HUB PUERTO RICANS FEAR ISLAND ‘IN GOD’S HANDS’
Hurricane Maria will be the first Category 5 storm to deliver a direct hit to Puerto Rico in nearly a century when the monster gale blasts the island today with howling winds and driving rains that have families in the Hub fearing for their loved ones back home.
“You have to evacuate. Otherwise, you’re going to die,” the island’s public safety commissioner, Hector Pasquera, said in a plea yesterday to Puerto Ricans planning to ride out the storm in flimsy wooden homes. “I don’t know how to make this any clearer.”
Maria would be the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in Puerto Rico since the September 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, also known as the San Felipe Segundo storm, crossed the island with sustained winds of 160 mph and killed more than 300 people.
Angela Correa, who serves as pageant director and secretary for the Bay State’s annual Puerto Rican Festival, said she spoke yesterday with a cousin on the island.
“I told her if the government says you have to evacuate, you evacuate. Take your papers, that’s all you need. Write your Social Security number on your arm so they can identify you,” Correa said.
“It’s terrible we have to be telling them that, but we can’t do anything else. They’re in God’s hands, whatever happens, happens and we can’t do anything about it. We just have to pray everything goes well.”
Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello echoed Pasquera’s call, warning that Maria — expected to slam into the island’s eastern coast this morning — may demolish the island’s infrastructure “with a force and violence we haven’t seen for several generations.” Rossello immediately vowed “to rebuild” after an anticipated islandwide power outage and communication blackout that could stretch on for days.
Correa said her family members told her that markets had been picked clean of essential items and everyone was hunkering down.
“There’s nothing in the markets. It’s terrible, it’s like Houston,” she said. “I understand it’s hurricane season ... and we all have to be alert when a hurricane comes. But this is over and over, back to back, totally horrible. All we can do is just pray.”
Maria and its sustained winds of 175 mph will careen across Puerto Rico after laying waste to parts of Dominica and Guadeloupe, hundreds of miles east of the island.
Boston residents with relatives in the historic hurricane’s crosshairs told the Herald they’re praying for the best, but bracing for the worst.
Vanessa Calderon-Rosado,
CEO of Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion, the nonprofit that operates the Villa Victoria housing development in the South End, said scores of Hub residents were worried that the islandwide blackout would make it difficult to keep in touch with family members after the storm.
“All of us here are very concerned ... We’ll have to roll with the punches and try to stay connected to our families and friends in the island,” Calderon-Rosado said. “People will lose power, internet, phone lines, all these things will keep the island incommunicado for a certain period of time, hopefully not too long.”
Ramon Rodriguez, 75, spoke to the Herald from his home in Corozal in central Puerto Rico, where he was preparing for what could be the storm of the century.
“I don’t think about myself — I think of the people living in the wooden houses,” he said in Spanish. “The wind is going to take them away.”
Rodriguez, who lives alone and has family in Brockton and Boston, said he has between two and four weeks’ worth of food and water.
The storm is the latest setback for the bankrupt U.S. territory, which is home to some 3.4 million people and suffered an estimated $1 billion in damage after Hurricane Irma narrowly missed the island earlier this month.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Maria’s winds intensified to 175 mph last night and additional strengthening was possible. At 8 p.m., Maria was centered about 160 miles southeast of San Juan and was moving west-northwest at 10 mph. Forecasters say storm surge could raise water levels by up to 9 feet, and Maria could swamp parts of the island with as much as 15 inches of rain.