Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Conditions dire 6 days after storm
Puerto Rico short on food, water as supplies trickle in
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Supermarkets are gradually re-opening in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, but the situation is far from normal and many customers are going home disappointed.
Most food stores and restaurants remain closed, largely because power is out for most of the island and few have generators or enough diesel to power them. The shops that were open this week had long lines outside and vast empty shelves where they once held milk, meat and other perishables.
Drinking water was nowhere to be found.
Mercedes Caro shook her head in frustration as she emerged from the Super-Max in the Condado neighborhood of San Juan with a loaf of bread, cheese and bananas.
“There is no water and practically no food,” she said. “Not even spaghetti.”
Six days after Marie struck the island, conditions in Puerto Rico remain dire, with 3.4 million people virtually without electrical power and short of food and water. Flights off the island are infrequent, communications are spotty and roads are clogged with debris. Officials said power may not be fully restored for more than a month.
President Donald Trump said that next Tuesday was the earliest he could get there without disrupting recovery efforts.
Maria Perez waited outside a Pueblo supermarket in a nearby part of San Juan, hoping to buy some coffee, sugar and maybe a little meat to cook with a gas stove that has enough propane for about another week.
“We are in a crisis,” Perez said. “Puerto Rico is destroyed.”
The fact that some stores and restaurants have reopened for the first time since Category 4 Hurricane Maria roared across the island Sept. 20 is welcome in a place where nearly everyone has no power and more than half the people don’t have water.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello and other Puerto Rican officials said some ports have been cleared by the Coast Guard to resume accepting ships, which should allow businesses to restock. But the situation remains far from normal.
“The crisis for these Americans needs more attention — and more urgency from the executive branch,” tweeted Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a Trump critic.
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio concurred, tweeting about San Juan, “MUST get power crews in ASAP.”
“We have a fundamental obligation to Puerto Rico to respond to a hurricane there the way we would anywhere in the country. #HurricaneMaria,” Rubio tweeted.
Trump agreed Tuesday to waive the usual requirement that state governments pay a fourth of the cost of disaster aid, since Maria hit a U.S. territory already mired in financial crisis.
Rossello said he's “confident the president understands the magnitude of the situation.”
FEMA Administrator Brock Long said Tuesday outside the White House that 16 Navy and Coast Guard ships are in the waters around Puerto Rico and 10 more are on the way.
Back in Puerto Rico, several supermarkets and phamacies opened on a reduced schedule or on a limited basis, but the process has been slowed by power outages, port closures and the near total collapse of communications. Supermarket chain Econo opened 80 percent of its 63 stores across the island Tuesday, though the hours would depend on the availability of diesel for its generators.
Two Medinia supermarkets opened in the coastal town of Loiza, but manager David Guzman said he had to impose restrictions on cooking gas and other products that were running low and might not be restocked soon.
“We are restricting so we can give something to everyone, to extend what we have left,” he said.
Therese Casper was among several dozen people waiting for a Walmart to open in the Santurce section of San Juan, but that didn’t happen Monday.
“I tell my husband it’s like camping. It’s ‘Survivor: Puerto Rico,’ ” Casper said. “It’s not what we bargained for.”
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, more than 10,000 visitors were told to leave the barrier islands of Hatteras and Ocracoke as high surf from a weakening Tropical Storm Maria pushed through dunes and under homes Tuesday.
An evacuation order didn’t apply to local residents. They are now resigning themselves to economic losses as well as more flood damage after repeated poundings by tropical weather.