How to survive climate change: a lesson from Hurricane Maria

Christmas is a big deal in Puerto Rico – celebrations traditionally run from November to February – but festivities are in scant supply at the end of 2017. On a hot and sweaty morning in mid-December, Pablo Méndez Lázaro and a band of volunteers are delivering not Christmas presents but essential filtration systems, food and medical supplies in the eastern interior of the island. At each house, the volunteers show residents how to purify the water they’ve collected in their backyards.

From the filter pouch, through the tubing, into the plastic bottle below. A basic act of alchemy transforms the contents of rain buckets, muddied by mosquitoes and sipped by any number of cats, into water fit to drink, clean wounds or even just wash dishes.

“Water is life,” says Méndez Lázaro, who has demonstrated this trick hundreds of times in the preceding weeks. “For a few months we can live without hospitals, without shopping centres, but, without water, no one can live.”

Water was in no short supply on 20 September 2017, when Category 4 Hurricane Maria cut like a buzz-saw across the island. The storm ditched two to three feet of rain, flooding houses and hospitals, while raging winds tore roofs off houses and electrical transmission towers from the ground, plunging the island into darkness.

Climate change may have played a role in the disaster – warmer ocean temperatures generally feed stronger storms. But even before the hurricane, exceptionally hot days, air pollution and sea-level rise – all symptoms of a changing climate – had already been taking their toll on the islanders’ health and financial stability.

Reference:

• Pablo Méndez Lázaro’s 2014 paper on the impact of natural hazards in tropical areas.
• The Lancet Countdown receives funding from Wellcome, the publisher of Mosaic.
• Alfredo Ayala’s charity is the Rogue United.
• The #FuerzaPuertoRico campaign was created by NotiCel.