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Puerto Rico Faces Hurricane Maria After Irma’s $1 Billion Damage
and Alexander Lopez
Two weeks ago, Puerto Rico was spared a devastating hit when Hurricane Irma ripped up the Caribbean. This time, it may not be so lucky.
The bankrupt island, already contending with the aftermath of a storm that left as much as $1 billion of damage and hundreds of thousands still without power, faces even more upheaval with Hurricane Maria set to hit as soon as Tuesday night. The government ordered rationing of basic necessities, including water and batteries, although those items were already gone from some San Juan store shelves as residents prepared for what could be the worst storm for the U.S. territory in decades.
“If you are in a flood zone or in a wood house, your life is in danger,” Governor Ricardo Rossello said during a press conference Monday in San Juan. “There has never been an event like this in our history in the last 100 years. Our call is for all citizens to move to a safe place.”
Puerto Rico is facing an active hurricane season with little financial ability to navigate a natural catastrophe. It filed for bankruptcy in May after years of economic decline and borrowing to fill budget gaps. A series of defaults have effectively left it unable to raise money in the capital markets. And its aging government-owned electric utility, the Electric Power Authority, is also operating under court protection from creditors. Puerto Rico’s emergency fund stood at about $32 million before Irma passed through.
Maria Heads for Battered Caribbean, Threatens Puerto Rico
Prepa, the government-run utility, is still trying to restore power to hundreds of thousands of residents after its electrical infrastructure sustained as much as $400 million of the nearly $1 billion of damage from Irma. It was already in need of upgrades because it relies on oil to produce most of its electricity and the median plant age is 44 years, more than twice the industry average.
“We will not have sustainable electric infrastructure in the near future,” Rossello said. “We will be bringing in crews from outside of Puerto Rico to attend to these measures.”
Hurricane Maria became a Category 5 storm late Monday with maximum winds of 160 miles per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Rossello’s administration has opened nearly 500 shelters throughout the island and may set up more. Water, batteries, baby food and generators were already scarce in San Juan by Monday evening and motorists waited at least half an hour in line to buy gasoline. Officials estimate the last time the island withstood such a powerful storm was in 1928 with Hurricane San Felipe.
Maria’s threat hasn’t rattled the bond market, given that Puerto Rico has already defaulted and is seeking to have some of its debts discharged in bankruptcy. While its securities were actively traded as the storm gathered force, Puerto Rico debt maturing in 2035 changed hands Monday at an average price of 58.8 cents on the dollar, in line with where they’ve traded over the past couple of weeks and up from 57.9 cents on the dollar at the end of August.
Weather Is Being Engineered In The Gulf – Evidence That Is Hard To Deny
(The Last American Vagabond) In the past, we have shown you not only that geoengineering is very real, but that it is being used in real world situations on a regular basis, with zero oversight. We have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that much of the current governmental body in the U.S. has very little concern for the well-being and quality of life of the average individual, despite that being their very charge.
Today, Americans are witnessing an unprecedented surge of weather just at a moment when the political pyres are burning brightest and those in power have the most to lose, or the most to gain.
It is no question that the American psyche has never been more weighed down by the current onslaught of manipulations and heavy-handed deceptions that are now being all but openly perpetrated by those who are beginning to make their presence known: The Deep State. Never before have actual real-world problems been more overlooked and outright ignored in lieu of emotional and wholly orchestrated tangential problems that are, in and of themselves, back-handedly counterintuitive.
Which is why such a blatant manipulation can be carried out right in front of our eyes while most are too distracted, vehemently arguing about Donald Trump or the true meaning of race or gender, and viciously defending those opinions as indisputable fact (thanks to the likes of CNN). Absurdly, we are being led like marionettes to argue about some of the least important issues facing Americans today, and those most rooted in feeling, over fact.
In the video below you will see indisputable evidence that, at the very least, Hurricane Harvey was fed from different land points in order to intensify the storm. We can speculate as to why, but the how is made very clear. One obvious possibility is to distract from the growing awareness around the US’ current path of destruction in the Middle East, and its overwhelming civilian body count. Another is to create the justification and context to support the narrative that these storms are caused by climate change or global warming, or the broad and general actions of the oil industry at large.
This isn’t to suggest that humanity’s actions are not taking their toll on the planet, anyone with eyes can see those effects, but the topic of “climate change” stems from a disingenuous place. The idea, as it stands, is deeply rooted in long-term political agendas designed to bring about massive shifts in both economic and societal norms, think “carbon tax,” and is a highly politicized discussion that is next to impossible to rationally debate; much like many of the hot-button topics of today, and that is no coincidence.
Make no mistake, there is a reason for all of it. There is a reason that this country is more divided nowthan at most any other time in history.
Thanks to the brave work of WeatherWars101, as well as many others, the reality of the current destruction, and those truly responsible, becomes painfully clear. Even to the laymen, what you will see in the video below is very hard to deny and will make you question everything.
Woman Trapped By Hurricane Waters Uses Unlikely Source To Finally Get Rescued
Between Hurricane Harvey and Irma, many areas have seen substantial flooding. The hours and days after the eye of the storm hits can be especially dangerous for flash flooding and water that is rising quickly. Many get a false sense of security as they weather the eye of the storm and are surprised by quick moving waters later. One resident in Daytona Beach became trapped in what looked like a hopeless situation as water suddenly rushed into her apartment. Kristina Barneski found herself knee deep in water with several more feet of water pounding on the door of her apartment. She tried to call for rescue, but the local 911 systems were overwhelmed.
When Barneski was not able to get through to local authorities, she started to get a bit more creative in her efforts to find help. Although her apartment was starting to flood, her smart phone still had a signal. She jumped onto social media and began texting with a friend 2,000 miles away to ask for help. This unlikely source, in the end, saved her life.
The texts with her friend in California started off very basic, the waters were coming in, and she did not know what to do. She was in a desperate situation, and she needed help. Her friend Hannah Brown tried to be supportive as she started to receive the frantic texts. Brown shared with her friend updates about the storm’s movements.
Texts between the pair became Barneskis lifeline. Her friend was able to stay in constant contact with her and brainstorm ideas about getting her a quicker rescue. At one point Brown started to contact friends in the area, but they knew this was not safe with the area curfew. Rescue from emergency crews could not happen until the morning, and this might have been too late.
Even though Brown was miles away in California, she had connections in Florida. The ladies had become friends when Brown lived in Daytona Beach. Brown attempted to connect with others in the area on Twitter. Her heartbreaking tweets about not being able to help her friend started to garner attention.
In the long hours of the darkness, the friends continued to text each other. Brown told her trapped friend to find a high piece of furniture or climb up on the kitchen counters to stay above water. She also suggested finding a white shirt or sheet to put out the window so rescuers could find her.
At some point, the texts stopped, and fear crept in. Brown started sending emergency information about surviving a flood as a last ditch effort to help her friend hand on until the rescue team could arrive in a few hours. It seemed at this point that things were getting worse.
Just as Brown almost lost hope, she got a surprising tweet and text. Her friend texted her that the fire department arrived and they got her out. The rescue team replied to her tweets that were now viral; they had her friend with them.
A quick thinking friend thousands of miles away put social media to use to save a friend that night. As Brown explained:
“Talk about the power of social media. She’s like family to me. I’d do anything for her.”
While some may point to social media being impersonal or moving so fast we become numb to important information, in this case having the ability to quickly connect with thousands of people possibly saved a life. Traditional means to make emergency contact were not working, but social media made the needed connection.
A simple text for support and help ended in a viral Twitter chain that landed in the hands of the Daytona Beach Fire Department. They were able to get Barneski out of her apartment and to a local shelter. Like many people caught in the hurricane, she only escaped with a handful of personal items. This did not seem to matter as she found comfort in reconnecting with Brown to share the details of the rescue. Between texts and Twitter, technology played a huge role in the pair being able to pick up their friendship right where they left off. Chances are they even made a new connection with the Daytona Beach Fire Department on Twitter.
12 Videos from Florida Show the Wrath of Hurricane Irma
Source: Shift Plan
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million. Below you’ll see videos from different parts of Florida that show you the true wrath of Hurricane Irma.
Irma first made landfall in the Florida Keys as a Category 4 hurricane. The second landfall occurred as a Category 3 on Marco Island.
In some positive news, Irma lost power over night and was been downgraded to a Category 1 by the time it hit Tampa and St. Petersburg.
Millions of Floridians are without power. (Last night it was estimated that 7 million people were in a blackout.) Florida Power and Light has said that the restoration will be a “slow and dangerous process that could take weeks.” (source)
Key West
The storm also pulled the water away from Key Largo.
Naples
Marco Island
(Umm…why is that guy out there with his motorcycle?)
Tampa
Irma also drained Tampa Bay.
Miami
Updates to come…
I’ll be adding more videos throughout the day.
The danger isn’t over yet, even though the Hurricane has been downgraded. A CNN meteorologist tells us what to expect:
Irma is moving up through Florida Monday morning, said CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward. The storm will weaken as it travels over land. The storm’s eye will move through southern Georgia by Monday afternoon. There is the potential for hurricane-force winds of at least 74 mph in northern Florida and southern Georgia, Ward said, and tropical-storm-force winds of least 35 mph will be felt in the Atlanta metropolitan area later.
By late Monday, the storm will reach northern Alabama but the impact will be felt well in advance because of its size, Ward said. There is also the threat of tornadoes in southeast Georgia and coastal South Carolina, Ward said.
The storm is expected to move on to western Tennessee by late Tuesday, Ward said.
“While the worst is over for southern Florida, the flood and wind threat will continue for portions of northern Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Southern Carolina,” he said. (source)
Solar Flares Responsible For Impacting Hurricane Irma Warning Systems
Mac Slavo
Massive sunspots and enormous solar flares can be responsible for taking out radio communications systems. Some scientists are now saying that the solar storms which have resulted from these recent flares could have been impacting the warning systems that were to let people know about the intensity of Hurricane Irma.
According to Pocono Records, if you still have your solar viewing glasses from the eclipse, now is a good time to consider putting them on and taking a quick look up at the sun. You should be able to see two big dark areas visible on our star. These massive sunspots are regions of intense and complicated magnetic fields that can produce solar flares, which are bursts of high-energy radiation. You can just barely make them out with solar viewing glasses, scientists claim, but these spots are better and more safely viewed through a solar telescope.
These two sunspots are causing a stir among scientists right now too. The solar storms these sunspots have already sent hurtling toward the Earth may affect communications and other technologies like GPS and radio signals. They’re already causing amazing displays of the Northern and Southern Lights and space weather scientists are getting excited because they wouldn’t normally expect this much activity from the sun at the moment, considering it’s nearing solar minimum.
Solar minimum refers to the low and inactive point during the sun’s 11-year cycle of solar activity. Even though our sun is heading for it’s solar minimum, a time when the sun tends to have fewer sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (large expulsions of plasma, electrons, and ions, and magnetic fields) these two sunspots have been flaring and shooting out coronal mass ejections, directly toward Earth and activity on the sun has picked up greatly in the past few days.
All this solar activity has already caused a couple of radiation storms in Earth’s high latitude regions that blacked out radio communication at certain frequencies. The impacts extended toward the equator and have affected high-frequency communications, including ham radios, which are used in emergency and disaster relief management. Radio fade-out maps from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology show that high-frequency radio communication disruptions have likely occurred in the same areas being pummeled by Hurricane Irma. –Pocono Record
Meaning these sun spots and solar flares could be responsible for the lack of communication and warnings regarding Hurricane Irma and those living in its path. It is highly likely that a loss of global navigation system satellite communications in those same areas have already occurred, but it will take time for the data to be analyzed before scientists can gain a full understanding of how this space weather activity has affected those on the ground. The radiation storms may also force flights over the polar regions of Earth to reroute to avoid increased radiation exposures for people on board and the potential loss of communication and navigation systems for aircraft on these paths.
Scientists have said that there is no need to worry about this coronal mass ejection being “the big one” – a solar storm direct hit that could cause widespread power blackouts and trigger as much as $2 trillion worth of damage, according to a National Academy of Sciences study. But this storm, on the back of this month’s abnormally active space weather, may wind up on the larger end of the scale and will be subject to massive amounts of analysis and research for months to come.
This Florida man rode out Hurricane Irma in his trailer, seated in a lounge chair
Meet Florida man, Vernon McAvoy. Even in the face of a raging hurricane, he was calm. And he did the one thing emergency officials warned people not to do. He rode out Hurricane Irma, from his trailer, seated in a La-Z-Boy recliner.
We caught up with McAvoy while checking out the damage at the RV park he lives in near Naples, not far from where Irma made landfall along Florida’s west coast. Trees were strewn all over the roads through the park, some landing on top of mobile homes and cars. Some of the RVs had been toppled over. Others had shredded metal sticking out from the sides. The house he occupied survived mostly unscathed. And so did he. Although at points with the gusts whipping through, he wasn’t so sure he would. “Actually I thought, yeah this could be it,” McAvoy said, almost casual about surviving the storm that ripped apart the neighborhood.
So what did it sound like? He told us, “I keep hearing people say it sounded like a freight train, which is kind of an understatement. I grew up around trains and it didn’t sound like no freight train. It was horrendous.”
And what did it feel like? McAvoy described the height of Irma passing over like this, “I got three or four gusts that just shook the snot out of the house. It just felt like you’re kind of on speed bumps on the highway. It just shook for just a brief moment. Did that maybe a half dozen times. It was like, whoa, little rush.”
McAvoy was lucky. A neighbor less than 50 feet from his back door had her home destroyed. The roof was peeled back and ripped off like a can of sardines. All while McAvoy watched, “As long as that roof was going that way, I was safe. If it was coming this way, it was time to get out.”
He had emergency supplies and an escape plan. If things got really rough, McAvoy said he’d jump into his van and drive to a nearby hospital less than 200 yards from his house.
Surviving Hurricane Irma in a place where so many trailers crumpled isn’t a bragging point for McAvoy. Instead, he says he simply took the storm in stride, “Just another day in Florida, you know. What can I say?”
11 Surreal Scenes From Downtown Miami That Look Like A Real-Life Disaster Movie
(Anti Media) Residents of South Florida woke up Sunday morning to Hurricane Irma making landfall at 9:10 a.m. in the Florida Keys as a monster Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph.
The monster storm made a second landfall later at 3:35 p.m. near Marco Island as it continued traveling north along Florida’s Gulf Coast. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects Irma to continue overnight into Monday before finally losing hurricane strength status.
#Irma is expected to bring heavy rainfall and flooding to much of Florida and portions of the southeast U.S. over t… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…—
NHC Atlantic Ops (@NHC_Atlantic) September 10, 2017
By Sunday afternoon Irma had been downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane, but the NHC was still warning of an “imminent danger of life-threatening storm surge flooding along much of the Florida west coast.” More than 6.3 million people evacuated from their homes after the Florida governor orderedthose in Irma’s projected path to seek safe shelter away from the storm. Curfews for 6:00 p.m. have been declared by local officials in the cities of St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay.
As Florida residents continue to brace for life-threatening storm surges of up to 15 feet, here are 11 surreal scenes from Miami that reminded us of a real-life disaster movie:
“Today is going to the be the long day,” said Mark DeMaria, deputy acting director of Miami’s National Hurricane Center.
“A very dangerous day is unfolding in the Florida Keys and much of West Florida,” Michael Brennan, a senior hurricane specialist at the NHC said Sunday morning. “It certainly could inundate the entire island. That’s why everyone in the Keys was urged so strongly to evacuate.”
Irma is not your ordinary major hurricane. Consider these stats from CNN’s meteorology team:
- Irma is the strongest Atlantic basin hurricane ever recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
- It spent three days as a Category 5 hurricane, the longest Category 5 hurricane since satellite storm-tracking began.
- No storm on record has maintained winds 185 mph or above for as long as Irma (total of 37 hours).
- It prompted the largest evacuation in the history of the Bahamas — and potentially the largest in the US.
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