Foraging for food, water and hope
Basics of living remain elusive as Hurricane Maria’s devastation lingers in Puerto Rico.
MAYAGUEZ, Puerto Rico — Joel Cotto and Jesus Gonzalez picked up their fishing nets after a full day at a lake in Cidra, Puerto Rico, feeling good about their bucket full of shrimp and fish known as chopas.
The friends say they became fishermen after Hurricane Maria devastated the island Sept. 20 because food for their families had become so scarce.
Cotto, 50, says the hurricane ripped the roof off his home in Aguas Buenas, a municipality in the island’s central region, and damaged virtually everything, including the refrigerator.
“The roof, the house — everything is stripped away,” Cotto said. “We have to fish for what we are going to eat today.”
Like Cotto and Gonzalez, 57, many Puerto Ricans are making substantial adjustments to their lives based on hurricane-related devastation to the U.S. territory. Despite some aid reaching residents in the last four weeks, many people have had to find new ways to at least temporarily feed their families, filter water and care for the young, elderly and sick.
Food, water, medicine, electricity and shelter all remain desperately scarce. The hurricane wiped out thousands of homes, decimated crops and cut power and phone lines, making it difficult for most of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents to communicate with family or aid services.
Some roads in mountainous regions contort and contract with mudslides that expose precipices on both sides. In some cases, collapsed bridges have left people isolated in communities that already were off the beaten path.
The number of deaths associated with the hurricane rose to at least 49, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said Friday, and that number was expected to go up again.
Officials say dozens of people were still missing.
Rossello was in Washington on Thursday trying to secure more aid for the island, whose residents are U.S. citizens at birth; he met with President Trump, whose administration has been criticized for its response to the devastation.
Despite help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies as well as private fundraising and aid efforts, many Puerto Rico residents remain in trouble. Thousands have left the island to be with or near relatives on the mainland.
Magdanell Quiñones, a teacher at the Luis Muñoz Rivera school in the Rio Piedras section of San Juan, the capital, says the island is in crisis despite a tendency for many people to put on a brave face.
“For everybody who hears we are OK, that means we are alive. But there has not been a day when I have not come home crying because I am thinking of a mother who came to me saying that ‘we have no food,’” she said.
Quiñones says she feels hopeful when she sees members of her community working to rebuild neighborhoods with their own hands. She has a child with special needs who has taken to working in their vegetable garden, which they replanted days after the storm hit.
Marinilda Rivera Diaz, a social worker in Rio Piedras, is part of an interdisciplinary team of professionals working at one of the “Stop and Go” centers, part of a government initiative to provide food, medical care and help filling out paperwork for federal aid.
“I am worried about the people who have bedridden family members living in their homes who depend on a respirator,” she said. “Can you imagine what it is like to need to breathe and not have oxygen?”
Among those recently at the Jose Celso Barbosa school where Rivera Diaz is working was Roberto Bonilla, who sought physical and emotional care. He was grateful for the warm plate of food he received.
“I am 60 years old, and I need food,” he said, kissing the plate.
Many island residents remain without electricity, with some of the more fortunate resorting to generators for power.
Dodgers player Enrique Hernandez, who hit three home runs as his team beat the Chicago Cubs on Thursday night to advance to the World Series, says his mother and other family members in Puerto Rico watched the game on a television powered by a generator.
Hernandez, who had written “Pray 4 PR” on his cap, and his fiancee set up an online fundraising platform that as of Friday had surpassed its goal of $100,000.
Enrique Batlle, who runs a hot dog shop in Mayaguez, says he’s an avid sports fan and would have watched the game if not for the lack of electricity. He found out later how well Hernandez had done.
“It’s tremendous,” Batlle said. “Puerto Rico needs good news with everything that has happened after the hurricane.”
Officials say the water supply reaching about twothirds of the homes on the island is now considered safe to drink, but they acknowledge that damage to the main laboratories responsible for measuring water quality has made it difficult to conduct rigorous testing.
The Environmental Protection Agency has urged residents to boil water before drinking it. Among the warnings from government officials was that people should not take water from natural streams because f luid from sewers was leaking into some rivers.
The lake where Cotto and Gonzalez were fishing is not far from the La Plata River, which officials say has been contaminated by sewage runoff.
The friends say they hope for the best.
“I don’t think it is contaminated, because we have eaten fish from it before,” Gonzalez said.