Nine days after Maria destroyed everything he loved, Luis Alberto Ruiz Irizarry reached the end of his rope. The 78-year-old patriarch, a retired salesman from Caguas, tied a belt around his neck and hanged himself in the backyard of his ruined home.
The Boston Globe reports:
When his daughter found him behind their home, she began to scream. Moments later, two neighbors rushed over and helped pull his limp body down from the roof.
There was no way to call an ambulance, so they carried him to their Jeep. With his wife pumping his chest in the back seat, they sped to the nearby hospital.
No one knows how long he dangled in the air, separated from the earth he loved but unable to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Writing in the Washington Post, his niece describes the slow motion catastrophe that unfolded for her family.
‘Papi tiene muerte cerebral.”
I don’t know when my cousin originally sent the text, but it buzzed through to Connecticut from Puerto Rico’s battered communications towers last Sunday at 6:27 a.m. My uncle was brain dead.
It would take two days for additional relatives to learn the news and acquire the gasoline necessary to make their way to his bedside and say goodbye.
“Hay que desconectarlo.”
The machines keeping him in a state resembling life could not undo the damage that had been done. Soon, they would let him pass.
Three days after he acted, at 5:58 p.m. last Monday, I received the text saying that my uncle had died. According to his son, he passed hours before they were to take him off life support, removing the burden from his children, as he had done in so many other ways before.
Official reports indicate there are only two suicides resulting from Maria. But we know that is no more accurate than the current official reports of only 34 fatalities. I have been told by medical contacts the morgues are full and they are using refrigeration vans to deal with the overflow. After spending days denying initial reports of this situation, Puerto Rico Public Safety Secretary, Héctor Pesquera, utlimately acknowledged they were true in an interview with the Miami Herald.
[T]he federal government would bring 10 morgue-containers to add 360 additional spaces for bodies to the 295 slots available at the Institute of Forensics Sciences. Additionally, there are 41 forensic pathologists from the U.S. Department of Health on their way to Puerto Rico to provide support to the overloaded operation, Pesquera said.
The area to receive and release corpses at the government Medical Center where several of those containers are already located has been militarized with tanks and troops from the United States Mortuary Affairs Unit
In Pesquera’s defense, his reporting is based on what he can confirm at the time. The governor is likewise limited to reporting on certified deaths. Note when Trump turns to him during their photo op and says “What is the death toll, 17?” The governor explicitly says “16, 16 certified deaths.” To which Trump then triumphantly turns to the cameras and proclaims “Only 16 dead!” like he is bragging about a golf score of three under par.
You can see by the look on Rosello’s face, he knows that Trump’s recasting of his statement is giving a false impression. The fact is that just in the reporting to date we can expect the death toll to be more than 600. The 41 forensic pathologists will be handling about 15 cadavers each. That’s a heavy load — and there are still many communities that remain cut off from the outside.
Unconfirmed reports of an ICU failure leading to 100% mortality is shocking, but completely expected. Those tragic deaths were mercifully quick. As we move away from the deluge, the slow grinding pain of the aftermath will wear people down as surely as water wears down stone. There will be more suicides. We have seen this before. In Katrina’s aftermath, CNN reported the suicide rate in New Orleans tripled. Five years out, the toll was still being felt and the suicides continued.
"Five weeks ago, my son had called me up," says Elizabeth Logan. "Usually when he calls he says, 'Hey Mom, how you doing?' But that day I could tell that something was on his mind." Logan is the mother of four boys. She's a small-business owner and a conscientious volunteer at her children's school.
And her son Lonnie, who is 23, is also a conscientious person, the kind of son who calls his mother every day. But Logan says that since Katrina, Lonnie has been having a hard time. Five weeks ago, he called her with more bad news. His best friend had committed suicide.
"He was saying, 'I just saw him, Momma! I just saw him! We were supposed to go out!' " Logan says. She says her son cried for days after he found out, and for good reason: This was not the first suicide by one of Lonnie's good friends — it was the fourth.
The suicide rate in Puerto Rico is higher than average for a Caribbean nation. Not as high as the rate you see in the US, but close to that of the UK. If Katrina is a guide, we can expect it to double or triple. Sadly, these deaths will likely go unnoticed by the world. Official statistics won’t record them. But the pain will linger in the beloved soil where the bodies are buried and in the broken hearts of those left behind.