Supplies bound for Puerto Rico ruined by rat infestation

Boxes of supplies collected to assist in relief efforts in Puerto Rico were contaminated after the Florida office they were stored in became overrun with rats, according to a new report.

The rodent infestation at the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration building in Kissimmee left at least some of the donated goods ruined before they could be shipped to help in Hurricane Maria relief efforts, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

The supplies were delievered to the facility in September, but executive director of the PRFAA Carlos Mercader said the organization “does not have the budget to finance the shipping cost” to Puerto Rico.

He told the Sentinel previous efforts to send out the the boxes of food, water and other items via different organizations “have been unsuccessful.”

The organization, which strives to shine a spotlight on public policy issues regarding Puerto Rico, has an annual budget of $200,000 and two full-time employees, the Atlanta Constitution Journal reported.

Juan Hernandez Mayoral, who previously served as director of the PRFAA office in Florida, slammed the ruined supplies as “governement negligence.”

“Every day, those employees would go into that office and saw those boxes and they did nothing,” he told the newspaper. “As if there was no need on the island.”

Puerto Rico was left devastated after record-breaking Hurricane Maria tore across the island at the end of September. CNN recently reported nearly half a million people are still without electricity more than four months after the Category 5 storm. Scores of people fled the island, many of them still evacuees in Florida.

“Due to many Puerto Rican families that have been displaced to Florida because of the hurricane, we have donated the meals to Puerto Rican families in need,” Mercader said in a statement.

“We will soon conduct an inventory of the donations and identify which ones are fit to be given out to Puerto Rican evacuees in Central Florida.”

Mercader declined to estimate how boxes were damaged in the infestation. The office had previously been infested in August, about a month before the massive and deadly storm.