people carry goods across roughly 100 meters of river near their isolated community. One man who had stood in line for gas for about four hours gave his gas can to a mother with a small child.

danicacoto8 karma

The bottleneck of aid supplies was bad at first. One official I spoke with said that part of the problem was a lack of certified truck drivers and trucks. He said many of them were still at home tending to personal disasters after the hurricane, and that some of the trucks were damaged. The aid has started flowing, but some in hard-to-reach areas say they haven't received any food or water yet. More than 2,400 containers have been transported to distribution centers in recent days, with more than 2 million meals and 2 million liters of water distributed. But people say more help is needed.

danicacoto7 karma

As with any disaster of this magnitude, it's inevitable that some resources will end up being mismanaged. And we'll be writing about that as well. The US government has ramped up its aid in recent days, but many especially in hard-to-reach areas say they have not received any food or water. The government has set up roughly a dozen distribution points across the island to hand out MREs and bottles of water, and the municipalities themselves are doing the same at schools and coliseums. But some people I spoke with said they had no way of reaching these places because they didn't have a car, or they were running low on gas and needed to wait in line for up to six hours. There are thousands of federal officials here involved in hurricane recovery efforts, and so far they have distributed more than 2 million meals and more than 2 million liters of water.

danicacoto6 karma

Many decided to stay with friends or relatives who had sturdy, concrete homes with hurricane shutters. More than 11,000 Puerto Ricans, however (including more than 400 pets), opted to stay at shelters across the island. The majority of these shelters are schools and coliseums, but even then it's not guaranteed that they'll withstand a Category 4 hurricane without any damage. The largest shelter in San Juan, the Roberto Clemente coliseum, had some flooding damage, forcing officials to move people to the second floor. Those who could afford it flew out ahead of the storm.