Naguabo

Naguabo (Spanish pronunciation: [naˈɣwaβo]) is a municipality in Puerto Rico (U.S.) located in the east coast of the island, north of Humacao; south of Río Grande and Ceiba; and east of Las Piedras. Naguabo is spread over 8 wards and Naguabo Pueblo (The downtown area and the administrative center of the city). It is part of the San Juan-Caguas-Guaynabo Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Naguabo is said to be the birthplace of the pastelillo de chapín, which is a popular food in Puerto Rico. It is trunkfish wrapped inside a flour dough that is deep fried. Pastelillo de chapín can be found in almost any seaside establishment on the island. [1]

Today the road to Naguabo by highway was just jaw dropping. So many pieces and parts of infrastructure, trees and debris strewn all over the country side.

This is a hard hit area, very close to ground zero of Maria landfall.

Lots of Army vehicles in this area.

The Walmart there took a big hit

Bent over poles and low hanging powerlines everywhere...

Yup, tolls work here too... Well let me be clear, the lights are on, but the system is probably offline... but seriously... Who built this system??? :)

Storm clouds chased us the whole day

We descended upon the city center, trees took a huge hit.

Once we were able to set up the vehicles in area not occluded by obstacles to the South, we set up our FEMA team to assist with a line for "New Applicants" and then a line for "Status and Updates" which made the lines move quicker.

As I mentioned last night late we installed a new Cisco Meraki Wireless Access Point system to help handle the large amount of crowds while providing priority access to the FEMA teams. All went very well for the first day out with the new system. Thanks to Tim and LibertyPR IT Team!

After we set up the tent situated FEMA team, we were asked by the local FEMA team which was held up in the mayor's office directly across the street if we could provide a few of those team members access to the Internet so they wouldn't have to do the paper forms and move those affected quicker to resolution. The signal couldn't quite reach inside the offices of the mayor very well.

So, I took one of the Apple Airport Extreme we were using placed it in bridge mode with a clear line of sight back to the MRL and voila... booming signal. We were able to provide Internet access to a whole nother FEMA Team... okay then, let's just notch that one on the belt! :)

The rain held off most of the day

I'd like to personally thank the police that are assigned to escorting us. They provide us with a lot of excitement with some serious hair raising riding ability. :)