A Tragedy Named Maria

By Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle

During my more than half century in Puerto Rico, I have seen countless storms born off Africa whirl across the Atlantic and reach hurricane speed somewhere in the Caribbean. It is, in a sense, a rite of autumn.

I think of the Caribbean as their bowling alley: storms appear as balls on the meteorologists’ maps. The balls roll over (and wreck) hapless islands on their way north — some toward Florida and the eastern coast of the mainland United States; others veer west and head for the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. Fortunately, most miss Puerto Rico.

I don’t remember the names of the little ones that did — an alphabet soup of wind and rain that interrupted or damaged lives. I do remember some of the big ones that missed us but wreaked havoc elsewhere as if they were the evil characters in a horror movie: Andrew, Charley, Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Ike, Harvey….

I remember telling my children as we bunkered down for one of the “little” storms: “An occasional hurricane is the price we pay for living in paradise.” I explained to them that a hurricane is a natural phenomenon that serves to clear the canopy from the forests and allows new vegetation to emerge. Homes, however, built in their path are at their mercy.

Big hurricanes have hit Puerto Rico directly: Among the most memorable for me were Hugo in 1989, Hortense in 1996, and Georges in 1998. Our hilltop home near the rain forest was strengthened after each storm and by the time Irma hit, on Sept. 6, 2017, I felt confident that it could survive a Category 4 or even a 5. The house was built of reinforced concrete, the security windows and doors were rated to resist 200 mph winds.

For Irma, I prepared my generator with enough gasoline for two weeks of power. I filled our 500-gallon stainless steel cistern and I stockpiled food and bottled water.

Category 5 storm Irma grazed the corner of Puerto Rico where we live, downing power lines affecting us and over a million homes. Compared to the islands and other points in its path before and after its visit — including Florida, damage here was not severe. Power was restored to us within a week and most of the island’s recovery efforts were directed to the devastated Leeward Islands.

By September 10, the main island of Puerto Rico had recovered enough to serve as a refuge for people stranded on other islands, including 1,200 tourists from Saint Martin and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Airlifts brought more than 50 patients to hospitals here.

Our house suffered no damage. Our grounds were a mess, of course. Tree limbs made our driveway impassable. Our neighbors helped clear it and within days we were near normal: we were cooking hot meals for our neighbors and celebrating the recovery.

Then, barely two weeks later, the monster Maria roared toward us. It was a bowling ball larger and heavier and more devastating than anything that had come out of the sky in nearly a century. It made a direct strike on Puerto Rico; the center of the storm was wider than the entire island. It ripped through the breadth and length of it scattering pins and pieces, tumbling towers and trees. It moved slowly making sure not a leaf was left in place. It sand-blasted the few staggering stalks of trees until the entire island looked as if carpet bombing had incinerated it.

Everything that was not firmly anchored to the earth was swept away. Houses made of wood were splintered or their roofs blown away. Utility poles and communications towers snapped and crashed by the hundreds. Even “hurricane-proof” houses like ours were battered: loose shutters, basement doors, satellite dishes, wooden decks, solar water heaters and panels became airborne.

Maria started venting at midnight, was furious by 1:30 a.m. We moved from the storm side of the house when the winds started ballooning the French doors in our bedroom. The doors held, but water jets blasted through beneath them. We could hear trees being ripped from the ground, the crash of items zooming into the night, the terrible din of our single wooden deck — with my wife’s orchid house — as it was torn from its concrete pillars and tossed onto the entrance of our house. (See photo with this story.)

The storm sounded like a steamroller, its engine screeching and whistling as it raced recklessly around the house. Then for hours it seemed like a jet plane was attempting to land on our roof. After a terrifying night, the jet took off and the steamroller creaked down the mountain and went on to flatten the remainder of the island.

A few naked and bent trees were left standing on our mountain but most lay like a giant’s game of pickup sticks. Among them were scattered and battered satellite dishes, tin and wooden panels torn from neighbors’ roofs and all manner of domestic flotsam and jetsam. The trunks and branches of palms, massive mahogany trees, banana plants and shredded jungle covered our driveways and much of our land. It would be months before we will be able to have them cut and cleared. But, we are safe and, we reason, if we live long enough, new trees will grow.

The next week was like a camping trip in hell. No running water, no telephone, no mobile signal, no news, no internet, no power — except when we ran our generator — no way to reach our family or friends. One single radio station could be heard and it broadcast only desperate calls from people wanting to know if their loved ones were alive and safe. We joined one neighbor in clearing the debris from our doorway and cut a path to their property. Our car was safe in another neighbor’s garage.

We were among the lucky ones, the privileged ones, the ones who prepared for the worst and were as ready as possible when the worst came. Some 3 million others are not as fortunate.

More than a month after the storm 80% of the 3.4 million people on the island are still without power; more than half have no running water. They are fated to live as if in a war zone — food, fuel, drinking water and medicine are scarce and infrequently available and then only after waiting in long lines. Traffic lights are inoperative and police and soldiers direct traffic by day and everyone sequesters themselves during the dark of night.

As I was to be the Puerto Rico delegate to a congress in Hyderabad, India, we had a round trip ticket that would allow us to get on one of the first flights off the island a week after the monster Maria struck. If we could not make the connecting flight to India, we decided, we would stay with family on the mainland USA until the island became livable again.

We gave our remaining food, bottled gas, drinking water and gasoline to our neighbors and headed for the airport. We passed queues of cars — I counted more than 100 in line at one of the few open gas stations — and small brigades of neighbors clearing snarls of power lines, poles, branches and trees from the roadway. We saw no federal or local government workers, no police or military, no organized aid of any kind.

The airport looked like a refugee camp. Hundreds of families hoping to leave waited in lines, many with small children and pets in tow. Harried airline employees — some had worked around the clock — did their best with the few computers operating under emergency power. With no air conditioning or fans temperatures reached 100º F. After six sweat-drenched hours in line, we were able to board one of the three flights that departed that day.

Once settled in the states, I watched the news and read messages from friends that began trickling in from the island. None of it was good. Help has been agonizingly slow in coming with politicians squabbling over nonsense while our people suffer.

My wife and I are both in our seventies. I am sight-impaired: I can’t drive. We can live on our own in the best of circumstances but certainly not in the worst. Most predictions placed the restoration of services — especially power — in our rural area in six months — at the soonest. Our hearts remain in Puerto Rico and we yearn to be able to do something. We feel helpless and dismayed.

Oct. 24, 2017–34 days after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico more than 2 million people have no power and 1 million no running water.

January 26, 2018 — more than four months after the storm, still no power in the homes of nearly one million people in Puerto Rico, including mine and my neighbors. Four months displaced to the states and anxious to go home. Recovery agonizingly slow — not enough aid, not enough workers, not enough supplies, not enough tarps for roofless houses, more than enough crime from desperate homeless and jobless people, more than enough suicides, more than enough people having to abandon the island. Paradise lost.

March 8, 2018 — almost six months after the storm. still no power in our area and more than a quarter of a million people without power (according to the government). According to the news reports and messages on social media, the number is probably a half million or more. Rubble still lines the roadways. Blue taurpolins cover roofs in every direction outside the main cities. Half of Caguas, our closest large city, is still in the dark. We have adapted to life in the dark, however, and have been making progress restoring our property. For a running account of how one (admittedly atypical) family is adapting, I invite you to read my Diary in the Dark.

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