Experiencing Hurricane María in Puerto Rico

Living in Puerto Rico, hurricane isn’t a strange word or phenomenon. Every year we are on edge during hurricane season, knowing that at any moment one of these natural disasters could cross our 100 x 35 island. For the past 20 years or so, we have been blessed with the fact that a big storm hasn’t affected us greatly like George, San Felipe or Hugo did. On September 20^th 2017 that changed.

I woke up at 5 am and there was a type of stillness in the air. It chilled me to the bone. You could hear the beginning caresses of the winds. The swaying of the palm trees could be seen from the windows. It was still pretty dark out. We had been without power since the night before, and that same morning our phones flashed an unfamiliar no service back at us. I couldn’t have begun to imagine that this was just the beginning, and I have to admit that me and my family were some of the lucky ones.

At 7 am, after having gone back to bed, I was woken up by the strong sound of a palm tree falling at my neighbor’s house. I swear I could hear how it had been torn from the soil and how it hit the ground with force. When we walked to our balcony to assess the damage, we could also notice that most of the trees had lost branches and leafs. The winds weren’t even that strong yet in the West of the Island, which is where I spent the events of Hurricane Maria at my parent’s home.

By 8 am, the winds had begun picking up. By 9 am, we had no water anymore. At 10 am, the passageway next to my house where we keep some crops had flooded.

If we weren’t already uncommunicated without power and telecommunications, we experienced how one by one all radio stations begun to come off air at around 11 am. We were lucky if we found at least one to listen to, and still nobody knew anything of what was going on. We had no clue where the eye was, what damage had it already caused in other islands or coasts or municipalities.

By midday, the sounds of the wind were extremely loud. Roofs had been lost. The smell of sea salt lingered in the air. You could hear doors rattling. The metal of the windows and some roofs was whining. If you touched the walls, you could even feel them rumbling. The trees swayed. Objects flew. Our bedrooms began to leak water from the closed windows. Thirty minutes later, we had to seal the front door because our street had begun to flood. In just 15 minutes, water quickly reached our balcony. All I could think about was how much the air smelled like the ocean. Five minutes later, visibility was low. To the point that we could not see the houses across the street.

By 1 pm, we were reinforcing the back door because we could swear that the door would implode on us succumbing to the strength of the winds. At 1:23 pm, we found a working radio station, but they had no clue what was happening. We did learn that barely any radio stations were working and that all Puerto Rican TV channels had gone off air.

At 1:30 pm a calmness surrounded us. The winds completely stopped. So did the rain. We walked outside and realized that we had reached the eye of the hurricane. Our neighbors came outside as well. They quickly got to work. Cleaning the drainage, hiding anything that could be a projectile. The eye lasted two hours and forty-eight minutes.

From 3:30 to 4 pm the winds and rain had slowly begun again. We had heard that the first half of the hurricane was always the worse. That it always carried the strongest winds and the strongest rains. That wasn’t the case. The winds change direction during the second half. They were also much stronger. I had not been able to comprehend the fact that things could actually be worse the second time around. There was less rain, but the winds had come back with a vengeful strength. The howling was so strong, at times I felt like screaming for it to stop. The house was rumbling as well, groaning at the abuse it was receiving.

The rain didn’t come again until 6:15 pm, and since the winds were now directly hitting the front of the house, most of the rain got in through the windows. We were forced to close all of the windows now. The water that splashed onto our faces was salty. The temperature had dropped, and it felt much colder inside the house.

By 7 pm, the night had surrounded us in darkness. We could no longer see the damage being caused by the hurricane. We could only hear things falling, the rustling of the wind and the rain as it hit against the windows and the street. If we peaked outside the windows, we could only see a white wall of rain just beyond our balcony. And by 8 pm, our street had begun to flood once again. Not as bad as the first time.

The strangest thing happened by 9:15 pm when suddenly we found a working radio station from Venezuela and we found one speaking in English. We heard this same story from others in the following days.

The winds didn’t stop until Thursday at around 5 am. That crisp Thursday morning we still had rain but no sustained winds. Sometimes we would get gusts reminding us that this system was still in our region, slowly crawling away in the sea. We learned that a curfew was established. Most of the day was spent doing clean up.

Without communications, we resorted to go out into the streets to be able to know if some of our family members were okay. We learn little by little that they are, but we can’t communicate that to all of our family members around the island, our friends or those who live outside of Puerto Rico. During our drive we see the extend of the damage that was caused by the hurricane. I can’t recognize my Island. You can see the despair and the desperation on the people’s faces as they clean up or take pictures of the damages that were caused to their properties.

On Friday, long lines begin in any establishment that opens. You have to do a line to get cash from the bank. You have to stand in line to get any type of food from fast foods, restaurants, bakeries, supermarkets, etc. Worse were the long lines that people were making to be able to find gas. People would stand in line for over ten hours to find $10 or $20 of gas. Most of the time, they were in line for closed gasoline stations unsure if they would even open.

I didn’t know that this nightmare could actually crawl on and on for days. It wasn’t until Saturday that radio stations and TV channels began to come back. We had no power or water, but with a generator and water reserves we have been getting by. It has been three weeks and I still can’t make sense of everything that has happened and continued to happen. Our telecommunications are still limited, but we have been able to speak with our friends and family. Gas and food isn’t being rationed as much anymore. You can find almost everything in stores (water is still very hard to find) and you can get a full tank of gas.

What Maria left in me was a will to continue forward for myself, and my family, but it also left a lot of fear. I fear that we may get sick. I fear that a plague may start. I fear that the death tolls will continue to go up. I fear that I may lose my job. I fear that my little Island will not be able to make it through this. Yet, I know we are strong and we have been able to get past this before, and we will once again.

Please, if you can and care, donate and raise awareness that we cannot do this alone. We need help. Many communities need access to clean water and a meal. There are families that have lost everything.

Love, Nashi