The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘These are our people’
Community rallies to send necessities to ravaged Puerto Rico
MIDDLETOWN — With hearts full of faith and conviction, a small troop of local volunteers with ties to Puerto Rico, intent on sending relief to the island savaged by Hurricane Maria a month ago, has completed its mission to bring a bit of hope to the island.
Deyanira Vazquez, who works at St. John Paul II School on South Main Street, her sister Lymaris Vazquez, and Jamila Cacares Ranno, all Puerto Ricans and parishioners at St. Francis of Assisi Church; joined Spanish teacher Emilia Triay, a congregant at St. Pius X Church, over the past few weeks to help their loved ones and others in need.
They mobilized the efforts of their church and school communities this week, delivering 211 backpacks full of food and supplies to increasingly desperate families at a shelter in the region.
Much of the U.S. territory, home to 3.41 million people was hit by a Category 4 storm Sept. 20 that killed 49 people. Puerto Rico is still without power, clean water, medical facilities and a host of other basic human needs. What little remains is being taken by looters, said Rev. Russell Kennedy of St. Francis.
“More than 80 percent of the island still does not have electricity and 50 percent of people do not have access to pure drinking water,” he wrote in this week’s church newsletter. “The heat and humidity must be taking a toll on everyone. I think it is safe to say that people there are feeling forgotten and depressed.
“The devastation is so great and things will probably never be the same,” he said.
A good portion of St. Francis church members are Dominican, Equadorian, Puerto Rican and Mexican, Kennedy said, and his parish is the only city church that offers a Spanish Mass.
Maria destroyed tens of thousands of homes and left tens of thousands of people without a job. It was the strongest hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in nearly a century, with winds just shy of Category 5 force, according to the Associated Press.
Deyanira Vazquez and Cacares Ranno, who were then acquaintances at the school, had a fortuitous meeting at the grocery store recently and began talking about organizing a local effort. “It was just fate that I was at Price Chopper,” Cacares Ranno said as she, Triay and Deyanira Vazquez spoke excitedly outside the school Friday afternoon while their children played.
Wanting to help the country where her mother, two sisters and other family live, Deyanira Vazquez came up with the idea of gathering donations of supplies from the school community.
She arrived at a competition in which the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students, on two teams — boys and girls — would ask family and friends to donate items for relief packages. The girls won the challenge, Triay said.
Soon, everyone wanted to help and donations began to pour in from Wesleyan University, which donated 30 backpacks, Middletown Adult Education, New England Dance Studios, New England Home Care, Attorney Nancy Hunter, Hartford Health Care Vascular Thoracic, and Outpatient Pharmacy Services at Yale New Haven Health and many others, Kennedy said.
Donations include toothbrushes, toothpaste, adult and baby diapers, feminine hygiene products, sheets, toiletries, water medical supplies, canned goods and many other items were collected.
Cacares Ranno’s cousin Jorge Colon, a retired firefighter, volunteers for Western Massachusetts United for Puerto Rico officials, a group of clergy, service providers and nonprofits bringing supplies to the island. The organization has already raised $90,000 to help the area, she said.
“He said, ‘I’m going to deliver to these towns because these are our people that need this.’”
The countryside has been cut off from basic necessities, bridges are down and communication is a terrible challenge, Cacares Ranno said.
“Everything kind of fell together because we were praying,” Deyanira Vazquez said. “It was hard. It was very difficult.”
The group settled on helping the capitol, San Lorenzo, and Caguas and Juncos, Deyanira Vazquez said. “These towns, nobody really has gone to them too much,” she said. “I thought it really was great.”
The countryside is so sparsely populated that it could take an hour for someone to walk to an individual’s home to check on them. Elders in the villages have an especially difficult time because they are so cut off from society, she said.
“I know more about what’s going on than my sisters do,” said Deyanira Vazquez. Her siblings have stayed on the island to take care of their 77-year-old mother. “She’s not going to leave her home. That’s where she lived her whole life,” Deyanira Vazquez said.
“If they leave their land, if their home is destroyed, what is to keep people from coming and saying ‘That’s my property?’” said Cacares Ranno, who owns Superkicks in Middletown, which teaches young girls to play soccer.
“They stay there. They don’t want to lose the only thing they have. This is what they know. This is what they are,” she said.
Deyanira Vazquez said canned goods will be added once the items get to Puerto Rico by cargo ship.
“The last challenge we had was how to deliver them,” Triay said. “We were going to take it right into New York but then Cacares Ranno said, ‘My cousin is going.’ He already had a fundraiser going,” she said.
They ran into a roadblock when they weighed the backpacks, which didn’t even contain the canned goods yet. Each weighed about 25 pounds and would be extremely expensive to ship — $5,000 to be exact.
That’s when Colon contacted a meat shipping company in Massachusetts that offered to foot the bill. Colon even got Jet Blue airlines to give him complimentary airfare so he can go to Puerto Rico first to receive the donations when they arrive.
Kennedy is impressed by the community’s efforts.
“I think they take pride in it and it’s good to see people come together because a lot of these people have family down there and they realize they’re really in tough shape, especially the ones that live outside the cities as you go toward the inland.
“They’re really cut off because it’s all blocked, the bridges are out, no electricity, God knows what they’re eating because without electricity you can’t run a freezer. It’s a tough situation,” Kennedy said.
“It’s a nightmare. It’s an island — it’s only got airports and ports. It’s not like Houston, where you can fly out of and send tractor trailers. You can’t do that to Puerto Rico,” he said.
Items can still be donated to the relief effort. Mayor Dan Drew, who heard about the effort through Facebook posts, Ranno said, is collecting nonperishables and other necessities in his office at City Hall, 245 deKoven Drive, through Nov. 1. Ranno said those items will be sent to Puerto Rico Nov. 10.