After Maria: Winds are gone, storm lives on for people of Puerto Rico

On 20th September 2017, Hurricane Maria was on Puerto Rico Island. Winds of up to 155 miles per hour destroyed thousands of houses, swallowed the road, leaving residents unable to use drinking water, food, health, electricity and communication. Recovery is slow. Residents endured for months without required utilities. The interruption of daily life makes the residents uneasy and abandoned.

Click on the image below to see the photo article of Puerto Rico by Detroit Free Press photographer Romain Blanquart.

After Hurricane Maria washed away the nearby bridge, the young mother and her children crossed the river in Puerto Rico. Due to climate change, Puerto Rico is at risk of catastrophic storms such as Mary, putting people and their livelihood at risk. Photo: Mercy Corps Jonathan Drake They also need to learn to adapt to more gradual changes, such as rising temperature and decreasing rainfall. In the past decade, only drought has affected over 1 billion people. Since 2001, the drought has destroyed enough products to feed 81 million people everyday - equivalent to the German population

Hurricane Maria annihilated the grid in Puerto Rico. The power generation system which had already been in a devastating state before the storm has been seriously damaged now and the transmission line that transports this electricity to the family of 5 million Puerto Rico is destroyed by 75%. Usually after these disasters, utilities only need to remake them - repair power plants, lines and transformers and restart the switch. So far it has not worked well in Puerto Rico. Entering the Green God: This week's Elon Musk met with the governor of Puerto Rico and discussed about replacing the old system with a shiny new solar panel and a Tesla PowerPack battery system. Environmental experts have started issuing the same recommendation. Exchange dirty expensive fossil fuel plants for solar energy. The island suddenly became the perfect place for these dreams - a small solar microcomputer can run the hospital and supply the air conditioner (yes, there is a light, television and sony console)

The storm that struck Puerto Rico for the first time in 89 years was the strongest, and Hurricane Maria attacked the island with a tornado. Large-scale rainfall brought catastrophic flooding, washed the bridge, and caused the entire community to drown. The infrastructure of the island became unstable and destroyed by years of negligence. Without electricity, tap water in most of the population was blocked. Communication in Puerto Rico is almost impossible for several days. The airport was closed and supplies were postponed due to the fact that the supplies had to be transported by air or air transport. The Federal Emergency Management Bureau, responsible for disaster relief, was hidden after a historic storm in Texas and Florida earlier this summer.