Problem

Image: A car passes among dark homes as people wait for electricity to be restored after Hurricane Maria passed through in Utuado, Puerto Rico.JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

wired.com - Adam Rogers - October 10th 2017

Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Maria tore through the Caribbean, Puerto Rico is still mostly an island deleted from the present and pushed back a century or so—with little clean water, little electric power, and almost no telecommunications. For telecom, the biggest problem is the lack of power, because most of the island’s transmission lines were knocked out. “We have to reconstruct the power grid as if we were dropping into the middle of the desert and starting from scratch,” says Luis Romero, vice president of the Puerto Rico Telecommunications Alliance.

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nbcnews.com - by Yuliya Talmazan - September 20, 2017

Dominica's main hospital "took a beating" from Hurricane Maria while buildings serving as shelters had their roofs ripped off, an official said as the first images showing the devastation unleashed by the storm emerged Wednesday.

The Category 5 storm hit the tiny Caribbean island late Monday, cutting off communications and leaving the rest of the world in the dark about the storm’s aftermath.

Video footage shot by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency shows large swaths of the island suffered heavy damage, with roofs missing and debris scattered for hundreds of yards.

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bbc.com - September 20th 2017

A strong earthquake has struck central Mexico, killing more than 200 people and toppling dozens of buildings in the capital, Mexico City.

More than 20 children died and 30 are missing after a school collapsed, President Enrique Peña Nieto said.

The 7.1 magnitude quake also caused major damage in neighbouring states.

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Image:  The 2014 El Portal fire burning near Yosemite National Park, California. Scientists have warned that rising global temperatures will lead to more wildfires in Yosemite and elsewhere. Photograph: Stuart Palley/EPA

theguardian.com - Peter Brannen - September 9th 2017

Many of us share some dim apprehension that the world is flying out of control, that the centre cannot hold. Raging wildfires, once-in-1,000-years storms and lethal heatwaves have become fixtures of the evening news – and all this after the planet has warmed by less than 1C above preindustrial temperatures. But here’s where it gets really scary.

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