SFGate | One person in Arecibo died after being swept away by rising water.
Officials believe there are probably others they haven't yet been able
to confirm.
At the intersection of Routes 2 and 1o in Arecibo, employees of the
Gulf Express gas station and their families - about 20 people in all -
were hard at work Saturday. Their boots and sneakers were caked with mud
because there is mud everywhere: On their pants and shirts, in their
cars and on the walls of their homes. The makeshift cleanup crew was
using brooms to sweep out the grayish brown slop that lay two or three
inches thick inside.
After Maria blew threw the city, taking down trees and power lines, the flash floods came.
"The water had to be at least six, maybe seven feet high," said
Nelson Rodriguez, an employee at the Gulf Express. "It took everything.
All the medicine in the pharmacy, all the food, it's gone."
Every home and business in this part of Arecibo was affected by the
flooding. Two blocks away from the gas station, Eduardo Carraquillo, 45,
helped his father, Ismael Freytes, 69, clean the mud out of their
yellow, first-floor apartment. Inside, a film, rising six feet high on
the walls, marked where water stagnated for much of a full day.
"The water just pushed through the door, as if it had been left
open," Carraquillo said. "We all evacuated the day after the storm,
because we were warned about the flash flood that might come. Everyone
left, just to be safe, except for two older men that lived a few houses
away. They just didn't want to leave. When we came back, we found out
the flood had killed them right there in that apartment."
Some Puerto Rico officials believe it could be months before the
island recovers and that it will be at least a year before some sense of
normalcy returns.
Officials estimate it will take three weeks for hospitals to regain
power, and about six months for the rest of the island to have
electricity. By Saturday, 25 percent of the population had
telecommunications connections.
Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced efforts to centralize medical care
and shelters for the elderly. He also plans to distribute 250 satellite
phones among mayors to facilitate communication. He said he urged the
mayors to develop a "buddy system" with other local officials.
Yulín, San Juan's mayor, said she has never seen such devastation,
but she also said she has never seen such determination to make it. She
described a phrase she keeps hearing from residents: "Yo soy Boricua. I
am from Puerto Rico."
