#65 Storms And Earthquakes Strike Mexico, Puerto Rico, And Dominican Republic
Episode Description:
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake has shaken Mexico’s central Pacific coast, killing at least two people and setting off an earthquake alarm in the capital. There were also damaged buildings and knocked out power in some areas closer to the epicenter. All this happened on September 19th the same day that major quakes battered the country in 1985 and 2017.
Meanwhile, most of Puerto Rico is without power after hurricane Fiona roared over the Caribbean island. Wind and rain from the storm tore the roofs off the houses and stripped the pavement from roads.
Hurricane Fiona then moved to the Dominican Republic, where emergency officials reported downed trees and power poles.
How to help people in Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Fiona:
BONUS EPISODES Patreon: ✨www.patreon.com/latinamericaneo✨
👉Website: www.latinamericaneo.org
👉Instagram: @latinamericaneo
🛍 Merch:https://latinamericaneo.org/shop
🔗LISTEN EN ESPAÑOL: https://anchor.fm/latinamericaneoes
Cold Opening:
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake has shaken Mexico’s central Pacific coast, killing at least two people and setting off an earthquake alarm in the capital. There were also damaged buildings and knocked out power in some areas closer to the epicenter. All this happened on September 19th the same day that major quakes battered the country in 1985 and 2017.
Meanwhile, most of Puerto Rico is without power after hurricane Fiona roared over the Caribbean island. Wind and rain from the storm tore the roofs off the houses and stripped the pavement from roads.
At least a dozen people are now reported to have been killed in the Caribbean from the hurricane and one from the ensuing blackout.
Hurricane Fiona then moved to the Dominican Republic, where emergency officials reported downed trees and power poles.
[Cue intro music]
What is going on everyone? This is the LEO podcast… where we talk about various educational topics… especially those impacting the Latin American community.
Let me tell ya’ll last week was a tough week to be Latino and see people from your community being affected by natural disasters all in the span of 5 days.
I’m sure by now you know exactly what I’m talking about with the Earthquake in Mexico and hurricane Fiona in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
Today’s episode is not only to inform you about both of these events but also to talk about the aftermath and how it’s impacted our people as well as how you can help the people of Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Fiona. We’ll discuss the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that shook Mexico last week on September 19th and again a 6.8 aftershock three days later, as well as how Hurricane Fiona disrupted critical power and water infrastructure for millions of people in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
I’m your host kevin muñoz, today is September 26th, and this is today’s free episode if you want early access to episodes and bonus episodes you can find that right now on our patreon.com/latinamericaneo and if not then enjoy this one!
[End intro music]
Topic 1: Mexico earthquakes
I want to begin by talking about the 7.6 magnitude earthquake that shook Mexico on the anniversary of two previous quakes and then get into hurricane Fiona in the second half of the episode.
According to the U.S. Geologic Survey, which had initially put the magnitude at 7.5 the quake hit last Monday, September 19th at 1:05 pm local time.
The 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook Mexico’s Central Pacific coast striking between the Mexican States of Michoacan and Colima killing at least two people and setting off a seismic alarm in the rattled capital on the anniversary of two earlier devastating quakes.
The earthquake coincidentally occurred on the 37th anniversary of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which killed around ten thousand people, and the fifth anniversary of the 2017 Puebla earthquake that struck the state of Puebla and killed 370 people.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said via Twitter that the secretary of the navy told him one person was killed in the port city of Manzanillo, Colima when a wall at a mall collapsed. We now know that there were two deaths in Colima due to the partial collapse of buildings and ten people were also injured: nine in Colima and one in neighboring Michoacan.
In Coalcoman, Michoacan, not far from the epicenter, pictures showed shingles knocked off homes and buildings walls cracked by the force of the quake. In one store, the merchandise was scattered across the floor.
Power was knocked out in part of Roma in Mexico City, some 250 miles from the epicenter. The national power utility said outages hit 1.2 million users.
Roma residents stood on the streets cradling pets, while tourists visiting a local market with a guide were visibly confused and upset. Traffic lights stopped working, and people clutched their phones, sending text messages or waiting for calls to get through.
Clara Ferri, who owns an Italian bookshop in Roma, said she told a customer to get out as soon as she heard the windows rattle, her senses attuned to the sounds of incipient earthquakes after 16 years in the location.
“It was like the dentist’s drill for me,” she said.
The rumbling grew in intensity, and as Ferri gathered with neighbors at an intersection, she looked up to see the eight-story building that houses her shop sway from side to side.
When she returned, shelves had toppled like dominos, sending over 1,000 books into heaps on the floor.
Officials roped off the sidewalk, which was littered with masonry that appeared to have fallen off the building. Residents trickled out with pets and suitcases, preparing to spend the night elsewhere, and a woman carefully escorted her 89-year-old uncle in his blue-and-white striped pajamas.
More than 200 buildings were damaged, including dozens of schools and health centers. Experts said there is no scientific reason for three strong earthquakes to occur on the same day and attributed it to coincidence.
Perez-Campos, a researcher in the seismology department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Geophysical institute, also said there was no physical reason for the coincidence.
Apparently, Monday’s earthquake was the result of the “interaction of the Cocos plate with the North American plate”, which also caused the 1985 earthquake. Five plates – North America, the Pacific, the Rivera, the Caribbean, and the Cocos – all run under Mexican territory.
According to Perez-Campos “the plates break when it’s their time to break” they don’t know about the calendar.
But many in Mexico believe that September 19th is a cursed date and many begin to worry about an earthquake come September.
Later in the week, a powerful magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Mexico, early Thursday, causing at least two deaths, damaging buildings, and setting off landslides.
The earthquake struck at 1:19 am near the epicenter of a magnitude 7.6 quake that hit three days earlier in the western state of Michoacan.
Michoacan’s state government said the quake was felt throughout the state. It reported damage to a building in the city of Uruapan and some landslides on highways.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said via Twitter that it was an aftershock from Monday’s quake and was also felt in the states of Colima, Jalisco, and Guerrero.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said via Twitter that two people died — a woman who fell down the stairs of her home and a man who had a heart attack. Residents huddled in the streets as seismic alarms blared.
It also knocked out power in some areas, though service was soon restored.
[middle of episode ad break]
Don’t go anywhere we’ll be right back after this quick break
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Topic 2: Hurricane Fiona
Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, more than a million people are without power or running water again as crews work to repair critical utilities disabled by Hurricane Fiona.
At least a dozen people are now reported to have been killed in the Caribbean after powerful Hurricane Fiona lashed the region with high winds and torrential rain that led to catastrophic flooding and widespread power outages last week.
More than one million people in Puerto Rico were left in the dark when Hurricane Fiona’s impacts overwhelmed the island’s power grid.
Fiona arrived almost exactly five years after Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, delivered a blow from which the island has never fully recovered. It has left many Puerto Ricans marveling anew at the kindness of neighbors, revisiting the age-old debate about leaving the US territory for the mainland and questioning their confidence in the island’s political leadership.
Since then, power has slowly been restored to some residents, but as of Sunday most of the island is still without power. If you’d like to check yourself you can do so by visiting poweroutage.us and you can select Puerto Rico which will then show you a map using the provider LUMA’s Energy internal outage data.
Hurricane Fiona first crashed into the extreme southwestern coast of Puerto Rico on the afternoon of Sunday, September 18th as a Category 1 hurricane, blasting parts of the island with 70- to 80-mph winds and rainfall totals that measured in feet.
The town of Ponce, on the southern coast of Puerto Rico, reported a wind gust of 103 mph as Hurricane Fiona hugged the coastline.
The storm led to a complete failure of Puerto Rico’s power grid and plunged the island’s nearly 1.5 million customers into darkness.
In addition to the blackout, torrential rain from Hurricane Fiona caused “catastrophic flooding” across Puerto Rico, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The National Weather Service office in San Juan issued a Flash Flood Emergency for parts of Puerto Rico on Sunday night as the catastrophic flood event produced 2 to 4 inches of rain per hour. Heavy rain led to mudslides and landslides as well.
Dramatic photos posted to Twitter by the Puerto Rico National Guard showed rescue attempts in areas of the island that had been ravaged by flooding this week.
The National Guard had urged people in low-lying areas to evacuate the area and get to higher ground to escape the flooding.
One image also shows a man clinging to a cement pillar to prevent being swept away by the raging rapids. Another photo thankfully shows the unidentified man’s rescue.
According to a report from Reuters, at least eight deaths may be attributed to Hurricane Fiona’s fury, including a four-month-old infant.
Torrential rain also triggered a landslide near the island’s capital of San Juan.
Officials said the landslide swallowed a large fence, vegetation, a playground, and part of a parking lot.
Puerto Rico’s Health Department said they are investigating 16 deaths that could be connected to the storm.
In Utuado, a bridge over the Guaonica River was swept away by raging floodwaters.
The temporary bridge had been installed after the previous bridge washed away in 2017 during Hurricane Maria.
After making landfall in Puerto Rico, Hurricane Fiona also barreled toward the Dominican Republic and made landfall there early Monday morning.
Hurricane Fiona was slightly stronger for its second landfall in the Dominican Republic, with maximum sustained winds estimated at about 90 mph – still a Category 1 hurricane. The Punta Cana International Airport clocked a 79-mph wind gust near the time of landfall in the pre-dawn hours of Monday.
Video recorded in the Dominican Republic on Sunday and early Monday morning showed the fury of Hurricane Fiona’s winds as the storm spun closer to the island of Hispañiola.
Another video posted to social media showed heavy rain and strong winds blowing through Punta Cana.
That region sits on the country’s eastern coast and is a popular tourist destination for people around the world.
More than 2,260 homes were destroyed, and some communities were cut off from aid
Recently an article from NPR also came out on how Puerto Rico’s plantains – a key staple in residents’ diets – were among the crops hit so hard by Hurricane Fiona that the island likely won’t be able to produce any for the upcoming holiday season.
Ramón González Beiró, the secretary of Puerto Rico’s department of agriculture, announced that the vast majority of fields were lost due to the storm’s heavy downpour and will take months to be restored. Bananas, papaya, and coffee fields were also battered by the storm. He estimated the island’s agricultural industry will lose about $100 million.
If you don’t already know Plantains serve as an important starch to many Latino communities. They are cherished for their versatility in cooking and are an essential ingredient in dishes like mofongo and pasteles.
Puerto Rico’s agricultural industry was already devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Roughly 80 percent of the island’s crop value was lost. Similarly, plantain and banana crops were among the hardest hit.
Ecuador, Guatemala, and the Philippines are among the world’s largest exporters of plantains. Still, the crop continues to be Puerto Rico’s third-largest commodity, bringing over $42 million in sales to the island in 2018.
In the days since the storm hit, hospitals, supermarkets, businesses and residents have had trouble finding diesel to fuel their generators, forcing some to turn them on for only a few hours a day. Others have seen their generators fail, as what happened to a building in the suburb of Guaynabo, where residents were stranded without elevators in a 27-story building, without water or electricity, until a backup generator was brought in a day later.
Of the 68 hospitals on the main island in the Puerto Rico archipelago, 15 to 20 were still without power and operating on generators on Friday, said Jaime Plá Cortés, president of the Puerto Rico Hospital Association.
Mr. Plá Cortés said that several hospitals installed backup generators after Hurricane Maria, when some had to rely on them for more than five months. But the machines need fuel to run.
Without saying that there is a fuel shortage or disruption in distribution, Mr. Pierluisi ordered the Puerto Rico National Guard on Friday to take control of diesel distribution to hospitals, supermarkets and water facilities. On Saturday, about one-fifth of an estimated 1.2 million customers of the water utility did not have service, mainly because of lack of power in water plants.
Edan Rivera Rodríguez, the secretary of consumer affairs who is in charge of overseeing fuel supplies, said in an interview on Friday that though there had been distribution issues at a couple of ports, Puerto Rico had 10.2 million gallons — or 11 days’ worth — of diesel supply. He was expecting that number to more than double with the arrival that same day of a cargo ship filled with 13 million more gallons of diesel.
Usually, among the five private fuel importers in Puerto Rico, the island has up to a 30-day diesel supply, Mr. Rivera Rodríguez said.
But for residents of buildings like Jardines de Francia, assurances that more diesel is coming soon provide little relief. The building does not have a generator, unlike many high-rises in Puerto Rico.
The lack of access to essential services such as electricity and water has affected the physical and mental health of Ms. Rivera and her neighbors. Diabetics store their insulin, which is supposed to be kept cool, in powerless refrigerators. One neighbor suffered an anxiety attack at night this week, apparently overcome by the post-hurricane stress, Ms. Rivera said.
Some residents pay $5, $10 or $40 for people to bring up their groceries and water. One neighbor bought a small $1,050 inverter generator this week, paid someone to bring it up and installed it in her balcony.
On Friday night, Ms. Rivera, who lives with her 10-year-old daughter and 59-year-old mother in her mother’s apartment, carried up the gallons of water that she uses for drinking, doing dishes and flushing toilets. A nonprofit provided trays of hot meals. She saved one for herself and another for her mother and daughter. Then she went upstairs to visit older neighbors with limited mobility.
A neighbor in her 80s, who lives alone on the 13th floor, cried when Ms. Rivera brought her a plate of hot food.
“I think she had not eaten in a while, because she started crying,” said Ms. Rivera as she stood in the middle of her dark and hot living room. “I told her: ‘Do not cry, stay calm. Tomorrow I’ll bring you more.’”
Conclusion/Closing remarks:
After Hurricane Fiona hit, we’re learning more about how vulnerable Puerto Rico’s power system remains five years after Hurricane Maria.
And as the process of recovery begins on the island, communities across the U.S. are rallying to provide support for Puerto Rico.
Additionally, President Biden declared an emergency in Puerto Rico, calling on both the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate disaster relief efforts for residents.
In the show noted you can find a list of a few organizations that are asking for assistance. Donations can be made through the links to their websites or social media pages. To name a few.
The Puerto Rican mutual-aid group is asking for donations of emergency essentials for residents, including first-aid kits, water filters, solar lamps and water purification tablets.
In addition to emergency essentials, the organization is also welcoming monetary donations as another form of direct aid and support.
Global Giving – https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/hurricane-fiona-relief-fund/
, a nonprofit that supports and connects other nonprofits with donors, has launched the “Hurricane Fiona Relief Fund” — aiming to raise $1 million to help residents on the island and other communities across the Caribbean.
Funds raised will help first responders “meet survivors’ immediate needs” for food, shelter, fuel, clean water and hygiene products, according to Global Giving.
https://www.hispanicfederation.org/fionahelp/
The nonprofit, which provides support to Latino communities across the U.S., says the organization is already on the ground in Puerto Rico providing emergency relief services and essential supplies to communities across the island.
“Because Puerto Rico is still rebuilding from the damage of Maria, the flooding and power outages caused by Fiona are already far more severe and life-threatening than they should be,” according to the organization.
The women-led nonprofit is coordinating hurricane relief efforts across the island, accepting donations of items such as nonperishable food, adult and baby diapers, gallons of water, toiletries and more.
The nonprofit is also accepting monetary donations via PayPal or on its website.
Relief and Rebuild Fund, launched in the wake of Hurricane Maria by Puerto Rican business leaders in the U.S., works with local organizations across the island to help rebuild infrastructure and provide disaster relief. The organization is activating its disaster aid protocol, asking for monetary donations for Hurricane Fiona victims.
THE END
That’s all for today on the LEO podcast. I’m Kevin Muñoz and as always feel free to send me a message with your thoughts or with any interesting topic that you’d like to see covered.
and for those of you on Patreon, I’ll see you there.
Otherwise, I’ll see you all in next week’s episode!
How to help people in Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Fiona:
Sources:
Mexico Earthquake
Hurricane Fiona
