Title
Vein’s Climate Story
Name
Vein Spahi
Place
Puerto Rico
How are you sensing climate change?
Climate change caused this huge hurricane in 2017 called Hurricane Maria that destroyed Puerto Rico. As a category five hurricane, it was abnormal and beyond anything Puerto Rico could have possibly prepared for. Hurricane Maria had dropped 15 inches of rain in one day which is 30% more than the record-breaker before it according to NPR. In NPR’s article “Climate Change Was The Engine That Powered Hurricane Maria’s Devastating Rains” by Rebecca Hersher written in 2019, it is stated that “The authors (of the study) found that a link a storm of Maria’s rain magnitude is nearly five times more likely to occur today, with warmer air and ocean water, than it would have in the 1950s when global warming’s effects were in their infancy.” Clearly, climate change is responsible for over three thousand lives that were taken by Hurricane Maria. All that and Puerto Ricans are still affected to this day by the damage of the hurricane.
How do these changes make you feel?
These changes have dramatically affected me and my family. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico so many family members were lost and most of the family members that survived had their houses completely destroyed. Two of my family members survived had to come live with us. They barely spoke English, but they were forced to transition to living here. I can not even imagine how sudden the change must have been for them since they moved into our house only three days after the hurricane. My family was not the only people moving out of there. So many people moved out that jobs like road construction were left vacant. So the damage the hurricane caused on the public property goes unfixed. The unfixed damage doesn’t stop there. Some places still have yet to gain running water after all these years. Imagine having to go through the pandemic without those bare necessities?
Collection
Citation
Puerto Rico
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