‘Quick response’: How a Puerto Rican town looked after its own after Hurricane Fiona

Lugging an empty cardboard box, Modesta Irizarry Ortiz rushed to pick up a dozen spaghetti and salad lunches on Wednesday afternoon at a makeshift soup kitchen in the northeastern Puerto Rican town of Loíza.

A group of volunteers chopped lettuce and scooped pasta out of a big, metal pot. Others stacked and packed styrofoam containers on long, plastic white tables, handing over hot meals to children.

Irizarry, dressed in a printed maroon and orange kaftan, was there to grab meals for the elderly in her neighborhood. She was among several Loíza leaders who went to the dining hall to help feed residents after Hurricane Fiona flooded the neighborhoods in the historically Black town.

“The important thing about that quick response is to tell people, ‘Although you lost your house, you lost everything, we are here to help you,’” she said.

The soup kitchen is one of two that opened in Loíza on Monday even as Hurricane Fiona’s furious rains poured over Puerto Rico. The initiative — born from the efforts of a network of community leaders and organizations like feminist public health group Taller Salud — is a way to deal with shortages of food and other immediate needs in a municipality where half the population lives in poverty and where crises have brought hunger.

But the temporary cookhouse also arose from lessons learned during Hurricane María in 2017, an intergenerational love of community — and a lack of faith in the ability of the federal or the island government to help in a crisis.

And it’s the kind of reaction to emergency, community leaders and grassroots groups say, that is rooted in an intimate knowledge that comes from being from and living in Loíza.

“We know where our elderly, our pregnant women, our women with children are,” said Anabela Fuentes Garcia, a Villa Cristiana community leader and Taller Salud staff member. “Where the highest, safest places are and how to protect ourselves from the force of the sea. We know where our strength is.”

Between the river and the sea

Loíza begins and ends in the water. The Rio Grande de Loíza cuts across the eastern municipality, merging with the Atlantic Ocean at its mouth. Several channels fragment its neighborhoods into a watery mosaic.

Hurricane Fiona left the municipality of about 23,400 people without power or drinking water, like the rest of Puerto Rico. The floods cut off several of its communities from the world. In Villa Santos, some neighbors could not leave their homes as late as Tuesday because of flooding that isolated them from the rest of Loíza.

Elsewhere on the island, Fiona dumped as much as 30 inches of rain, hitting the southern region hard. Authorities said Wednesday that about 27% of customers had power, while nearly 59% had their water restored. Over 800 people were still staying in government shelters.

As many as 15 people had to be rescued in the town during Fiona’s passage, said Juan Osorio Santiago, a 29-year-old municipal paramedic. In one case, a group of rescuers fought against the currents for nearly an hour to retrieve a bedridden man in his 90s from the rising, knee-deep waters that burst into his home in Melilla.

By Wednesday, the municipality was pumping water out of neighborhoods, and the storm waters had begun to recede. Many streets were already dry. Along one main road, women filled up white vats with drinking water.

But in some Loíza neighborhoods, like Miñi Miñi — which has a culvert running through it and gets flooded when a nearby reservoir’s gates open — Fiona’s floods continued.

Passing vehicles splashed in the leftover pools of water. A blue home’s front yard was swamped, partly concealing the legs of a small trampoline. The wheels of a white car left under the shade of large trees festered in a hot swamp of debris, oil, and water.

Reina, a 9-year-old yellow mutt, basked on the hot asphalt. Her owner watched the scene from her pink porch.

Derick Aponte, 36, who sat out in the shade with another Miñi Miñi resident holding a coffee cup, said he hadn’t left the barrio since before Fiona because the storm blocked its three entrances.

“We get cut off,” he said, “Up to now I haven’t been able to leave. I am going to try and see if my SUV doesn’t get ruined.”

Miriam Fuentes, 70, said Miñi Miñi neighbors with generators stored meat for residents without power, monitored the water levels for each other, and gathered to share hot chocolate and bread.

“We are a united community,” she said.

Hurricane María’s lessons

At Taller Salud’s Loíza offices, volunteers and staff trickled in and out Wednesday. The day’s tasks were scribbled on a white board in blue and red marker: Buy boxes of water and blue tarps, distribute food, and visit houses in hard-hit areas to figure out what residents needed.

The soup kitchen the organization is running cooks about 420 lunches a day, said Jenifer de Jesus, director of Taller Salud’s community and leadership initiative. This year, the group has held walks around the municipality to speak about hurricane risks and being prepared.

“Since María, we have never stopped the preparation and education efforts, of creating the social and community infrastructures to be ready when the moment comes,” de Jesús said.

In the coming days, the group plans to open two more comedores, makeshift dining rooms. She called the project “lessons learned from María,” which de Jesús said revealed the necessity of having food available during emergencies.

“It’s a very immediate response, it’s there in the community, it doesn’t require bureaucracy or waiting for people from outside to come offer support,” she said.

In the beachfront barrio of Piñones, residents had trimmed the thick mangrove and cleared trees that had fallen during Hurricane Maria to open the flow in the nearby Canal Torrecilla, allowing the community to evade the massive floods that slammed other Loíza barrios during Fiona.

“The richness of our communities is in our organizations and in prevention, because we can’t depend on disasters to get help, but instead in preventing them. That’s fundamental,” said Maricruz Rivera, founder of Corporación Piñones Se Integra, a local community group that spearheaded the cleanup.

She added: “The first responders are the community. And even if we didn’t flood, we are watching out for our neighbors.”

Lots of love — and mistrust

The grassroots, local-level organizing that has played out in Loíza — and across other Puerto Rican communities during the storms, earthquakes, and COVID-19 pandemic that have struck Puerto Rico in the past five years — is also the result of what is widely perceived on the island as an inefficient response to Hurricane María. Many blame the government’s lack of response for the deaths in Maria’s aftermath.

And in Loíza, that devastating storm’s shadow looms even over the municipality’s top levels: Blue tarps still cover not only at least 68 homes, but part of the roof of the mayor’s office.

“Imagine if we waited five years, ten years to respond. That can’t be. We’d lose our lives,” said de Jesús, “Bureaucracy should not be an obstacle to a dignified life.”

Other community leaders also spoke to the Miami Herald of the distrust they have in the governments of Puerto Rico and Washington to effectively respond to any emergencies on the island.

María Villegas, a 43-year-old community leader from hard-hit Melilla, was helping coordinate the soup kitchen’s efforts on Wednesday.

“We tell our grievances to the government, but we do not believe in its promises,” said Villegas, also a Taller Salud staff member.

But perhaps more than any skepticism towards official emergency responses, the leaders said that a love of community guides them.

This week, Irizarry has served over 100 meals in several Loíza barrios. She recalled one woman exclaimed in joy when she saw that her hot dog had the fixings she loved. When Irizarry served the first lunch this week, someone asked if it was for real.

“We are giving it to you with love so you feed yourself,” she responded. “It’s how you offer that ‘Good morning,’ or ‘How are you?’ or how you place your hand on their shoulder, or hug them, or look at them.”

It’s that solidarity and dedication to community, to each other, that community leaders said runs in their blood and which they aspire to pass on to Loíza’s future generations.

Villegas said the municipality’s youth join adults when they mobilize in times of crisis. After Hurricane María, children served meals to residents trapped in flooded communities where food was scarce. In the latest storm, some of the young have monitored flood levels and cleared out blocked sewage.

“I have my hopes pinned on them that they will do it too,” she said.

Miami Herald Staff Writer Omar Rodríguez Ortiz contributed to this report.

This story was originally published September 22, 2022 at 5:00 AM.