When Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, told reporters while begging the White House for help that "people are dying," she wasn’t exaggerating.
Her city and much of the island is coming up on two weeks of suffering after Hurricane Irma, which not only knocked out power for the entire population but also left scores of people without clean drinking water, easy access to gasoline, readily available food and much-needed medical care. Although the death toll is officially 16 right now, that number will almost definitely go up.
"Sadly, the island is so badly damaged that there is no ability to communicate—no way to know the number of people who may have been killed in the storm itself with houses coming down, debris," Stephen E. Flynn, the founding director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University, tells Newsweek.
The director of Puerto Rico’s emergency management agency told reporters during the storm that he predicted he’d "find our island destroyed." Trees fell, buildings flooded and entire communities were effectively cut off from the outside world.
But the chaos didn’t end when the storm passed.
Hospitals have limited power from generators that rely on diesel—which is now in short supply. Doctors who are spread out in various communities have no backup power and, because of their size, aren’t likely to get any of the limited supplies coming in.
For Puerto Rico now, though, all he can hope for is immediate help.