As if the residents of Puerto Rico haven’t been through enough after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, they are now firmly in the middle of yet another hurricane season. This week, weather experts have their sights fixed on the island as a tropical storm makes its way through the Caribbean. Hurricane Beryl was recently downgraded to a tropical storm and was about 300 miles southeast of San Juan late Sunday night. The National Hurricane Center says that the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico could expect strong winds and several inches of rain from the storm in the coming days. Additionally, the conditions could result in new power outages—not exactly welcome news for Puerto Rico which has remained without consistent power since Hurricane Maria’s landfall in September.
One major concern about this tropical storm is the damage it could cause to homes without sturdy roofs. There are approximately 60,000 people currently living in Puerto Rico homes with tarps for roofs after the damage caused by Maria. These people are being urged by the government to relocate as soon as possible to the homes of relatives or to government shelters. And of course, there is the issue of more power outages. The power grid on the island has always been fragile and in need of repair but was nearly destroyed after Maria. Not only have there been frequent outages for the last nine months, there are still more than 1,500 PREPA (Puerto Rican Power Authority) customers who have yet to see their electricity return at all.
Meanwhile, for those displaced Puerto Ricans who have been living on the mainland since Maria, they remain worried about their future—on and off the island. More than 1,700 people across the country have received assistance through FEMA’s Temporary Sheltering Assistance (TSA) Program which has provided them with funds to stay in hotels paid for by the federal government. The program was set to end on June 30 but thanks to a successful lawsuit, a judge has blocked FEMA from ending the program abruptly. This means that families and individuals have until July 23 to stay in their hotels. But, they continue to encounter roadblocks to obtaining sustainable housing and jobs. According to interviews with Grist, for some Puerto Ricans, enduring the storm was not the worst of their experience. Instead what came later has been the most traumatic and hard to navigate. Here’s what Adriana Colon, age 20, said:
We didn’t lose our home, it was more everything that happened after the hurricane: no electricity, no water, no food. I spent a lot of days trying to find one can of formula for my baby. He was actually getting sick because of the smell of the generators. He got a lung infection.
Colon describes conditions as so hot in her home after Maria, that she resorted to sleeping outside and/or on her roof so that her infant son could sleep. He was five months old and “suffering a lot” and that’s when she made the decision to relocate. Subsequently, she found that it was hard to maintain employment without daycare and wasn’t receiving any kind of benefits to help with food. She finally landed a job in a restaurant but spends most of her income on daycare. She is also pregnant, and says that the stress of not having a permanent housing situation and dealing with FEMA weighs on her. She, like others who were interviewed, don’t want to stay in a hotel forever—especially because they know that they face the possibility of homelessness once the TSA program ends.
Displaced Puerto Ricans on the mainland worry that they may never be able to go home again. Meanwhile, those on the island have extensive Hurricane Maria cleanup to deal with and the possibility of more hurricane damage from storms this season. Let’s hope that this hurricane season proves to be incredibly uneventful for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands this year. But let’s not just rely on hope. Let’s also keep the pressure on the federal government and elected officials to put money and resources into helping Hurricane Maria survivors on and off the island.