Picking up pieces in the wake of Maria’s devastation
Bianca Padró Ocasio is a breaking news reporter at the Orlando Sentinel who grew up in Puerto Rico.
People at the airport in Puerto Rico — not long ago the scene of stranded and desperate travelers — now gather for heartbreaking sendoffs in front of the TSA checkpoint. It’s bittersweet. The only sweet part is knowing your family will be safe, your elders will get the medical attention they need, children can keep going to school, college semesters won’t be deferred.
That is, for those who can and want to make the “brinquito,” or the tiny jump across the ocean. It’s the promise of normalcy.
But on the island, where I grew up, remains the familiar bitter taste of struggle.
Puerto Ricans know struggle — they take pride in it — but this struggle feels out of their own hands.
Everywhere photojournalist Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda and I went last week, we saw signs of the painful process of gathering the pieces of a life before Hurricane Maria.
On Tuesday, when President Donald Trump came to assess the damage on the U.S. territory, we headed to Maunabo and Yabucoa, in the southeast part of the island. The satellite GPS rerouted us a few times, because some roads led to private properties, and others were blocked off as municipal workers picked up debris.
We arrived at the home of Ada Rivera in Barrio Talante, whose son Miguel Carmona lives in Orlando. Carmona hadn’t heard from her or his own son in Maunabo, so we went to make sure they were fine.
Maunabo is right next to Yabucoa, where the storm first made landfall. Neighbors have been able to clear up their streets, but the area is pitch black and most neighbors are still without water. Cellphone towers are still down.
Rivera, who doesn’t have water or power, offered us a cup of coffee.
“I have plenty of water saved up, so don’t be shy if you need to use the bathroom,” she said.
We, of course, refused, wanting to let them save their resources.
Rivera said that back in Orlando, we knew more about what was happening on Sept. 20 when the hurricane howled through the island than those who were living it.
And when Central Florida’s 320,000 Puerto Ricans were yearning for word from the island, family and friends here were just as desperate to let them know they were OK.
On Wednesday, driving into Loíza from the northeast side of the island, Ricardo and I saw people stopping on the side of a bridge, where the iconic Rio Grande de Loíza flowed below just a couple of miles from the beach.
A sewer line under a road that runs along the river had burst, releasing wastewater over the road and into the river.
The stench was unbearable. A man who said he worked in federal security called authorities to respond to it. But it struck me that the lack of communication, of telling the world of what is happening, remains one of the toughest challenges. It still took us two hours to get back into San Juan, at which point I was able to tweet images and get the news of the incident out into the world.
Through all of our reporting, we never called ahead, set up a meeting, asked what time was convenient. We showed up unannounced and in one case, we even had a picture: Do you know this
woman? Where does she live?
Everyone invited us in. Like in most tragedies, everyone felt the need to report on their own story: where they were when the hurricane rolled through, who they haven’t heard from and what the government isn’t doing.
When we went to a cooperative building in Trujillo Alto, south of San Juan, residents found a dozen ways to tell us what Maria’s winds sounded like on the day of the hurricane: “...like a chainsaw,” “… like a hand slapping for hours against the glass doors,” “… like a car alarm that wouldn’t go off.”
We returned to the metro area at the end of every day to send in our work. Here, another reality emerged. The damage was obvious, but at least there was power and a cell signal and that made a huge difference.
I left the Convention Center in San Juan close to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, the night the governor extended curfew to midnight.
I walked to the nearby Sheraton hotel — where some press members, FEMA, electric, military and essential government workers are staying. Some smoked cigars, sipped on whiskey and finished steak dinners at the hotel's restaurant.
Ricardo and I had to pass
through three checkpoints every day to access the press area at the Convention Center. The heavily armed military presence isn’t normal. But everyone seemed to act as if it was.
I ran into a friend, another reporter. “Even if everything is upside down, at least if people see the metro area is coming back to life, there is hope that help for everyone else will arrive soon,” she said.
On my last night, I went into Río Piedras to see a friend I promised I’d meet before leaving. The bar El Boricua — El Bori, for short — and the streets around it were so packed it was hard to move through the crowd. This is how it usually looks on a Thursday night.
Bargoers talked politics: “Where are the blue tarps! Why do they keep arresting people who violate curfew! I haven’t showered in a few days!”
The beer was cold and live salsa played for hours. I ran into more friends who said it was the first time they had left their homes in two weeks.
The next day, I was back in Orlando, reassured that my family and friends will find ways to cope. There are so many more stories to tell.
For me, it’s definitely more bitter.