Puerto Rico is still a mess. 60% of the island is out of power and there is zero land line telephone service. I'd estimate that only about 70% of the traffic lights in the island are working 6 months after the storm and it is less than 50% on the north coast, and I don't remember seeing one functioning traffic light in San Juan, though my time there was limited to driving to airport. There are power lines strewn about the roads and power line poles littering the sides of the roads all over the place; there is debris everywhere in places like Mayaguez on the West coast and Arecibo on the north coast. Several people I met and asked how they were doing responded with "I'm ok, I've got power and water now so I can't complain." Pretty sure our entire hotel was run on generators. I spent most of my time in the Southwest which was the least affected but also the sparsest human population density (aside from the central mountains). The good news is that every where I went there were power trucks on the roads working to restore normalcy. In my few conversations with the locals I gleaned that most people blame the Governor and not the feds for mishandling the recovery, but the reality is that there is no money to manage the recovery.
Probably less interesting to most folks, but, ecologically (which was why I was down there), There are a few sad stories. The eastern population of the Puerto Rican Parrot, a highly endangered and reintroduced population is nearly completely wiped out, they found many of the radio tracked individuals dead and have only located a few individuals since the storm; there is a second population in the West so the species is ok for now. The other sad news I heard was that the bat populations suffer near total collapse following the storm. Coastal fresh water wetlands, where most aerial insects breed were inundated with salt water during the storm surge so insect populations disappeared for about a month and fruit bearing trees that support fruit eating bat populations were also badly affected. We went to one cave that last year supported an estimated 300,000 bats and on the night we were there we counted a few hundred.
Probably less interesting to most folks, but, ecologically (which was why I was down there), There are a few sad stories. The eastern population of the Puerto Rican Parrot, a highly endangered and reintroduced population is nearly completely wiped out, they found many of the radio tracked individuals dead and have only located a few individuals since the storm; there is a second population in the West so the species is ok for now. The other sad news I heard was that the bat populations suffer near total collapse following the storm. Coastal fresh water wetlands, where most aerial insects breed were inundated with salt water during the storm surge so insect populations disappeared for about a month and fruit bearing trees that support fruit eating bat populations were also badly affected. We went to one cave that last year supported an estimated 300,000 bats and on the night we were there we counted a few hundred.