‘Catastrophe’ at isle hosps

PUERTO RICO’S hard-hit hospitals remained ground zero Wednesday for the human suffering caused by Hurricane Maria.

Patients and staff swelter in rooms without air conditioning. Doctors use flashlights to examine patients in rooms without electricity. Lifesaving medical equipment is flatlining because generators can’t get the diesel fuel to power them.

And panic has started to set in.

“Please we need HELP in PR. We have a catastrophe in our hand, many people and children are going to DIE,” Dr. Felix Seda of San Jorge Children’s Hospital said on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.

“Where are our leaders ????? ” Seda asked. “HELP!”

The dire plea came after the pediatric center in San Juan ran out of diesel fuel Monday. It had to rely on portable eight-hour battery packs to keep the ventilators going for three highly vulnerable patients, the Daily News was told.

As the hospital scrambled to transfer its most fragile cases, nearby Pavia Hospital Hato Rey heard about the situation and shared a 1,200-gallon tank of precious diesel.

“That was a miracle,” San Jorge’s executive director, Domingo Cruz Vivaldi, told The News.

Miracles are what medical teams continue to hope for.

Seventy percent of the island’s 69 hospitals were still stuck in the dark Wednesday. At the 21 operating with some form of power, services often hung by a thread.

Only one of five operating rooms was usable at San Juan's Hospital Del Maestro.

“I think that we have been, like, abandoned,” Dr. Veronica Rodriguez, Maestro medical director, told CBS News.

“What I fear most is that a patient can die because of this,” she said.

At Maestro, only the ICU had any form of air conditioning. Just two other floors had lights.

Cruz Vivaldi said a U.S. Army tanker delivered diesel Tuesday, filling the hospital’s main 4,000-gallon generator and a smaller 400-gallon generator covering a separate 20-bed unit.

But his main building burns through 1,300 gallons a day, while the smaller unit consumes 200 gallons. That means another delivery is needed Thursday.

And while Hurricane Maria, the Category 4 storm that plunged Puerto Rico into chaos, did most of its physical destruction a full week ago, its effects could snowball into health epidemics, Cruz Vivaldi said.

“I think we’ll see a huge increase in cases in the next three months — dengue fever, complications from diabetes and patients not taking proper care at home, asthma problems,” he said.