Prayers for Puerto Rico as Hurricane Maria slams into the island.  Maria made landfall in the area around Yabucoa with 155 MPH winds.  Maris is the strongest hurricane to hit Puerto Rico since 1928, when the San Felipe Segundo hurricane slammed the island and killed about 300 people, the National Weather Service said.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) – Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico on Wednesday as the strongest storm to hit the U.S. territory in nearly 90 years, turning streets into debris-laden rivers, damaging buildings and cutting power, after killing at least nine people in the Caribbean.

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Sunday (Day #7) was mostly a day of church, fellowship, thankfulness and recharging.  There’s still so much to be done.  We were also able to get 5 new generators delivered to a few homes in inland Lee and Collier counties along with five window AC units. (Yea, Home Depot.)  We also found a great auto-shop allowing us to use a bay, lift and tools to put some much needed maintenance time into our two primary high access trucks which have taken a serious pounding for a week.
Today (Day #8), we’re working on oil changes and repairs to some transmission and undercarriage (linkage) work before heading back in to eastern Lee and Collier counties.
♦ Flooded roads remain an issue. ♦ The hurricane curfew has been lifted.  ♦ Schools remain closed.
♦ The primary power issues are in Monroe county (FL Keys), Collier county (Naples, Marco Island), and Lee county (Lehigh, Fort Myers) areas. –SEE HERE–  Obviously the recovery efforts in Monroe county are going to be months long, if not years.  In Southwest Florida (Collier, Lee) hopefully the power can be returned to the most seriously affected within two weeks.
Lehigh Acres (eastern Lee County) and Golden Gate (eastern Collier county, Naples) are where most of the blue-collar working class live.  Unfortunately those areas also got the worst part of the storm.  The inland power infrastructure was seriously damaged by the eye-wall winds of Hurricane Irma.  That’s where we’ve been focusing on trying to do what we can.  These folks have to keep working regardless of how much damage and chaos personally surrounds them.
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It’s really challenging to get solid information into the hands of the people who need it most.  Several, heck a lot, of people we’ve met are ‘renters’, have absentee landlords and don’t have any insurance coverage themselves.
There are door-to-door FEMA response crews out in the various neighborhoods in Florida (Irma), and Texas (Harvey). Here’s a decent article with phone numbers (how to) and explanations of what to expect:

FLORIDA –  If you live in one of the disaster-designated Florida counties and experienced property damage or loss directly caused by Hurricane Irma, register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for disaster assistance – even if you have insurance.

You may register for assistance the following ways:

Online at www.DisasterAssistance.gov

If you don’t have Internet access, you can call 800-621-3362.

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