• Puerto Rico Puts Its Prisons in Flood Zones | The Marshall Project
    https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/09/21/puerto-rico-puts-its-prisons-in-flood-zones

    Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico early Wednesday morning as a category 4 storm. With winds measuring 155 miles per hour, by mid-day local media were reporting that all of Puerto Rico had lost power. The whole island, home to 3.4 million people, is currently under a flash flood warning, and the National Weather Service in San Juan is advising people to move to higher ground.

    While it will be difficult for most people to move to safety, it will be harder still for people who are incarcerated in Puerto Rico’s 29 territorial and federal prisons. As you can see from our map, the prisons are clustered around eight complexes across the island, most along the coast and near high-risk flood areas.

    During last month’s flooding in Houston following Hurricane Harvey, nearly 6,000 inmates in five Texas prisons were evacuated. The same happened in south and central Florida, where over 7,000 prisoners were moved across the state in anticipation of Hurricane Irma.

    Puerto Rico was still recovering from Hurricane Irma, less than two weeks ago, which spared the island the brunt of the fierce weather but did leave mounds of debris and about 63 percent of the island, about 1.5 million power clients, without electricity. Now Hurricane Maria has cut off communication with most government officials and the re