March 20 marked six months to the day that Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico. Amid conflicting reports about the extent of the damage, its impact and the death toll resulting from the hurricane itself, it is clear that the island has been forever changed.
After an initial rescue and recovery period, FEMA began to scale back its food and water aid in February along with its housing vouchers for Puerto Ricans displaced by the storm. Problems persist with the electrical grid and controversy and claims of corruption among contractors plagues the Puerto Rican Power Authority. As a result, some 8 to 10 percent of the island remains without power. Many more experience frequent blackouts. Some schools have reopened and but don’t have power for extended periods of time (or at all) and so they close mid-day—leaving students short of a full day’s worth of learning. Puerto Ricans are angry and frustrated that the federal government has not done enough to help. So on Tuesday, they took to the streets of Washington, D.C. to make their frustrations known.
As NBC News reports:
Around 250 people gathered in front of the FEMA headquarters in D.C., under a bitterly cold and icy rain, carrying blue tarps like those used by FEMA. “These tarps still say SOS,” said Julio Lopez Varona, a senior adviser on Puerto Rico at the Center for Popular Democracy, an economic and social justice advocacy group.
“People are living through this in FEMA hotels, unclear whether they are being kicked out. They are desperate,” said Ana María Archila, the organization's co-executive director. “They are here because they want to call attention to this story."
After gathering in front of FEMA, protesters went to Congress to demand justice for the island. Here’s a photo from Twitter which shows several activists getting arrested for demanding that the U.S. government do its job and commit resources to the island for a full recovery.
It is fitting that one of the goals of this event is to continue to call attention to this story and keep it in the press. The media has been incredibly negligent in reporting what’s happening on the island and the inaction of the Trump administration—choosing instead to report every time the president rattles off an inane tweet trying to distract us from real news. Yet, there is so much work that remains unfinished and it is being ignored by the very institutions that have the power to fix things.
Last week, Daily Kos spoke by phone to Marilyn Luciano, a community leader in the Río Abajo neighborhood of Utuado, Puerto Rico. Luciano’s community was stranded for weeks when the only bridge connecting the neighborhood to the rest of the island was wiped out in the hurricane. Community members made due by fastening a shopping cart to a zip line so that they could receive supplies (water, food, diapers) that were passed to them from across the river.
Though the new bridge was inaugurated the day before, as of March 14, Río Abajo remains without power and has no idea when it might return. Luciano had this to say about the situation: “55 families where I live still don’t have light. The government claims it is trying to do its best but we still don’t have a firm answer about when we will get it. We were told that it might be before/around April 7th.”
Though many Puerto Ricans remain extremely disappointed at the lack of progress on the island and how the government is treating those evacuees who have relocated to different states on the U.S. mainland, FEMA officials seem to think they’ve done an okay job. As mentioned in the NBC News story, according to Justo Hernandez, deputy federal coordinating officer for FEMA, progress is slow-going but continuing.
Hernandez said Puerto Rico's progress can’t be marked only by water and power generation. He said more than half of the debris from the storm has been removed, including appliances, furniture and other refuse washed from homes. Small business loans and unemployment relief, as well as funds for rebuilding and repairing homes, have also been awarded.
FEMA still is distributing 50,000 meals and 50,000 liters a day to parts of the island, so the response is ongoing, Hernandez said. But he said a lot of effort is also going into building Puerto Rico’s “resiliency,” making sure it can withstand the next hurricane.
There are lots of folks who would agree with Hernandez about one thing: Puerto Ricans themselves are indeed resilient and are working their hardest to help one another out and return the island that is nicknamed isla del encanto (island of enchantment) into the pre-hurricane place that they cherished so much. Hopefully, it will return to some sense of normalcy as quickly as possible. The next hurricane season is just around the corner and begins in June.