City man reports on hurricane documentary

HARTFORD — One year after the historic devastation of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, Connecticut Public Television will air “The Island Next Door,” a new documentary chronicling Connecticut Public Radio’s year-long, multiplatform reporting initiative that tells the stories of real people touched by the storm, both on and off the island.

Directed by Connecticut Public Radio Visual Reporter Ryan Caron King with reporting by Middletown resident and News Director Jeff Cohen, “The Island Next Door” tells the stories of disaster and recovery as Puerto Ricans on the island rebuild from the last storm and prepare for the next, according to a press release.

“Each story is unique, many are deeply personal, and all of them are snapshots in time of a place and its people,” Cohen said in a prepared statement. “This documentary is our effort to highlight the storm’s effects on the people it touched — both on the island and in Connecticut.”

Recently, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced the island’s official death toll from Hurricane Maria at 2,975, and described the effects of the hurricane as “unprecedented devastation,” the release said.

Connecticut had hundreds of thousands of residents with Puerto Rico roots before the hurricane. Thousands more came after Maria hit.

“For us to treat the storm and its aftermath as anything other than a local story would be to fail in our work and our public service mission,” Cohen said in the statement.

“We can’t tell the whole story of Maria in one documentary,” Caron King said in the release. “It’s big, and it’s complicated. It’s evolving. But we can tell the stories of our neighbors — the Connecticut residents with Puerto Rican roots who were the first responders, the evacuees who came to make a new life in Connecticut after Maria, the families that took them in, the people who went back to rebuild. Their stories are important, and we’re grateful for the chance to tell them.”

“The Island Next Door” will premiere on CPTV Sept. 20 at 8 p.m. For information, visit theislandnextdoor.wnpr.org.

Ryan Caron King for Connecticut Public Radio Danny Torres has worked for the fire department in Meriden for decades and has family across Puerto Rico. He was part of team of Connecticut veterans and volunteers — self-described as the Puerto Rican “water dogs” — pumping water from a river in Salinas, Puerto Rico, through a mobile filtration and purification system for residents there to drink after the hurricane.