There are a reported million and a half people without drinking water. How about airdropping a million Sawyer Squeezes
[Update a few minutes later]
I just sent an email to Sawyer to ask how many they have in stock, and how much it would cost per unit.
[Update mid afternoon]
No response from Sawyer yet, but using weight of 3 ounces, area of 3 square inches, coefficient of friction of 1 (WAG), I’m getting about 10 ft/s. That seems safe enough. Anyone want to verify?
You might also ask if they work for salt water.
According to Amazon commenter, it apparently does work well enough with salt water. They tested water from Salt Lake in Utah.
I think they do, but the problem in PR isn’t a lack of fresh water, but a lack of clean water. They have rivers, plenty of cisterns, and get plenty of rain.
PR has always had a problem with not so much clean water but power. True, clean water is important but power is used to clean and deliver water. It would be an excellent place to try out small nuclear power plants (NuScale or some other design). On an island that needs to import 100% of their petro-energy it makes more sense than most other places.
They also should start building houses to withstand 150 mile per hour winds. Like thin shell concrete dome homes or something similar. It’s not like this was an unknown disaster. As they rebuild they need to think long term there is no reason to build anything that isn’t going to last in that environment.
Of course there is. Capital. It might simply be that building something like that is neither cost effective nor affordable for them.
Most small island nations typically use petroleum based fuels to generate power. Diesel on small scale generators and Fuel Oil for larger scale generators. If there’s enough demand for it then lower density fuel like coal or natural gas may be used. Looking at the PREPA (Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority) page on Wikipedia they seem to use quite a lot of power. They have two 1GW and six 500MW class generators. These could be nuclear power generators.
In a place like that with tropical storms, it’s quite likely they would be better off building the generators partly underground. Take Taiwan as an example. They have hurricanes and earthquakes so they use GE EBWs (Boiling Water Reactors) which are built partly underground.
Of course, they would have to take into account all known natural environmental conditions, but give the engineers the leeway and they will come through with a solution. (five miles off shore, below the first isotherm might also work. but someone would have to run a cost/risk/benefit analysis)
There are currently two effective options for disaster-resistant housing that can work in virtually any terrain or environment. Both involve heavily-insulated reinforced concrete, cost slightly more than an A-frame (but material costs and availability can vary) to construct but far less to heat/cool, and both can actually be built faster than a wood framed house.
The first is the Monolithic dome, which has been around for almost half a century now. It’s the most disaster-proof option that you can come by, and their domes have survived hurricanes, near-misses from tornadoes (AFAIK none have actually been hit by the latter), wildfires, and electrical fires that charred up the inside (until the O2 ran out) but left the dome intact.
Domes have never really caught on aesthetically, though, which is where the Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) comes into play. ICF is not as survivable as domes, but it’s reasonably close now that the roof can be made with ICF in addition to the walls, and ICF homes can be built to look identical to a traditional house.
The one threat that can still defeat both types? Flooding (well, I suppose, if you omitted windows and used watertight naval-grade doors…).
Man, at first I thought you had written “Lawyer Squeezes.” Dyslexia is funny, sometimes…
Did PR just get inhabited yesterday? I’m for helping fellow Americans, but they’ve turned that island into Haiti.
They will get money and they will not use it wisely. Just once I’d like to hear a leader say, “We’ve got it covered because we’re smart enough to prepare for things that happen every couple of decades.”
I’m much more sympathetic about events that happen in geologic time.
Did PR just get inhabited yesterday?
In the grand scheme of things, yes. Its not like they have six thousand years of perpetual society that has vast experience in dealing with hurricanes. But the people who live there weren’t born yesterday. That their government isn’t better prepared to handle a yearly threat with such devastating consequences is inexcusable.
I live in WA state though and we are just now getting good at fighting forest fires, so I shouldn’t be too hard on PR.
A cyclone of tropical storm strength passes near Puerto Rico, on average, every five years. A hurricane passes in the vicinity of the island, on average, every seven years.
Discovered by Columbus and American for over 100 years. So they really have no excuse for not being better prepared.
Plus they have a built in storm shelter… their mountains. They could easily be prepared if they cared to. Or they could do nothing.
It’s all because evil bankers will not give them free money.
Unfortunately my copy of “Fluid-Dynamic Drag” is at work, but I think that a drag coefficient (coefficient of friction doesn’t seem like the right term, because the skin friction part of the total Cd is likely not the dominant drag term – it’s a bluff body) of 1 is probably a little high; I’d estimate 0.8 because of the relatively high fineness ratio, and I think that will hold whether tumbling or not.
So, at sea level standard day, terminal velocity D = W, consistent units:
Cd * S * 0.5 * rho * V^2 = D = W; solve for airspeed:
V^2 = (2W) / (Cd S rho)
substituting Cd = 0.8, S = 3/144 ft^2, air density = 0.00238 slug/ft^2, and W = 3/16 lbs, I get V = 97 ft/s. Even with moving Cd back to 1 instead of 0.8, terminal velocity is still 87 ft/s.
I checked my work against this app: http://www.calctool.org/CALC/eng/aerospace/terminal
Maybe tape ribbon chutes to each one?
Small typo: units for density is slug/ft^3. Numbers unchanged.
So at 60 mph, lighter than a baseball and much less dense than a hailstorm it seems pretty safe to me. Bomb da hell outa them.
Back in the early days of the Afghan efforts we were dropping HDR’s (Humanitarian Daily Rations, or MRE’s that nobody will eat) from C17’s by just dumping them out the back…An MRE weighs around 1.5 pounds each, they (the MRE’s) survived and so did the Afghans.
I say no aid should be sent until the island is renamed Puerto Pobre. Let’s have some truth in advertising.
Seems to me things like these would help (pardon the link) http://www.lightme.tech/product-g_1.html
for places that are months away from electricity, if they’re not already being supplied. Sometimes you just need a little light to keep the dark at bay if only for a little while. They’re not that expensive either.
Anyway feel free to shoot the idea down.
You could make a solar charging kit that would run lights, some appliances, and devices. It wouldn’t be super cheap but you could juggle the components to make the cost more reasonable. Solar panel, deep cycle batteries, inverter, charge controler, and wiring. Deep pockets could buy in bulk. Put it all assembled in a box but create a compartment to shield the panel when not in use. Then when the box arrives at its destination, just put the panel on top the box or someplace else, charge up the batteries, and plug stuff in.
It could be cost competitive with a generator but wouldn’t need gas, would be quieter, could be used indoors.