Hurricane Maria: One Year Later (Part 1)
The picture above was indeed true, Puerto Rico was destroyed by Hurricane Maria last year. Today marks the one year anniversary of the worse storm to hit Puerto Rico since the 1920's. I was thinking that I didn't want to talk about it or even see media coverage of the storm. However, I realized that I can't hide from the painful memories and this would be a stigma that would remain with me forever until I die. While it's true that as time goes by the pain does get easier to take, it will never truly go away entirely. In layman's terms, I just need to move on from it the best I can which is what I been doing this year. Hurricane Maria changed my life forever. So I decided to write this blog post to go over those painful events, just to get it out of my head. I will break this down into two parts since it covers quite a long period of time. Look for part 2 tomorrow.
September 18th 2017
I'm looking at Maria's path and accepted that we were going to get a direct hit from the monster. Nevertheless, I continued to pray that somehow this would shift away from us. I and my parents were making our final prepartions for what was going to be the biggest hit since hurricane Georges back in 1998, which I wasn't in PR to experience. I was scared as it was because I never been through a hurricane in my life, but little did I know that my first hurricane would be a CAT 4/5 storm.
To add insult to injury I found out that my grandmother died and my family wanted me to go out there for the future burial. My mom told me to find tickets to New York and I would get into an arguement with me because she failed to realize that there were no planes leaving and there were no planes that had room for people trying to get out of Puerto Rico. That is when I realized that I was trapped in Puerto Rico to face the animal that would be Maria. I knew I would be in a fight for my life against a storm whose objective was to destroy everything in sight.
I felt a certain doom knowing that I was unable to get out of the island and there was a chance that I might not live to tell the tale. After all, the weathermen were calling for 180 mph gusts and record storm surge. Considering that I'm only 10 miutes from the Carribean Sea, it was going to be a very bad storm. Little did I know, it was going to be far worse that I could imagine.
September 19th 2017
The day before the storm. I was basically ready for what would be doomsday. All my windows were covered, car was filled up best I could, and we had food for a few days saved up. I continued to watch the latest weather forecasts hoping for a change, but the forecasts held strong. The only thing that changed was the place of land fall. Earlier models had the center coming towards where I live and they went slightly east hitting the southeastern portion of the island.
That didn't really make a difference since Maria was just a huge storm in nature. Hurricane force winds extended 150 miles from the center and Puerto Rico is only about 120 miles wide. Basically all of Puerto Rico was going to feel the wrath of the storm. At this point, I gave up hope and simply braced for what was going to be the worse day of my life. I talked to all my friends on social media and said goodbye not knowing if I would come back. This was a storm capable of killing people and I had to accept that.
That particular night, I simply couldn't sleep waiting for the storm to arrive. I still had power and had the AC on trying to keep myself cool as it was an unusually humid night. At that point I asked myself, what did I do to deserve this? I would never get an answer to that question. At around one in the morning the lights went out and at that point I knew I was going to be in the dark for the long run. I tried laying down and managed to do so for a couple of hours until the winds started to pick up.
September 20th, 2017 - Doomsday
At around 6 in the morning, Maria came into Puerto Rico making landfall. I don't know exactly since I had no power and no phone service. I was taken back all the way to the dark ages and would be under house arrest for the whole day while punishing winds and rain were besieging the island. It sounded like a demon was outside and it was looking to destroy everything in sight. I and my parents held each other tightly and were scared for our lives. At around 7 in the morning though, things went from 0 to 60.
The living room window blew out due to the powerful winds. Those 160 mile per hour winds came into my house and pushed me to the floor. The water began to creep into my house and that is when I realized that I was in the teeth of the storm. We got a piece of plastic to put over the window to prevent the wind and rain from getting into the house. However, despite our efforts to hold the fort, water began to rush from the door and invade the living room. At that point, my living room turned into a mini pool with water up to my ankle.
My mother took care of trying to keep the water from entering the house while me and my father kept the plastic up to cover the window that had blown out. We had to stay there for 10 hours straight without rest or even anything to eat. I began to become weak and tired. I just wanted the storm to end, but I knew that I couldn't give up because my house was on the line. At around four in the afternoon the worse of the winds were beginning to subside somewhat. The skies were still gray and ominious reminding me that this was far from over. I could only wonder how my neighbors were doing, but I would have to wait until the next day to find out.
Finally at five in the afternoon on that fateful day, I got to eat. Luckily for us we had a gas stove, so I enjoyed my one and only meal that day, a bowl of chili. Chili never tasted so good, but I guess anything tastes good after you been through a life changing experience. I went outside to see the damage and saw that our light pole had went down. All of my plants in my garden were gone, a year worth of hard work destroyed in mere hours. It sucked to see the destruction. However, the days after I would see how bad this storm really was and the horror that would follow. While I survived the storm, the long aftermath was only beginning. My life turned from being a bestselling author into one that I only had one mission, survival!
What people don't realize is that the worse part of any storm is not so much the actual storm, but what comes after. I would go through days of loneliness, survival, hunger, lack of sleep, and hopelessness. For a long month, I was in for the worst days of my life and would realize that we cannot take anything for granted. For the first time in my life, I felt defeated and demoralized. For the first time in my life, I had no idea what I was going to do or even what the next day would bring. I had no idea what all my friends were thinking and what would happen if I did survive the aftermath. The picture above only tells part of the tall tale of Hurricane Maria. It pains me to write this blog, but I want to be open on what exactly I went through during the storm and how I survived.
I'm sure I will be suffereing PTSD as I grow up, but I'm happy to have survived such a storm that had the feeling of a demon attacking us. Please leave your comments below and check out the aftermath of Hurricane Maria on tomorrow's blog. May all of you have a great Thursday.
