A Puerto Rico resident documents her struggles in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria
I kept a diary over the past few days. Writing just helped keep me sane. The first entry was written in Rincon, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 21, the day after Hurricane Maria hit here. Please don’t look at this report as representative of what others went through. We are some of the lucky ones, and others have much more heartbreaking news to report. Those who were in a hospital when the storm hit, anywhere on the southeast coast, or in the central mountains or along the water went through unspeakable horrors that make our experience seem like a cakewalk in comparison. We all have a story to tell of how we weathered this horrible storm, and this is just mine.
Thursday, s e p T . 2 1 These past few days have felt like a nightmare. Hurricane Maria is finally over, and we are grateful to be alive. I’ve never experienced a storm of this magnitude before, and there were moments on Wednesday when I did feel truly afraid. At 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Maria began to pound Puerto Rico. The wind was raging loudly, the shutters were rattling, and the doors were banging against their hinges. My husband Markus and I didn’t feel secure in our bedroom, so we retreated to our windowless bathroom “bunker” in the center of the house with our hurricane supplies and our cats, Simon and Fiona. Inside, it was nice and quiet—at first. We put sofa cushions on the floor and in the bathtub. We settled in and we actually fell asleep because at that moment we did feel safe. We woke up at 11 a.m. to a very different scene. The wind was so strong and loud that it sounded like a train plowing through the hallway. I looked down and saw water gushing into the bathroom from under the door, quickly soaking through the sofa cushions, pillows and supplies. We threw towels down trying to slow the flood as it continued to fill the bathroom floor. I panicked at the realization that our home was actually flooding. The storm grew louder and louder. We heard trees crashing, broken glass and everything slamming into our house. Each time something large hit the window, I winced instinctively. I was
by C.D. Faust
by C. Faust
covered in a cold sweat and struggling not to hyperventilate with the continuous sound of destruction all around. Maria raged on, and in the afternoon, water began to trickle from the ceiling vent. It started out slow, so we caught the water in plastic cups. With each gust of wind, the leak grew worse. Eventually, water was spraying from the ceiling in bursts that actually hurt when they hit my face. We were both drenched, so Markus ripped the shower curtain off the rod and we covered ourselves with it in an attempt to stay dry. We held each other under the hot, sticky plastic curtain, curled up on a soaked sofa cushion. Simon squeezed in between us while Fiona hid under the cabinet to get away from the chaos. I worried about the chickens in the downstairs bathroom. If the shutters ripped off the windows, they would never survive this storm. This thought kept tormenting me. Then the bathroom door started to rattle violently followed by a massive crashing sound that shook the whole house. That was when I began to feel real terror. Markus was prepared for this. Before the hurricane, he had dragged in wooden boards, a hammer and framing nails in case we needed to keep the door from flying off the hinges. It seemed pretty excessive at the time, but now I was grateful that we had this. He jumped up and nailed a crossbeam over the door—reminiscent of those zombie apocalypse films. This curbed the rattling and calmed me down—for about five minutes. In my mind, we were now in the Titanic, and our ship was sinking fast. I was starting to worry that the roof could actually be ripped off the house, but Markus assured me not to worry and that we would see the other side of the storm. He started repeating the same calming sentences: “We’ll get through this. This is a cement house. We will be fine.” In the evening, the wind began to finally slow down a little, and that was such a relief. We even heard some coqui frogs.
It feels like The Wizard of Oz but in reverse. We went from Oz in Technicolor to black-and-white Kansas wrecked by the tornado.
Photo/C. Faust
after the storm
after the hurricane hit, fresh water, food, gas for vehicles and cell phone service all became scarce—and for many in Puerto Rico, they still are.
Something out there was alive, somehow. Finally, we felt like we could get some sleep. I woke up to more raging and the bathtub was shaking at 2 a.m. Somehow, Markus was sleeping, and despite my terror, I let him rest. It sounded like a tornado, and water was pouring in angry gusts from the ceiling again. I was just praying for it to all be over at this point. I was exhausted. Naturally, we had no service on our phones. We had no idea where the hurricane was going, no window through which to see what was going on. For all I knew, the hurricane might be turning back toward us to finish the job. Eventually, numb to the chaos that raged around me, I fell back to sleep and woke at 8:30 a.m. to total calm. Markus awoke, and we nodded at each other in relief at the silence. He then pried the nails out of the door frame, removing the boards from the bathroom doors. It felt like opening a coffin from the inside. We had been locked up in this tiny space for over 24 hours at that point. We stepped out and found water everywhere. Both floors of our home had flooded. With the windows nailed shut, the house was eerily dark. Daylight that struggled through the tight cracks was the only indication that the night had already passed. We tried the front door, but it would not open. Markus threw his body against it to dislodge it. We sloshed through the inches of rain and mud to the back door, but the lock would not turn, no matter how much force we used. Markus found the sledge hammer and considered. He did not want to break the door, as in the days ahead, it seemed crucial to be able to lock the house. We tried the front door again, since it at least unlocked, and shoved our bodies against it with all of our might until it finally came open with a cracking groan. Once we opened the door, we were confronted with the sheer devastation this storm caused. A massive jobo tree had fallen across our driveway, smashing the fence and retaining wall and blocking our access to the street. It took the power line with it as well. All about us were broken trees strewn about like matches spilled from their box. We looked out at the jungle and found it reduced to sticks. Every leaf was blown from every beautiful tree. It was a surreal, heartbreaking sight. At that moment, our neighbors came out of their home and cheered “You’re alive! We are all alive! Thank God! We are all “afTer The sTOrm” so blessed!” That put continued on page 12
11.16.17
|
RN&R
|
11
