Puerto Ricans leave for U.S. mainland

MIAMI — Lourdes Rodriguez fled Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria filled her home in the northern town of Vega Baja with mud, ruining mattresses and other belongings. She thought it would be a short stay with her daughter in Florida, but three weeks later there’s still no power or water back home.

“We’re going to be here indefinitely,” the 59-yearold retiree said in an interview at the daughter’s home in Tampa. “It’s been crazy, totally unexpected, like nothing I’ve experienced before.”

In San Juan, Efrain Diaz Figueroa, 70, sat listening to a battery-powered radio amid the wreckage of his home, its walls collapsed into the yard and clothes and mattresses soaking in the rain. A sister was coming to take him to family in Boston: “I’ll live better there,” Figueroa said.

Tens of thousands of islanders left for the U.S. mainland to escape the immediate aftermath of the storm. With conditions back home still grim — about 85 percent of residents still lack electricity and 40 percent are without running water, and neither is expected to be fully restored for months — many find themselves scrambling to build new lives away from the island.

Particularly in states with large Puerto Rican populations, such as New York, Illinois, Florida and Connecticut, people are bunking with relatives while trying to find longer-term housing, jobs and schools for their kids.

“I am in limbo right now,” said Betzaida Ferrer, a 74-year-old retiree who moved from Miami to Puerto Rico in July and now finds herself back three months later, only this time without a place of her own. She is trying to find a job that will let her afford $1,300 in monthly rent, more than double what she was to pay back home.

“To be in a situation like this where you need help is horrible,” said Ferrer, who is staying with friends and taking a threehour-a-day job-training program.

There have been several major migratory exoduses from Puerto Rico to the mainland over the years, most recently during the past decade when the island’s population shrank by about 10 percent because of a long economic slide that shows no sign of easing anytime soon.