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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 3106648" data-attributes="member: 56035">so i think its going to be worse than katrina.<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/in-puerto-ricos-town-of-the-forgotten-residents-are-desperate-for-fema-to-show-up/" target="_blank">In Puerto Rico's "town of the forgotten," residents are desperate for FEMA to show up</a>Maldanado said that he had been promised things a satellite phone to stay in touch with the governor, but it never arrived. He told us that when he gets diesel fuel, which is very hard to obtain on the island right now, it gets stolen at night, and that he has only 14 municipal police and 24 Puerto Rican police to manage a town of nearly 19,000. He showed us the meals he says the National Guard gave him to distribute to residents seeking food. Each one-day ration comprised a small fruit cup, a 7.5-ounce can of Hormel Corned Beef Hash, four small cookies, and a pack of peanut butter and cheddar crackers.We walked around to the next block, on a street called Dos Rios. Armando Fernández was in the street with half a dozen other people working to clear the mud. Most people’s belongings were piled into huge mounds in their front yards. Fernández said he works with the local public housing office, and he said 44 of 60 public housing units in this part of Ciales had suffered severe damage or been completely destroyed. He told us we were the first people from outside the neighborhood to come to the street asking people how they were getting by. He and his neighbors were more than willing to help the local government clear the mud, he said, if the government could just bring the machines to do it. He added that he and his friends were organizing to obtain their own fuel and equipment if the government couldn’t step up....Fernández’s neighbor Saul Pagan told me that the mud—and everything inside it, from trash to dead animals—was a major public health hazard. “There are all sorts of bacteria and other stuff in there that can get on us,” he said.On our way out of town, we visited a shelter for people who lost their homes near the Ciales city center. Marisol Vega, a doctor volunteering to help coordinate medical care at the shelter, told us that the local government did have some supplies to nourish the people, but that the bulk of the water and other items were donated by people in Ciales.“It’s amazing,” she said. “The same community that’s down is the same community that donates.”</blockquote>

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