Hurricane Maria: One Year Later (Part 2)
The picture above is what many of the roads in Puerto Rico looked like. While this is not exactly close to where I live, I went through many roads that looked like this or worse after Hurricane Maria hit. Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Hurricane Maria making landfall. Today marks the one year anniversary of the aftermath of the storm and that is when the real hell began. Warning: The content here might be distrubing to read and you might cry.
September 21st, 2017
The night before was the first full night that I slept without light or air conditioning. Little did I know that it would be one of many days that I would have to go through without the luxury of light. Soon it would become my everyday reality for at least a month. Nevertheless I got up optimstic and hoping for the best. I had survived the storm, so maybe things would recover quickly and considering that my neighborhood survived things would pickup soon. This was the day that I just took in stride, ate some food, relaxed, and enjoyed the cold rain that was coming down. I was smart enough to save the rainwater in a barrel just in case the water was shut off. According to the radio, all of Puerto Rico was in the dark and more than 50% had no water. So I counted my blessings that at least I was able to still take a shower and I had food still left.
I actually kind of enjoyed the first day after Maria. With a good book in my hand and rain coming down all day, it wasn't all bad. Of course, I didn't leave the house and only went as far as my neighbors house to see how they were. So I wasn't aware of all the destruction that had actually taken place. Nevertheless, I continued to think positively and kept thinking about my killer book promo idea that I had in mind with two new releases that were coming soon. Call me naive or whatever, but I really thought I would be able to get back on my feet within a few weeks. I had no idea that my 'prediction' was going to be totally wrong with a capital w. It would rain for a couple of more days and then it stopped raining...
September 24th and 25th, 2017
It stopped raining... In one sense I was happy to see the sun again, but I knew the temperature was ready to shoot up and things were about to get real. I continued to have fun with my neighbors during the day, but I began to notice that when the sun went down it would ger lonely very quickly. I have to add that we were on curfew at 6 in the afternoon, which meant we had to go out and get food before six and spend the night unable to go for a walk. Depression started to kick in for me when nightfall came in as I knew there was no light or even phone service to talk to anybody. While my parents went to bed, I would sit in the living room just thinking what would be my future and if I would ever be normal again. To be honest, this was the day I began to realize that it wasn't going to be such a quick recovery.
The next day, my neighbor needed to go to the hardware store and needed me to take him since he was too old to drive anymore. So I instanty said yes as I wanted to be a good person and wanted to leave the house. When I passed by the town center to get to the hardware store, I saw the path was blocked by officers. Naturally I went around the road block and when I got back to the town center I saw the reason why. A huge 100 year old tree had gone down blocking the road. It only got worse... All of the trees in the town center went down. The beauty of the town that was once there was gone in the matter of hours. Light and telephone poles were also down. That is when I realized that I was royally screwed and I can kiss my book promos goodbye. My mission became simple, just survive until things turned normal again.
When we got to the hardware store, we saw the place was flooded. Although they were in operation, they took only cash and had to take care of us from outside since going in was too dangerous for the customers to enter the store. Going back home that day, I would see many homes that did not survive and realized that I was just plain lucky to not lose anything. Things became clear that Maria did her job in causing massive destruction.
September 28th and 29th, 2017
It became a normality for me to walk to the supermarket just to get food for the day. I can see the poor people needing money to buy food as ATM's were out of order. While we had money to buy food, but cash reserves were getting low. After nightfall came down, my depression began to get worse to the point where I began to feel hopeless and tires. I haven't gotten a good night sleep for close to two weeks at that point. I was hearing that looting was getting worse and I needed to watch my back. I would stay up with a baseball bat just in case I needed to defend myself from a looter. I never imagined I would have to take these drastic steps, but this was my new reality and I had to live with it.
On September 29th, 2017 me and my aunt along with the rest of my family decided to head north where thing were 'slightly' better. We attempted to get cash out of the bank and get phone signal to talk to our loved ones. When we got up to Caguas which is close to San Juan, I was able to talk to one of my friends, Hector. I was so happy to talk to him and at the least I was able to tell him I was ok. However, before I could talk to anyone else, the signal weakened again so I was unable to talk to anyone else. Then things went downhill from there, the bank was closed as we got close to the machine to take out money because they had ran out of diesel to power the ATM machines. At that point, we hoped they could restore service but they told us we had to go home as the diesel wasn't going to make it that day.
So we went home, tired and broke along with the continued feeling of hopelessness. I began to feel that death was inevitable. I was tired, hungry, depressed and broke. At that point in the car, I was ready to give up and yet things would get even worse. We decided we would try again after that weekend to get money from the ATM, our lives were depending on it. Despite getting money from our neighbor, we needed money for ourselves. So that weekend I tried to keep myself thinking positively and lived the best way I could. During the day, I did maintain a good outlook on things and considering I had books to read it helped. When nightfall came however, my outlook on life would go downhill. I even grabbed a knife and thought about killing myself as I couldn't handle the hopelessness of not having a clear look into my future.
October 2nd, 2017
We got up at 5 in the morning so we can go to the bank at the town next to us since the one by us was out of order. We wanted to get there early in order to beat the line. However when we got there at six in the morning, there was already a big line of people. Nevertheless the situation was dire, so we had no choice but to wait there as we were down to out final 40 dollars. We waited there patiently as the bank wasn't due to open until ten in the morning. At first it wasn't too bad as the sun was only rising.
By eight in the morning though, the sun was beginning to shine right on my head and the heat began to go up in earnest. Still, we had no choice but to stand there in the heat so we could take money out. Ten o'clock came and the line was beginning to move for the ATM machine. However, by eleven o'clock the line stopped and we had no idea why. It wasn't until we were told that the diesel powering the machines ran out. All I can say is, "I was one unlucky person..." So we got out empty handed and spend some money eating pizza. I was beginning to run out of hope and that is when me and my parents told oursleves that we gotta get out of Puerto Rico until everything passed. The path getting to New York was not going to be an easy one though and that will be covered in part 3 on Monday. Have a good weekend everyone.
