Late March, 2018

Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico last September. There are still people without power, and they may not get it until May. And the new hurricane season is just around the cornet. Early predictions suggest a season much  like last summer. There is, as I write this, a Category 5 cyclone in the eastern Indian Ocean.

The image above shows utility trucks at the port, presumably waiting shipment back to the states. Some contractors (PowerSecure, Fluor Corporation) have come to the end of their funding and, with outages in smaller and smaller sections of the island, are leaving the work to the few remaining utilities and contractors.

Every day the newspapers have stories about some aspect of the recovery. Some of the stories are bizarre, some sad. According to one recent article, the island’s suicide rate rose by nearly 30 per cent in 2017, with half of the suicides in September and November. Calls to various mental health agencies were at record levels in December 2017 and January 2018, after a lull in October and November caused no doubt by the disruption in telecommunications caused by the hurricanes.

Men 40 to 50 years old are the most frequent victims of suicide, and hanging is the most common method. Puerto Rico has very tough gun laws. I wonder what the suicide rate would be if guns were readily available, and how the rate here compare to US states with their spectrum of gun laws.

Another article noted that 6 per cent of the island’s population fled in September, October, and November, after Hurricane Maria, which equates to 184,000 people. This is a continuation of the recent population decline as Puerto Ricans have moved to the mainland to seek better job opportunities. Some demographers are comparing the population decline here to Ireland in the 1840s, when 25 per cent of that island’s population fled during the Great Irish Famine.

Puerto Ricans have taken it upon themselves to use social media to identify problems. For example, citizens point out the location of power poles leaning over roadways, an effort made more urgent after a pole fell on a passing car and killed its two occupants. That occurred on PR-124 in Las Marias.

PREPA, the local power authority, is undergoing a series of investigations related to bribery charges. US Representative Rob Bishop (R-Utah) seemed particularly incensed by reports that gentleman’s clubs in San Juan were energized earlier than other businesses after bribes were paid to PREPA supervisors. Bishop wrote Zulma Rosario, Director of the Government Ethics Office here and asked for a full investigation. Rosario said of her investigation: “It continues to expand. The investigations are booming . . ”  and claims they are “running smoothly.” It is alleged that some supervisors were bribed with cash as well as thousands of dollars worth of vouchers usable at the clubs.

Meanwhile, the 2018 hurricane is approaching, and various agencies are releasing their early forecasts for the season. Professor David Dilley of Global Weather Oscillations seems to be on a roll. It is claimed he led the only prediction service that correctly forecast the very active 2017 season, as most other services predicted a more normal season. For 2018, Dilley and his group predict pretty much a repeat to 2017. He said “You can expect 16 named storms, eight hurricanes, four major hurricanes, potential for four United States hurricane landfalls – two of which will likely be major-impact storms. And once again – some Caribbean Islands will have another dangerous season.” By way of comparison, the Atlantic basin, during an average year, experiences 12 named storms, six hurricanes, and 2.7 major hurricanes.

I’m not sure how Dilley can be this specific, especially as to landfall predictions. But it is true that there is already one Category 5 storm this year. The cyclone season has started in the western Pacific. Marcus is 2018’s first category 5 tropical storm. Marcus is no danger to land and will veer to the southwest over cooler waters, leading to her destruction.

Tropical Cyclone Marcus off the northwestern coast of Australia. Marcus is 2018’s first category 5 tropical storm.

So 2018 will be another interesting year for hurricanes. I hope Puerto Rico is spared – they have suffered enough.

And if you were wondering if I ran into any PREPA supervisors haunting San Juan’s exotic clubs, kindly disabuse yourself of that notion. I have not yet been to any exotic club here in Puerto Rico. I don’t even know where they are. I do see an occasional cab advertising one of them – Lips, if you can believe that. So I’m sure it would be an easy thing to hail a cab and get there.

As I write these words, however, I recognize that a visit to a gentleman’s club would be excellent material for a blog post or two. Trust me, my visit would be academic only, perhaps a cross-cultural sociological comparison of exotic clubs in San Juan, San Francisco, Dallas, New York, Washington, Montreal.

I feel a whole new research career coming on. If you want to support my scholarly efforts, or perhaps conduct a research trip with me, let me know.

Notes and Sources: The news sections are summaries of recent articles in the San Juan Star, the English language newspaper.

The cyclone image is from NASA, via a blog post at www.wunderground.com, an excellent source for weather information and discussions.