ROCKIES’ CUEVAS SPREADS WORD OF PUERTO RICO’S NEED
Rockies prospect Noel Cuevas seeks help for his beloved Puerto Rico
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ.» A week after Hurricane Maria cut across Puerto Rico like a scythe, Noel Cuevas was working at his family’s damaged but still-standing gas station.
Cuevas had been up since well before the crack of dawn, rationing gas and helping armed police maintain order at the station. Now, night had fallen, and because there was no central electric power, almost all of the lights were out. Local residents were getting restless. Panic was in the air.
“Can you imagine? Someone waits 10 or 12 hours in line for gas, to fuel their generator, and then they get to the front of the line and they’re told there is no more gas?” Cuevas recalled. “People were afraid of dying in hospitals because the machines were not operating, because there was no power. People came to me, crying, begging. It was terrible. It was the worst thing that ever happened in our history.”
Cuevas grew up in Camuy, a charming, northwestern coastal city of about 35,000 people. It’s a tourist destination, known as “La Ciudad Romántica” (romantic city). The hurricane didn’t hit Camuy as hard as some areas, but Camuy still felt its wrath.
Cuevas, 26, an outfielder in the Rockies’ farm system, mourns for his homeland. He has only an outside shot of making the club’s opening-day roster, but he came to spring training eager to tell his story because he wants his people’s voices heard.
“I can tell you about all that I saw, and all that I heard, but it won’t do justice to what the people of Puerto Rico went through, and are still going through,” an emotional Cuevas said inside the Rockies’ clubhouse at Salt River Fields. “It should never have come to this. When the hurricane came through, it showed just how bad our infrastructure was. It should have been taking care of long before the hurricane hit. It has to be taken care of now.”
Leveling his homeland
Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm packing 155 mph winds, ripped through the heart of the Caribbean island Sept. 20. It destroyed thousands of homes and left much of the island without electricity or clean water for months.
The exact death toll remains in question. Thursday, the government of Puerto Rico enlisted George Washington University to review the deaths that followed the hurricane. The official death toll stands at 64, but reports from various news organizations suggest the actual number may be significantly higher, perhaps more than 1,000.
Five months after the storm crippled the island, winds of despair still touch many of its 3.4 million citizens. Last week, Puerto Rico’s Department of health reported that the number of people who have tried to kill themselves since Hurricane Maria hit had more than tripled. From November through January, a crisis hotline run received 3,050 calls from people who said they had attempted suicide.
As of last week, about 99 percent of the customers in Puerto Rico had running water, but more 400,000 residents still didn’t have electricity, according to Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At the end of January, official aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was “officially shut off” because of the progress made restoring power and basic services to the island. That decision brought the ire of many, including U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-fla.
“There are still a lot of people that wonder why are we giving foreign aid to Puerto Rico,” Rubio said on the floor of the Senate. “You have to remind them, Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and its residents are U.S. citizens.”
The federal government finally heeded the wake-up call. This month, when a $400 billion funding bill was passed to keep the government running, Puerto Rico, along with the U.S. Virgin Islands, were granted major funding, including $4.8 billion to replenish Medicaid funds, $2 billion to restore the devastated power grid and $9 billion for housing and urban development projects.
But according to The New York Times, the funding fell “tens of billions of dollars short of what Puerto Rico says it needs to come back from the devastating storm.” Last fall, Puerto Rico estimated it would need $94.4 billion to rebuild the island and make its infrastructure more resilient to future natural disasters.
“Life-changing” event
Cuevas, and his younger brothers, Christian and Ricardo, grew up “comfortable” in an uppermiddle class section of Camuy. His father, Noel Sr., owns a number of gas stations. All but one of them was destroyed by the hurricane.
“It was life-changing,” Cuevas recalled. “What I saw, the morning after, was like something I would only see in a horror movie. There was not a tree left standing up. There was not a light pole left standing up. It was like a giant lawn mower just ripped out all of the trees.
“You’d drive by houses and the only thing left standing were toilets — sitting there all by themselves. It was tough seeing all the people I know so well lose everything. A lot of them left for the mainland, and they aren’t coming back.”
Cuevas, powerfully built at 6foot-2 and 210 pounds, was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2010 and sent to the Rockies after the 2014 season as the player to be named in a trade for pitcher Juan Nicasio. Cuevas hit .312 with 15 home runs and 79 RBIS at Triple-a Albuquerque last year. He planned to play winter baseball in Puerto Rico, tuning up for spring training, but the hurricane destroyed the baseball fields.
So, after his family’s life normalized, to a certain extent, he went to Mexico. managing to play in 47 games. But even now, with the Rockies having started their Cactus League season, Cuevas calls home nearly every day to check in with his mom, Enid.
“She lost her power again the other day. … They still get a lot of blackouts back home, but she’s doing better,” Cuevas said.
He and his brothers have hauled water from the nearby ocean to fill toilets. When water service finally was restored, it was contaminated — so Cuevas took showers standing outside his house as rainwater poured out of a broken gutter.
“Living through the hurricane changed my entire perspective,” Cuevas said. “I’d traveled through the Dominican Republic before when I was with the Dodgers, and I saw poverty. But I couldn’t put myself in their shoes, because I had never really been in that situation.
“But then, for the first time in my life, I was asking, ‘Am I going to have to go to bed without eating?’ That changes you.”
During the World Series, Cuevas watched as big-league stars such as the Dodgers’ Kiké Hernandez and the Houston Astros’ Carlos Beltran and Carlos Correa raised awareness for Hurricane Maria. That heartened Cuevas.
“There are a lot of baseball players, like Carlos Beltran, who helped,” Cuevas said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that haven’t been in the big leagues that long, and they’re helping people build a new house. I think that, yes, it’s nice, but I think help’s got to come from somewhere else.”
If Cuevas is still angry about what Puerto Rico has endured, he doesn’t show it. Rather, he seeks awareness.
“My home is a beautiful place, and more than that, it’s an American place,” Cuevas said. “And we are U.S. citizens, and I think a lot of people forget that. I don’t want them to ever forget, I want them to remember that we still need help.”
“Living through the hurricane changed my entire perspective. I’d traveled through the Dominican Republic before when I was with the Dodgers, and I saw poverty. But I couldn’t put myself in their shoes, because I had never really been in that situation. But then, for the first time in my life, I was asking, ‘Am I going to have to go to bed without eating?’ That changes you.” Rockies prospect Noel Cuevas, on surviving Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico