Pulitzer Center Update

This Week: One Month After Hurricane Harvey

November 14, 2017 | Newsletter
In Key Allegro, a coastal town where Harvey made landfall, the devastation was made worse by the fact that, prior to February, 2016, the lack of a designated flood zone allowed for homes to be constructed as close to the water as owners desired. Alex MacLean. United States, 2017.

In Key Allegro, a coastal town where Harvey made landfall, the devastation was made worse by the fact that, prior to February, 2016, the lack of a designated flood zone allowed for homes to be constructed as close to the water as owners desired. Alex MacLean. United States, 2017. 

A Bird's-eye View of Harvey's Destruction

Dan Grossman and Alex MacLean

A month after Hurricane Harvey made landfall, reporter Dan Grossman and photographer Alex MacLean hired a four-seater Cessna to document the wreckage for The New Yorker. Vast piles of debris still littered suburban landscapes; mobile homes tossed by 138-mile-per-hour winds lay toppled like left-behind toys; at the Royal Purple Raceway, in Baytown, Texas, 28,000 storm-damaged vehicles awaited salvage or disposal; and at high tide in the wealthy neighborhood of Key Allegro, seawater still lapped near the doors of pricey homes. Grossman and MacLean report that Harvey is expected to be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history—for now.

Family and friends lift a coffin carrying Junmar Abletes—another victim of an extrajudicial killing—out of a hearse in Navotas’s Catholic Cemetery. Abletes, who was 27 when he died, had moved to the island of Samar, over 370 miles away from his home in Metro Manila. While back on a family visit, he was assassinated in the Market 3 slum in Navotas, where his family lives. Image by James Whitlow Delano. Philippines, 2017.

Family and friends lift a coffin carrying Junmar Abletes—another victim of an extrajudicial killing—out of a hearse in Navotas’s Catholic Cemetery. Abletes, who was 27 when he died, had moved to the island of Samar, over 370 miles away from his home in Metro Manila. While back on a family visit, he was assassinated in the Market 3 slum in Navotas, where his family lives. Image by James Whitlow Delano. Philippines, 2017.

Duterte's Slaughter

James Whitlow Delano

James Whitlow Delano's photos for The New Republic capture the ravages of life in Filipino slums, where President Rodrigo Duterte "has unleashed masked assassins in a spasm of slaughter that has created a siege mentality ... delivering assassination with impunity, without pause."

American college students at Casa del Son. Image by Sally H. Jacobs. Cuba, 2017.

American college students at Casa del Son. Image by Sally H. Jacobs. Cuba, 2017.

Cuba Travel Gets Harder

Sally H. Jacobs

New regulations by the Trump Administration—not to mention mysterious sonic assaults on U.S. diplomats—have blocked or scared off some American travelers to Cuba, but others are not deterred, reports Sally H. Jacobs for PRI's The World.

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