The Hurricane That Drowned an Entire Country - Maria 2017
On September 20th, 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, showcasing an extreme weather event with devastating hurricane footage. This natural disaster caused immense damage across the island, highlighting the destructive power of the storm. The video captures the widespread impact on the beautiful Caribbean region.
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On September 20th, 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, showcasing an extreme weather event with devastating hurricane footage. This natural disaster caused immense damage across the island, highlighting the destructive power of the storm. The video captures the widespread impact on the beautiful Caribbean region.
For copyright and business inquiries, contact us at: darkhorizonyt.contact@gmail.com
Music by Epidemic Sound.
#HurricaneMaria #Maria2017 #PuertoRico #Hurricane #NaturalDisaster #WeatherDocumentary #ClimateChange #ExtremeWeather #Disaster #Storm
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TVTranscript
00:02September 20th, 2017, a Category 4 hurricane named Maria makes landfall on the eastern
00:09coast of Puerto Rico shortly after 6 in the morning local time.
00:19Hurricane Maria is officially the most deadly U.S. natural disaster in the last century.
00:25There's a high rise about a hundred yards behind me and it's continually tearing pieces
00:30of the building away and they're flying through the air like projectiles.
00:33Sustained winds at 155 miles per hour, the strongest storm to hit the island in nearly
00:3990 years.
00:41By that night, the entire island has gone dark.
00:45150 mile an hour winds ripping buildings apart, knocking out power everywhere.
00:49All of the electricity is out tonight.
00:51The official death toll released by the government of Puerto Rico in the days that
00:55follow is 64.
00:57But there is a part of this story that remains hidden.
01:00The actual death toll.
01:02What happened in Puerto Rico in the fall of 2017 was not a hurricane.
01:07It was a hurricane, followed by the longest blackout in American history, followed by a
01:13year of dying that the government refused to count.
01:17Don't forget us, just don't forget us.
01:24To understand what happens to Puerto Rico on September 20th, you first have to see the
01:29island it hit and why it was already wounded before Maria ever arrived.
01:34Two weeks earlier, on September 6th, Hurricane Irma had passed just north of Puerto Rico.
01:55Irma was a Category 5.
01:57It did not make landfall, but it grazed the island close enough to knock out power to more
02:02than a million people, kill at least three, and leave the electrical grid hanging by a thread.
02:08Repair crews had been working around the clock for 14 days when the next storm appeared on
02:14the forecast.
02:1555% of the island is still in the dark.
02:17Her concern was getting electricity back.
02:21We did not get much damage in Puerto Rico.
02:23I think it will be back sooner rather than later.
02:26I mean, I hope.
02:27I have no power at home either.
02:28The reason a storm could shut down a modern American territory for almost a year is in
02:34what was holding the lights on.
02:36Puerto Rico's electrical grid was decades old.
02:39Most of its transmission lines were strung through mountainous interior terrain on wooden
02:44poles, many of them dating back to the 1960s.
02:48The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the public utility responsible for the grid, had
02:53been bankrupt for three months when Maria formed.
02:57Maintenance had been deferred for years.
02:59Backup systems were thin.
03:01Generator fuel supplies were limited.
03:04And Irma had just spent two weeks chewing on the margin.
03:08Three and a half million American citizens lived on this island.
03:12Most of them had been told the worst of the season was already behind them.
03:16They were dangerously wrong.
03:18On September 16th, a tropical depression formed in the central Atlantic.
03:23Within 48 hours, it had a name.
03:26Within 72 hours, it was a hurricane.
03:29And it was heading directly at Puerto Rico.
03:32It hasn't even begun to recover from Hurricane Irma.
03:35It is now under another hurricane warning tonight.
03:38It's horrible over there.
03:39There is not a leaf.
03:41Every tree is bent.
03:43Buildings, houses, businesses, everything is devastated.
03:46You know, we have paradise, but this is what we have to go through.
03:51Been there before, done it before, and we do it again.
03:54As you ride around the island, we found a lot of people who said, listen, I stayed for
03:58Irma.
03:59I'm going to stay again for Maria.
04:00But we have come across groups of people who said, there's no way I'm riding out another
04:05storm.
04:05Maria forms east of the Lesser Antilles and moves northwest.
04:09On September 18th, in less than 24 hours, it goes through one of the most rapid intensifications
04:17ever recorded in the Atlantic basin.
04:19Winds climb from 85 miles per hour to 160 miles per hour.
04:25The central pressure plunges.
04:27By the morning of September 19th, Maria is a Category 5.
04:32It plows into the island of Dominica that night.
04:46It scrapes the city clean.
04:49The Prime Minister of Dominica, hiding in his official residence, has to be evacuated through
04:55a hole in the roof.
04:56Then Maria turns toward Puerto Rico.
04:59In the hours before landfall, the storm goes through what meteorologists call an eyewall
05:05replacement cycle.
05:06The original eyewall collapses.
05:09A new, larger one forms around it.
05:12The storm weakens slightly, from Category 5 back down to a high-end Category 4.
05:18The eyewall doubles in size.
05:21This does not help Puerto Rico.
05:23It makes things worse.
05:24A wider eyewall means a wider band of catastrophic winds.
05:29A wider eyewall meant no corner of the island was out of reach.
05:34At 5.51 in the morning local time, on September 20th, Maria makes landfall near the town of
05:41Yabucoa on Puerto Rico's southeastern coast.
05:46Whoa.
05:48Get ready.
05:51Get ready.
06:02atches.
06:14The winds, at 155 miles per hour.
06:18Central pressure at 927 millibars, the strongest landfall on Puerto Rico since the San Felipe
06:26Segundo hurricane of 1928. In the town of Yabucoa, in a neighborhood called Playa El Negro,
06:35a man named Carlos Bonilla Rodriguez is sheltering at a neighbor's house. He watches through the
06:41window as the wind reaches his own home a few yards away. He sees the roof lift,
06:47peel back, and disappear into the storm. He is one of the lucky ones. He is sheltering somewhere
06:55with walls. The storm pushes northwest across the island, Yabucoa to Caguas, Caguas to the central
07:03mountains, the central mountains to the northern coast. For more than five hours, every part of
07:10Puerto Rico is inside Maria. Every single one of the island's 78 municipalities is struck.
07:19There is no part of the island that is spared.
07:29We can see some of the debris that's come off buildings from all around here. Bits of roof,
07:34side walls, balconies, satellite dishes, everything just getting ripped down by winds up to probably
07:41150 miles per hour here. It was a worst case scenario for this island, the heavy populated
07:46eastern part of an island where three and a half million people live, a U.S. territory really
07:50getting pounded by these destructive winds. It feels like... By 11 in the morning, the rivers are no
07:55longer rivers. They are brown floods carrying houses, cars, and refrigerators down out of the
08:02mountains. By two in the afternoon, the eye exits Puerto Rico's northwest coast. The wind dies down,
08:10the rain keeps falling, and the island is silent. For the first 12 hours after Maria leaves, almost no
08:19information gets out of Puerto Rico. Cell towers are down, power is out. Roads in the interior are
08:26blocked by mudslides, fallen trees, and collapsed houses. The few satellite phones in government hands
08:33are being used to coordinate first response, not to call reporters. In Washington, the early news coverage
08:40describes a serious storm with significant damage. The full picture is still hours away.
08:46Not a single car in sight. We're the only ones out here. Emergency management now confirms 100% of Puerto
08:52Rico now without power everywhere you look. What is happening on the ground is this. Every hospital is
08:59running on generators. Every dialysis center is closed. Every traffic light is dark. Every refrigerator full of
09:07food and medicine is starting to warm up. Every person who depends on a machine to stay alive
09:12is now depending on a generator, and on the fuel that runs that generator, and on the road that fuel
09:19has
09:19to travel down. And most of those roads no longer exist. While Washington waited for news, the real disaster
09:27was just beginning. By then, people are already dying. Governor of Puerto Rico says two-thirds of
09:34the island are a disaster zone. Many residents there short on food, their homes flooded, and they're
09:40desperate to find loved ones. CBS News Correspondent. The first wave of deaths comes from the storm itself.
09:46People crushed under collapsed homes. People swept away by flash floods. People struck by debris and winds that
09:53reached over 170 miles per hour in some gusts. The official immediate count is small. 16. Then 24. Then 34.
10:05By the end of the first week, the government of Puerto Rico has confirmed 16 storm-related deaths.
10:12The math and the reality were starting to drift apart. In the mountain town of Utuado, a hospital that
10:19survived Hurricane Irma loses power within hours of Maria's passage. Its generator works for two days.
10:26Then the fuel runs out. A man named Ivan Luciano had been admitted to that hospital with diabetes
10:33complications during Irma. When his condition worsened and he needed dialysis, he was transferred
10:3920 miles to a larger facility in Arecibo. He was in the intensive care unit there when Maria hit.
10:45The Arecibo hospital lost power. Ivan Luciano died on October 3rd.
10:53This is happening across the island. By federal estimates, only 11 of Puerto Rico's 69 hospitals
11:00had electricity or generator fuel one full week after the storm. Refrigerated medications spoiled.
11:07Oxygen concentrators stopped working. Operating rooms could not be sterilized.
11:12But the storm itself is not finished, even after it passes. In a coastal town, while the eyewall is
11:19still raking the island, a United States Coast Guard Petty Officer named Osiris Torres is sheltering with
11:26his family. He is an aviation maintenance technician. He has been stationed in Puerto Rico for years.
11:32The storm is at its peak. The wind is unsurvivable. The rain is horizontal. He hears something through
11:41the wall. It is his next-door neighbor calling for help. The neighbor's elderly mother is trapped.
11:47There is no one else. Osiris Torres opens his door, steps out into a Category 4 hurricane and walks to
11:55his
11:56neighbor's house. He gets the mother out. He brings her back. They ride out the rest of the storm together.
12:06He does not file an after-action report. He does not call it a rescue. He goes back to his
12:13job at the air
12:13station the next morning. The story only surfaces in a Coast Guard internal lessons learned document months later.
12:22This was the reality of the recovery. Help wasn't coming from the government. It came from neighbors.
12:29In the town of Aguadilla on Puerto Rico's western coast, a couple named Zaira Arvelo Alicea and her
12:36husband Juan Carlos are at home when the storm hits. The water comes faster than they expect. It comes through
12:44the doors. It comes up to their waists. They climb onto a mattress. The water keeps rising. They float.
12:52For 16 hours, they float on a patched air mattress while their house collapses around them.
12:58When the storm finally ends, they are rescued by neighbors. They walk for miles to a family member's
13:04home in the next town over. Soaked. Cut. Exhausted. But alive.
13:11In San Juan, in the historic neighborhood of La Perla, a community organizer rallies her neighbors
13:17before the federal government arrives. They feed each other. They clean the streets themselves.
13:23They distribute supplies that they pull from what little is left in their own homes.
13:28The federal aid that does arrive is delayed, undersized, and unevenly distributed. People who
13:34watch from the back of the room remember thinking that no one was coming for them.
14:00The power is not fully restored to Puerto Rico for 328 days.
14:0611 months. It is the longest blackout in American history. The second longest in modern world history.
14:16By the measure of total customer hours of power lost, it is more than three times larger than the
14:22next biggest blackout the United States has ever experienced. For most of that year,
14:28the official death toll from Hurricane Maria remains 64. A team at George Washington University,
14:36commissioned by the government of Puerto Rico itself, releases its findings in August of 2018.
14:422017. After analyzing excess mortality across the months following Maria, they arrive at a number.
14:482,975.
14:53A separate Harvard study published months earlier estimates the true toll could be even higher,
14:59closer to 4,600. The government of Puerto Rico revises the official count to 2,975.
15:08It takes one full year for the truth to make it onto an official document.
15:14Among those 2,975 is a 48-year-old man named Orlando Lopez Martinez.
15:22He had been receiving dialysis three times a week. After Maria, his treatment center closed for four days.
15:30When it reopened, the staff was rationing treatment because they could not get enough generator fuel.
15:37He got less than half of what he needed. He died on October 10th.
15:43The cause of death listed on his certificate is heart attack, brought on by kidney failure.
15:49The certificate does not say Hurricane Maria. That is how the official death toll stayed at 64
15:56for almost a year. Hurricane Maria didn't just take lives. It erased them.
16:06The storm passed in a single morning. The dying took 11 months.
16:14I make these videos to tell stories that matter. Stories like this don't really end when the storm is
16:19over. They stay with the people who live through them, and sometimes they slowly fade everywhere else.
16:25So if this story meant something to you, even for a moment, help it reach someone else. A like,
16:31a comment, even just sharing it. It might seem small, but it genuinely makes a difference.
16:35Because every bit of support pushes these stories further, and keeps them from being forgotten.
16:41Stay safe. I'll see you in the next one.
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