LOIZA, Puerto Rico — Massive damage to Puerto Rico’s water system from Hurricane Maria poses a looming health crisis for island residents exposed to contaminated water, health workers and environmentalists warn.
“The drinking water system in Puerto Rico was already very fragile,” Olson said.
Alicea said he is not worried about a health crisis because with each delivery, municipal workers emphasize the importance of drinking bottled water.
Iricelis Ortiz, 42, said municipal officials have yet to pass through her neighborhood, so residents organized a committee to ask the city for what they need.
Ortiz worries that the bad-tasting, blue-colored water that runs in her pipes is unsafe.
Bottled water can be hard to find and gets expensive, said her aunt, Maria Ortiz, 66.
“Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen a continuous stream of adult and pediatric patients with gastrointestinal illness, most often involving fever, vomiting and diarrhea,” said Christopher Tedeschi, an emergency medicine physician at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, who returned Thursday from Puerto Rico.
Llamara Padró, a nurse at New York’s Upstate University Hospital, who volunteered with a group of 40 nurses organized by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said they treated people with gastrointestinal symptoms and conjunctivitis.
“It’s right now a public health crisis,” said Padró, whose group worked in more than a dozen communities across Puerto Rico.
Dorell reported from Washington More: Five weeks after Maria most of Puerto Rico remains an island in the dark More: Who will rebuild Puerto Rico as young professionals leave island after Hurricane Maria?