Dramatic “Before And After” Photos Show Puerto Rico’s Plunge Into Darkness
It’s been a week since Hurricane Maria made landfall in eastern Puerto Rico, and hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans living in remote villages remain cut off from the world, after the storm trashed power grids, tore up roads, downed cell towers and caused a dam in the northwestern part of the island to fail, endangering tens of thousands of people living in a valley below.
Hospitals, especially in rural areas, have been hopelessly crippled by the storm, which has left them dependent on backup generators for power, threatening the lives of thousands of vulnerable patients. Shipments of diesel fuel to the hospitals are delivered by armed guards to protect against looters – which sounds like something from the plot of one of the “Mad Max” movies.
CNN sent low-flying planes over the island to survey the landscape, and they’ve brought back some stunning footage of the damage. News anchor Jake Tapper tweeted this before-and-after photo, which shows how more than 90% remains mired in blackouts more than a week after the storm made landfall.
Puerto Rico before the hurricane:
And after:
Some meteorologists said Maria hit Puerto Rico with the flooding of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, and the windspeeds of Hurricane Irma in Florida.
“It is as if Puerto Rico got hit with the strength of Irma’s winds, leaving a trail of devastation worse than much of the destruction Irma left in Florida,” said CNN meteorologist Judson Jones. “The rainfall in some areas of Puerto Rico rival the amounts of rain left by Harvey in Houston. And now they are contending with a dam disaster that is reminiscent of California’s Oroville Dam crisis earlier this year.”
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