BY RON RICHARDS
CANO'VANAS, Puerto Rico - On September 22 the most
destructive hurricane in decades battered Puerto Rico. The
hurricane-related death toll is about 20 and still rising. More
than 18,000 people are living in shelters. The government
estimated damages to be at least $1 billion.
The hurricane left all homes in this U.S. colony without electric power and virtually all without running water. The Puerto Rico Telephone Company, which uses underground lines, was in better shape. Most homes never lost telephone service.
A week later 40 percent of the population had electricity and 65 percent had water. Most schools reopened on September 28, but 300 are so damaged they cannot be used and 170 are functioning as shelters.
Most people with water and electricity live in the San Juan metropolitan area. Hardest hit was the mountainous interior of the island. Many rural areas were completely cut off by a combination of destroyed bridges and downed trees and power lines.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) set up a toll- free number for hurricane victims, who are supposed to call to request aid. In the most devastated areas, however, many people do not have telephones.
On a September 27 visit to Villa de Hugo II, a working-class community in Barrio San Isidro of Canóvanas, the outer suburbs east of San Juan, almost every house showed signs of damage. The community, founded by people who lost their homes during Hurricane Hugo in 1989, consists of 500 homes, most of them plywood with corrugated metal roofs, a small number made of concrete or cement blocks. The community is built on a series of low limestone hills that rise out of the flood plain of the Río Grande de Loiza. Most are recent immigrant workers from the Dominican Republic.
Ramón Emilio Rodríguez and María Guerrero have lived for five years in a wooden house with a sheet metal roof. He works in construction. They fled to a neighbor's cement house when the roof flew off their home. "We have received no help up until now," Guerrero said. "We have no water nor electricity." The promised aid from City Hall "has not arrived yet."
On top of the hill Gregoria Rodríguez lived with her four young children on the second floor. The upper part of the house was wood with a corrugated metal roof. During the hurricane she took refuge in another house. When she returned, the roof and parts of the walls were gone. All of her possessions except for a bit of clothing were destroyed. She said she hopes to rebuild a better house in cement.
The community has stickers calling for the reelection of the pro-statehood mayor but all residents interviewed agreed that absolutely no help has arrived from the municipal government or from any other agency, public or private.
Meanwhile, with materials at hand, members of the community have begun to rebuild. Some new roofs have been built or old ones covered with plastic. In better-off communities the concrete homes fared well and the damage was restricted to wooden roofs blown off patios and downed trees.
One of the most impressive sights in the wake of Hurricane Georges has been the thousands of working people around the island organizing to get work done on their own. People with access to heavy equipment such as tow trucks and backhoes went out and started clearing the roads without waiting for the government to act. Others used saws and machetes to remove downed trees.
Some people have began to protest the lack of services. On September 25 people stood in front of City Hall in Cidra with signs saying they had been abandoned by the mayor. People have called the media to complain that FEMA did not have Spanish- speaking operators.
The emphasis of the Puerto Rican government has been to see to it that capitalists, such as those who own the expensive hotels, do not lose money. The headline in the September 28 El Nuevo Día read hopefully, "Everything is ready for the tourists." "We are back in business" proclaimed Jorge Dávila, executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company.
Ron Richards is a member of the American Federation of Government Employees in San Juan.