A friend's co-worker was taken to the hospital last week with undiagnosed respiratory distress. She had no history of respiratory or bronchial problems. No history of asthma even though that is pretty common on the island.
(Puerto Ricans have a higher incidence of asthma than the general population. For a long time "they" [whoever "they" is] thought it was because of the dust from the Sahara Desert in our atmosphere [that's a story for another time]. It turns out people of Puerto Rican descent, even those who have never lived on the island, have the same higher incidence rate. No one knows why.)
For a while doctors weren't sure she was going to survive. Fortunately she pulled through.
She was one of many many people looking for medical help for new, never-had-'em-before respiratory ailments. At Helping Horses at the Picadero, we're hearing the same kinds of things about horses. Many horses are having trouble breathing, just like KTJ and Zip.
There were so many people reporting respiratory distress the specialists (breathologists?) got together to talk about it.
Their conclusion is all these people - and animals - having breathing issues are collateral damage from the hurricane.
I've never heard this phenomenon discussed after any other hurricane or disaster. When we think about hurricane damage, we think about - and the media focuses on - in damage to stuff: houses destroyed or damaged by wind, rain, or flooding; downed powerlines and trees; blocked roads; grieving people. In the aftermath we are fed images of lines for gas, food, water, medical attention.
Slowly, those lines disappear. Things appear to return to some semblance of "normal. The public - those who aren't directly involved - get tired of the disaster. The media moves on to the next big disaster somewhere else. Meanwhile, there are people and animals with on-going respiratory ailments and only a handful of people are asking "why?" and "why now?"
When Maria blew through the island, she stripped all the leaves, broke limbs and toppled many many trees. Estimates are between 60% and 70% of the trees on the island were damaged or destroyed. Fields and pastures were stripped of grass and other vegetation. "Things" in the soil below were stirred up into the air.
Those trees were a massive air filter, changing CO2 for O2, capturing dust and spores and goddess-knows what else, cleaning and filtering our air.
We talked in the first days about how bare everything was. The hills and cliff sides looked like they'd been hit by a devastating forest fire, except the spider-y trunks and branches weren't black.
In the second week after the hurricane, when the first tentative flashes of green appeared, we remarked how quickly Mother Nature was rebounding. Now, two months later, there is lots of foliage returning.
But it is an illusion. It is just a fraction of what it was.
Every truckload of debris - and there are hundreds, thousands of them - is full of trees that used to clean our air. The huge dumpsites around the island are the repositories of thousands, maybe millions, of leafless lifeless trees. Even those that survived and have new foliage are caricatures of themselves, trees from a Tim Burton movie or a Dr. Seuss book.
With 90% of the island still without electricity thousands of gas and diesel generators bun constantly. Now that gas is plentiful and relatively cheap ($.70 - $.75 per liter, roughly $2.66 - $2.85 per gallon) traffic is worse than ever.
The diggers (front-end loaders) and dump trucks block roads as they scoop up the bones of trees, stirring up the dust those same trees used to protect us from. Long lines of cars back up behind the diggers and trucks. Memories are short: people have already forgotten about the lines for gas just a month ago. The sit in lines, going nowhere, with engines running and air conditioners going full blast.
There is no wonder that people and animals are having difficulty breathing.
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