It isn’t just the sweltering heat that’s causing a post-apocalyptic medical crisis either. A lack of clean drinking water is compounding the problems. In one town, the medical team encountered an orphanage where children were on the verge of dehydration. The physicians flew in pallets of fresh drinking water to save the kids’ lives. Because of the lack of water,  Dr. Raul Hernandez, an internist based in San Juan, is bracing for an outbreak and possibly several deaths from waterborne diseases. He said Leptospirosis, a bacterial diseasespread through the urine of infected animals such as rodents, is becoming a growing concern. Due to a lack of safe drinking water, people are drinking from whatever water sources they can find just to survive, he said. If that water contains urine from an infected rat, the disease will spread, he said. So far, at least two deaths have been attributed to Leptospirosis in Puerto Rico.

Dr. Miguel Acevedo led the second team of emergency physicians from Florida Hospital. “They say it could take six to nine months for power to be restored fully in Puerto Rico. No hospital can plan to survive on generators for that long,” he said.

What doctors are dealing with in Puerto Rico is a “Mad Max kind of situation,” said Acevedo.

 

“The reality here is post-apocalyptic,” he said. “You can’t understand the seriousness of it unless you see it.”

HURRICANE Ophelia has developed a terrifying 'sting jet' that could see winds of up to 100mph could smash into the UK and Ireland today.

To call Ophelia unusual would be an understatement. For one thing, it became a major hurricane at longitude 26.6°W, further east than any other formation of a Category 3 in the Atlantic. The former record-holder was Frances (1980), which became a Category 3 at 12.8°N, 29.8°W. Ophelia’s achievement is even more impressive when you consider its latitude: 34.8°N. In data going back to 1851, no other major hurricane is known to have formed anywhere close to as far northeast as Ophelia. The runner-up at Ophelia’s latitude range, Michael (2012), developed some 900 miles further west (see Figure 2 below).

Ophelia also extends this year’s count of major Atlantic hurricanes to six, a tally last achieved in 2004. Only two years have notched seven major Atlantic hurricanes: 1961 and 2005.