With Bottles And Buckets, Puerto Ricans Seek The Water To Survive

Gas for cars and generators is hard to find.
Communities across Puerto Rico have lost running water as a result of the widespread power outages from Hurricane Maria, and it’s not clear when it will be restored.
Many people are living off stockpiles, like Martha Viera and her daughter Veronica Vargas. They rode out the hurricane in their house on the top of a mountain ridge, near Aibonito in central Puerto Rico.
But Alberio says he needs water "for everything … to drink, to bathe, to wash up, to clean the house" so he traveled half an hour to this spring.
"There’s no water anywhere else," she says.
And other people in line here say they plan to use this water only for cleaning, not for drinking.
In Coamo, a small town in southern Puerto Rico that was hit hard by the storm, people lined up to take water from a municipal tank where it has been sitting stagnant for days.
Other people hop in to bathe.
"I lost everything in my house," he says.

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