Yet to reach rural P.R.
AS HEAVY RAINS darkened the mountain sky and blasts of wind sheared trees and sent dangerous debris swirling, Ashby Sanabria and her family were taking cover in their home. Then the power suddenly went out.
Hurricane Maria had just made landfall in Puerto Rico as a massive Category 4 hurricane.
“We couldn’t open our windows or doors. We didn’t know what to do,” Sanabria, 59, of Cacao, Orocovis, a rural town in the center of the island, told the Daily News.
“We would go in the bathroom, we would sit on the stairs, we would come to the living room — then we just prayed that God takes (the storm) away. It didn’t feel like it was ever going to stop.”
Six months after Maria ravaged the island on Sept. 20 — devastating its infrastructure and already-fragile economy and causing the longest blackout in U.S. history — Sanabria says her barrio, or district, is still living in the dark, fresh water is still scarce and residents remain desperate for help as relief efforts have been minimal or nonexistent.
“We have not seen one utility brigade in this area,” Sanabria said. “Every time we ask (officials) ‘What is the plan of action? What is being done?’ We are met with absolutely no response.”
It’s a dire situation that is still being felt across the Caribbean island left reeling after an estimated $100 billion worth of damage in Maria’s wake.
About 10% of Puerto Rico is still without power, particularly in the mountainous and rural areas, and occasional outages still plague larger cities like the capital of San Juan.
Some residents still lack basic needs like clean drinking water and adequate health care, and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost as a $74 billion public debt continues to loom over the island.
Of the roughly 40,000 small businesses on Puerto Rico — which employ more than 80% of private-sector workers, or about 556,000 people, according to the Small Business Administration — about one-fifth remain shuttered due to the storm.
Last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated Puerto Rico’s workforce had lost 4% of its jobs due to the storm.
The social cost has been heavy, too. A report this month by the City University of New York’s Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College estimates nearly 136,000 Puerto Ricans have relocated to the U.S. after Hurricane Maria.
Florida saw the largest influx of people with 56,477, followed by Massachusetts with 15,208, Connecticut with 13,292 and New York with 11,217.
And even suicide rates on the island have spiked, which some officials, including San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, blame on post-Maria despair. Figures released by Puerto Rico’s Department of Health in December show there were 253 suicides last year compared with 196 in 2016, a 29% increase.