In Puerto Rico, storm evokes painful memories of Maria, but also reminders of lessons learned

As the first rains and winds from a potential tropical storm hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday afternoon, many on the island were figuring out their last-minute preparations.

Gas stations in San Juan had more customers than usual as people filled up their cars. At one garage, a man stored a yellow gasoline-powered generator, the kind used to power essentials such as fridges, in the back of his van. People crowded supermarkets to buy food and other supplies. The streets of La Milla de Oro, a financial district, were mostly empty. Plaza Las Américas, the Caribbean’s largest mall, was slated to close at 5 p.m.

As of Wednesday, Puerto Rico is no longer in the path of potential Tropical Storm Isaias, although tropical storm conditions are “likely” through the night. The weather system has struggled to morph into a storm due to several factors, ranging from its large size to dry winds and clouds of Sahara dust. But even though the tropical system does not present anywhere near the threat of a monster storm such as Hurricane Maria did in 2017, many Puerto Ricans still felt anxious and nervous. Community leaders reassured people, saying they are more prepared than they were three years ago.

Maria left an indelible mark on how Puerto Ricans think about, experience, and prepare for storms and hurricanes. A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey conducted almost a year after Hurricane Maria found that 9 percent of island residents surveyed reported receiving mental health help due to the storm. In a 2019 study that surveyed around 96,000 Puerto Rican students, 45.7 percent reported hurricane damage to their homes, and 7.2 percent exhibited “clinically significant” symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

On Wednesday, “PTSD” was a trending topic on Twitter in Puerto Rico, with over 20,000 tweets that included the word.

Three community leaders across Puerto Rico spoke to the Miami Herald about how their neighborhoods, communities and towns have prepared for the storm. They spoke about the psychological impact that Hurricane Maria had, but also highlighted the deep resilience and self-reliance their communities had developed after the hurricane. And all three spoke about how, in the wake of perceived government abandonment and neglect, individuals, communities, and groups prepared for natural disasters like this.

‘Anxiety that has not ended’

Mark Martin Bras lives in Vieques, an island municipality of the Puerto Rican archipelago that Hurricane Maria ravaged. The municipality’s electrical grid was still dependent on generators for over a year after the storm. Its hospital, destroyed by the hurricane, is still not operational.

Martin Bras, who has lived in Vieques for over two decades, is a board member of ViequesLove, a nonprofit created after Hurricane Maria when the need for better infrastructure and services in the town became apparent. The organization provides immediate relief and fosters community development. It also works closely with the local and state government.

Martin Bras said that even if people were nervous, the community was more prepared now to weather storms.

“There wasn’t chaos or long lines” at supermarkets, pharmacies, or gas stations, he said.

Martin Bras told the Herald that since Maria, community organizations have pushed efforts to make the island more resilient and ready for disasters. Vieques, which was largely cut off from the world after Maria, now has a robust radio communication network of community groups in place.

“We are connected to the Virgin Islands, to mainland Puerto Rico, to different official agencies ... all connected to a network that allows us to communicate ... which didn’t exist before Maria,” he said. “It’s like night and day.”

He also added that the island now has three “resiliency centers,” which cannot shelter people, but provide water, food, communications, and first aid supplies. Still, Martin Bras said, much needs to be done when it comes to infrastructure and public services such as water, electricity, and medical services.

“The necessary changes have not been made for this island to be functional. Not even talking about emergencies and disasters,” he said. These bigger infrastructure issues cause the community a lot of anxiety, especially during hurricane season.

“Maria created anxiety that has not ended,” said Martin Bras. “It would be much easier to fix that anxiety if we knew we were going to be as taken care of as well as other municipalities on the island,” he added, alluding to Vieques’ geographic isolation and limited resources compared to other Puerto Rican towns.

‘We have learned with the passage of time’

Jessica Rotger Muller, a 44-year-old mother of seven, is a community leader in Barrio Amelia in a municipality on the northern coast of the island, Cataño. She described her community as tightly knit, a place that when the need arises, “everyone helps each other.”

Like Martin Bras, Rotger Muller said that she thought her community was “more aware” and better prepared for potential storm Isaias as well as the 2020 hurricane season.

“I think we have more knowledge about how these [storms] can affect us and how we can respond,” she said. She also noted that a lot of people were preparing for the storm at the San Juan-area Walmart and Sam’s Club, where she went on Wednesday to purchase items at the last minute.

“A storm is coming tomorrow, and tomorrow you can come by the neighborhood and you will notice that the areas are flooded because they are in flood zones. However, the sewers are clean, there are no people outside, and there is no garbage outside the houses,” Rotger Muller said. “You can see that we have learned with the passage of time.”

Rotger Muller said that Hurricane Maria had greatly affected her neighborhood and her family. She suffered damage to her home, which she had moved into two weeks before, right before Hurricane Irma grazed Puerto Rico. She lost her stove, her fridge, the furniture of one of her rooms, and a fence in her yard. Rotger Muller was grateful there wasn’t more damage.

Her family is close, so they didn’t find it difficult to pass the time playing games or sitting outside their door laughing and making jokes. Still, according to Rotger Muller, her family was the last in Barrio Amelia to be plugged back into the electrical grid. It was difficult for her youngest son to see their neighbors have electricity while they spent more days in darkness.

“I don’t care how insignificant an atmospheric event might be, we were marked by Maria,” she said. “And during hurricane season, people still talk about their experiences” with the hurricane.

‘We know who our neighbors are’

In Loíza, a northeastern coastal town that is home to one of Puerto Rico’s largest Black communities, Maricruz Rivera Clemente could hear the strong gusts of winds and rain Wednesday against the windows and doors of her home.

Rivera Clemente is a community leader of Piñones, a beachfront barrio of Loíza. She is also the founder of Corporación Piñones Se Integra, COPI, a local community group that promotes Puerto Rico’s Black heritage and is dedicated to preserving the municipality’s nature and ecosystems.

Since June, COPI has been cleaning the Torrecilla Canal, which connects the Piñones Lagoon and the Torrecilla Lagoon. Hurricane Maria filled the Torrecilla Canal to the brim with fallen mangroves, broken tree limbs, and other debris. The six-person strong brigade has cleaned around 200 meters of the canal. They have been cutting fallen trees in the canal as well as trimming trees on its shores to ensure that the water flows. Cleaning the canal is essential because when it gets clogged, the waters can overflow and inundate Piñones.

Like the Vieques and Cataño community leaders, Rivera Clemente emphasized the self-reliance and strong survival skills of her neighborhood and town. Hurricane Maria was the best illustration, she said, that the local and federal government cannot respond to the needs of its citizens in times of disaster.

“Because of that absence of resources and commitment on behalf of the government, in Piñones we have always done things without the government,” she said. “What resources we do have, we fought for, but we don’t stop. We search for resources, we invent them, we make them.”

This self-management was not unique to Loíza and Piñones, Rivera Clemente said. Communities across Puerto Rico had to figure out how to move forward on their own. She said that Hurricane Maria’s legacy is still felt today.

“Some people were left with a great emptiness. Hurricane Maria affected us not only physically, but emotionally,” she said.

The community leader added that Piñones’ location, in the middle of a mangrove forest, protected the neighborhood from flooding and wind, and made people feel more secure.

But more than anything, she said, people in the community know they can rely on each other. Rivera Clemente said that she has been regularly in touch with other community leaders across Loíza to see how prepared their communities were for the coming storm and to check in on how they were feeling.

“We identify people who are in need and distribute help. ... We know who our neighbors are,” she said. “We are able to get out of difficult situations and [we are] triumphant because those social dynamics are powerful. Really powerful.”

This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 8:27 PM.