Puerto Rico mops up after Maria
COST: MANY DIE, POWER SHUTS DOWN ACROSS ISLAND
‘It was a really bad experience, really bad. I almost died of fright.’
Wading through highways swamped by turbid waters that sloshed over scattered, sunken belongings, residents of this Puerto Rican barrio flooded by Hurricane Maria have begun emerging from their shattered homes.
Lying southwest of the capital San Juan, the Juana Matos neighbourhood in Catano municipality took a huge hit from Maria after the storm slammed winds of up to 249km/h into Puerto Rico early on Wednesday, destroying or damaging an estimated 80% of housing in the working-class barrio.
The storm, the second category 5 hurricane to batter the Caribbean this month, claimed at least 32 lives across the region, including 15 in Puerto Rico, and shut down power and communications across the island of 3.4 million people.
By Thursday, Maria’s floodwaters had turned the heart of the predominantly wood-built Juana Matos barrio into a series of waterways more suited to boats than walking.
“It’s like we’re in Venice,” said 69-year-old steel worker Joaquin Rebollo, looking out across a broad channel that is normally teeming with cars. “It was a really bad experience, really bad. I almost died of fright.”
Pitching the roof off his home and dozens of others in the area, Hurricane Maria began to work through the wiring around the house as darkness descended across the island.
“It was like [Maria] was chewing the cables,” he said, vividly making as if to bite through power lines with his teeth.
Rebollo and many neighbours left their homes in the hope the flooding that rose to nearly two metres in some areas would recede.
Houses locked for the storm were stripped of roofs or walls. Stranded cars stood half-sunk in driveways and satellite dishes tilted towards the sky to receive signals that had gone.
“I peeked my head out during the storm and felt the wind – and saw the wood, the roof, and the windows in the air,” said Domingo Avilez, 47, who took cover inside a small cement stock room beneath his mother’s house when Maria struck.
By the end, the stock room was the only room left.
Local officials estimate upwards of 2 000 people live in Juana Matos. Many too old or unwilling to evacuate watched from upper floors as the floodwaters turned streets into stagnant canals that seeped through their homes. – Reuters