Puerto Rico’s heartland braces for the long wait

OROCOVIS, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s heartland has always felt like a world apart. It’s a region of fog-shrouded mountains and icy streams — far removed from the sun, sand and surf highlighted in tourism brochures.

When Hurricane Maria made landfall on Sept. 20, the devastation that followed only deepened the divide between the people from el centro and those who line the coasts. As authorities scramble to restore water and electricity to the capital and other vital lowland cities, residents of the interior say they know they’ll have to wait.

More than three weeks after the storm hit, a group of volunteers near the town of Barranquitas were clearing trees and mud off the road. Asked why they were spending their Sunday laboring under the hot sun, one shrugged.

“Who else is going to do it?” he asked.

The government says 40 roads and 18 bridges remained out of commission in mid-October and many of those are in the hard-to-reach central mountain range, which has peaks near 3,400 feet and steep slopes of now-flattened plantain fields.

Pedro Collazo and his family had to drive 20 miles from their hamlet of Puente Roto to the town of Cayey to buy water and other basic provisions. The trip — navigating mudclogged roads and fighting the crowds at the grocery store — took them 11 hours.

The entire region is without light or power and Collazo’s family has been gathering water from the river and rainwater to wash clothes and flush toilets.

The government has said it hopes to have 95 percent of the power restored by Dec. 15, but it’s likely that this sparsely populated region will be in that last 5 percent, greeting the New Year in the dark.