Puerto Rico running out of money after Hurricane Maria
SAN JUAN: “I don’t know how much worse it’s going to get,” Cortes said as he joined other motorists stopping on a bridge over a river in northern Puerto Rico to catch a faint cellphone signal.
“Right now it’s manageable, but I don’t know about next week or after that.”
The father of six typically works from home or travels around the world for his job, but neither approach is possible now because the power is still out for nearly all 3.4 million people in Puerto Rico and flights off the island are down to only a few each day.
While Cortes is okay for the moment, others don’t have nearly the same resources.
Cruzita Mojica is an employee of the Puerto Rico Treasury Department in San Juan.
While she, like many public sector workers, has been called back to work, she can’t go because she has to care for her elderly mother in the aftermath of the storm.
She got up at 3.30am on Wednesday and went to four ATMs only to find each one empty.
“Of course I took out money before the hurricane, but it’s gone already,” she said.
“We’re without gasoline. Without money. Without food. This is a disaster.”
Surgical technician Dilma Gonzalez said she had only U$40 (RM169) left and her job hasn’t called people back to work yet in the capital.
“Until they let us know otherwise, I’m not supposed to go back,” she said with a shrug as she pressurewashed the street in front of her house.
All are struggling with the overwhelming devastation of Hurricane Maria, which began tearing across the island early in the morning of Sept 20 as a Category 4 storm with winds of 249kph.
It destroyed the entire electrical grid while grinding up homes, businesses, roads and farms.
At least 16 people were killed. There still is no exact tally of the cost and full extent of the damage, but Gov Ricardo Rossello says it will bring a complete halt to the economy for at least a month.
“This is the single biggest, major catastrophe in the history of Puerto Rico, bar none, and it is probably the biggest hurricane catastrophe in the United States,” Rossello said on Wednesday as he delivered aid to the southern town of Salinas, whose mayor says all of the agriculture there was wiped out when the wind tore up plantain, corn, vegetables and other crops.
Antonia Garcia, a retiree who lives in Bayamon city, said she was down to her last US$4 (RM17).
She spent a day using precious petrol to look for an ATM that was in operation because she couldn’t get into her credit union, which was taking only 200 customers a day.
“This has become chaotic,” she said.
Puerto Rico was already struggling before the storm.
The island has been in a recession for more than a decade, the poverty rate was 45% and unemployment was around 10%, higher than any US state.
Manufacturers of medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, which are the most important segment of the economy, have been shedding jobs for years.
Now everything from multinational companies to small businesses and ranches are scrambling to get enough fuel to run generators while their employees struggle to even get to work.
Before the storm, the island’s government was in the midst of bitter negotiations with creditors to restructure a portion of its US$73bil (RM308.83bil) debt. — AP