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Thousands of people are fleeing Puerto Rico as the island remains without power and the death toll continues to climb more than a month after Hurricane Maria. Even for those who can afford plane tickets and get to the airport, there’s another hurdle: evacuating with pets.  Leaving the island with animals in tow has become a huge challenge, said Sarah Barnett of the Humane Society of the United States, which has workers on the ground in Puerto Rico. The pet owners Barnett has spoken with have been “hysterical” with worry, she said.

Some pet owners stayed, remaining in dire conditions to care for animals. Others had to make gut-wrenching decisions. Claudia, a single mother who left for North Carolina with her baby and two dogs, left her other three dogs with a friend. She’s now desperately trying to bring those dogs to the mainland, too.

“They’re inundated with people wanting to fly their animals out in cargo,” Barnett said. American Airlines is accepting a limited number of pets per flight as checked baggage, and United is transporting animals through its PetSafe program.  Delta did not reply to a query about whether it is flying pets in cargo, though it previously waived fees for pets flying in the cabin from Puerto Rico. JetBlue and Southwest never transport pets in the cargo hold, though they both fly a limited number of small pets in the main cabin. A JetBlue spokesperson told HuffPost the airline has waived all in-cabin pet fees for flights out of Puerto Rico through Nov. 15, and doubled the number of pets per flight from four to eight.

Storm-ravaged Puerto Rico has promised a full audit of a $300m (£227m) deal won by a small electrical firm with Trump administration connections.A US House of Representatives committee is also scrutinising the contract.The chief executive of Whitefish Energy Holdings in Montana knows US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, while one of its investors has donated to Donald Trump.

Puerto Rico, a US territory whose 3.4 million residents are US citizens, was struck by two hurricanes in September - Irma and, later, the more-destructive Maria. The second storm all but wiped out the island's power grid.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) placed the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in charge of "the immediate power restoration effort".When asked by BBC News about the contract, USACE spokeswoman Catalina Carrasco said on Monday "the US Army Corps of Engineers does not have any involvement with the contract between the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and Whitefish". She referred further questions to Prepa.