Will Hurricanes Like Hurricane Maria Become More Common in the Future?

Volume 1 - Issue 3

Ronald T Richards*

Received: March 21, 2018;   Published: April 05, 2018

DOI: 10.32474/MAOPS.2018.01.000113

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Abstract

I teach physics in Puerto Rico. On 20 September 2017, Hurricane Maria, a category 4 storm hit the island. I live in Trujillo Alto and my house was without electricity for 105 days until 3 January 2018. Today there are several hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico who do not have electricity and for those who do have power the system is unstable with frequent blackouts. Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto Rico was part of a hurricane season that included massive destruction in Texas and Florida. Unless you have lived through a similar experience, it is difficult to imagine what Puerto Rico was like in the weeks after the hurricane. If you did not have stockpiled in your house food, water, cash, gasoline, propane, or medicine these things were only available from your neighbors or in very limited quantities in the few stores that were open. There was no telephone service and there were very few first responders to answer your call. For a week and a half after the storm I was a volunteer with the Municipal Emergency Management Office. The day after the storm they had no generator and no communication with the vehicles that left the office. The instruction was return in 3 hours so that we know that you are alive. And it was not only the lack of telephone service. Radio and television stations were going off the air. There were no newspapers, Internet, or postal service. For most people the only connection with the world was an AM radio operated with batteries. And the radio was filled with hospital administrators making a desperate plea for a truck load of Diesel.

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