Foreign Affairs

Trailers Full Of Donations For Puerto Rico Hurricane Victims Found Unused, Rotting

CASA_KLUMB,_ORIENTE,_SAN_JIUAN,_PUERTO_RICO | Circa April 2018 | By JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ, M.D. [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Donations for victims of Hurricane Maria were found rotting in rat-infested trailers at a state elections office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, nearly a year after the storm devastated the area in September and October 2017.

“At least 10 trailers full of food, water and baby supplies” ruined by animal droppings were shown in a video posted Friday by a Puerto Rico radio station, reported The New York Times.

The donations were supposed to be distributed from the election commissions offices by the National Guard.

Authorities said the donations had sat at the office for almost a year Friday, according to The New York Times.

News of the ruined donations comes as the island acknowledged in a report that Hurricane Maria may have killed more than 1,400 people in Puerto Rico, “a number almost 20 times higher than initial reports indicated.”

Other donations to victims, many of whom had no access to electricity, running water or grocery stores, have also been ruined before getting to the people who needed them. A South Florida man collected “tons of supplies” and chartered a flight to get them to Puerto Rico, but when the flight company found out he had paid with fraudulent checks, it let them go to waste, reported The New York Times.

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