Reliving hell and facing a dicey future

The images of the deadly storm came across the TV in her Bronx hotel room last week — blankets of rain, whirlpool winds, shards of wood where homes once stood — and Jenyffer Ortiz could feel the anxiety starting to build as she watched Hurricane Florence tear through the Carolinas.

A year ago, that was her and her family trudging through the flooded streets, sifting through soggy belongings, only it was Puerto Rico in the eye of an end-of-days storm named Maria, and the federal government seemed to have turned its back.

Her ordeal is far from over. Maria’s aftermath forced Ortiz to the mainland and New York to seek medical treatment. But the federal housing vouchers that kept her and her children off the street expired last week, and now Ortiz — mother, grandmother, survivor, diabetic — finds herself homeless again.

“Making the decision to come to this country was very difficult,” Ortiz said as she prepared to leave the Holiday Inn Express near Yankee Stadium that has been home since January. “I left behind my family, my kids, I have grandkids. I left behind a life.”

Ortiz, 46, has two of her children with her, 20-year-old Carlos and 14-year-old Valerie. The storm has also separated Ortiz from her husband, who came with her to New York, but had to return to Puerto Rico. She has no other family in New York.

The mountain hamlet of Orocovis where she lived was among the hardest hit when Maria roared through on Sept. 20, 2017. Ortiz is still haunted by the memory of a bedroom flooded past her knees, and water coming into their home from the toilets and showerheads. “When you looked through the windows, all you saw was houses that were moving,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz said the storm’s aftermath made it hard to maintain her medical routine. She has Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and other medical issues. So, it was on to the mainland and New York, where she traded one hardship for another.

Their next stop is a shelter in the Bronx. “We’re going to start from zero,” Ortiz said.