A Paradise Lost
On September 20, Hurricane Maria, a powerful Category 5 hurricane with 150 mph winds and 12 foot storm surges, made direct landfall on Puerto Rico. The hurricane sliced the island through the middle, entering through the town of Yabucoa in the southeast and exiting in Aguadilla in the northwest. It left a diagonal trail of unprecedented destruction.
Even after six weeks, 80% of the island remains without power, and most people do not have access to potable drinking water. Food supplies are limited, and cell service is practically non-existent. The excessive flooding caused many roads and bridges to collapse, leaving dozens of towns completely cut off and making the relief efforts challenging. Crops were decimated and the delicate ecosystem of the El Yunque rainforest has been laid to waste, threatening the destruction of delicate species of plant and animal life.
I knew all of these facts and details when I travelled to Puerto Rico with my mother three weeks after the Hurricane. I had watched the MSNBC and CNN reports and dutifully read the New York Times articles my mother kept forwarding, but no amount of news and statistics prepared me for what I witnessed during my four days on the island.
The trip was a chance to visit my 84-year-old grandfather who had been without power for three weeks and with whom we had only limited contact since the storm hit. It was also a chance to bring batteries and other supplies to community of Punta Santiago in the town of Humacao, a nearby fishing village that was badly affected by the storm. We also planned to visit communities in San Juan, where my mother’s nonprofit, Resilient Power Puerto Rico, was planning its first solar power installations and to meet with the local team of architects and installers that were coordinating the effort. The group was founded in the days after Maria to provide power to community centers, clinics and other public places in Puerto Rico’s most devastated areas. The days were some of the most intense I have ever experienced, without a moment’s rest from dawn until late into the night.
From the moment I landed I could sense something was very different. At the airport I noticed something I had never seen before in my years of going to Puerto Rico – crowds of people leaving with dozens of suitcases. They were going to Orlando, Chicago, New York. Places where they had family and friends, joining the extended Puerto Rican diaspora on the mainland. What was usually a small and quiet airport with few stores was now a cacophony of noise and confusion –a steady daily stream of 4,500 children, siblings, husbands and wives turning their backs on their once beautiful and tranquil island, with no choice but to leave, many of whom will never return.
Driving through San Juan, always a hectic experience, had an added level of stress. Since there was no electricity, there was no signal lights. Every time we reached an intersection there was a slight moment of panic not knowing if the other cars were going to stop. People were mostly considerate, which surprised me considering the current state of events. Everywhere you looked there was something broken.
We stayed in Condado, a well-to-do neighborhood near the beach. The building had a working generator, and we had air conditioning and running water. There was a big supermarket across the street and a couple of restaurants around the corner. Everything in Condado was different. We drove around fallen electrical poles and barren trees, hearing the constant humming sound of generators. My ancestral island, a beautiful, lush place full of memories, family, and joyful times that I had visited so often as a child, had been destroyed and it was painful to see it.
Soon after we landed, we headed to a community center in the impoverished neighborhood along the Caño Martin Pena, a polluted canal that connects an estuary to the San Juan bay and is home to a group of eight poor, densely populated neighborhoods known as the “G8.” The people in the G8 live primarily in wooden houses with tin roofs, built originally by impoverished squatters. The community center was the site of Resilient Power Puerto Rico’s first installation, and we were there to meet with the installation team and inspect the site.
We climbed a ladder to the roof and saw 20 newly-installed solar panels which were about to be put into action. From the solid concrete roof of the newly built community center, I could see the destruction of the surrounding houses—many of them had no roofs or had partial roofs patched together with plastic sheeting or were half-built with random materials. The building where we stood was clearly the anchor that held the entire community together, more important now than ever to help families and children rebuild their lives. Tesla had donated two Powerwall batteries to the project, and everyone was excitedly waiting for the batteries to fully charge so we could turn the power on. Finally, the moment came. There were cheers and hugs all around. The community leaders, the Puerto Rican installers and electricians, the Tesla engineers – everyone was celebrating. Although a seemingly small act, in the middle of the chaos, it seemed miraculous. The repowering of just one community center brought a sense of life and joy. I suddenly felt a sense of hope that maybe, solar panel by solar panel, we could power up the island and bring life back to these communities.
On my second day, we drove to La Playita –another G8 community– to visit another site for possible solar microgrid installation. La Playita, like most communities in the G8, is located entirely in the floodplain and is regularly flooded with wastewater. This is a neighborhood that one normally cannot reach due to its seclusion, but we had the City of San Juan’s Resilience Officer, Alejandra Castrodad, as our guide. She knew the community like the back of her hand, calling out to people by their first names and knowing the details of their lives. It is home to a large elderly population, the majority of whom were unable to evacuate during Maria. At La Playita, the situation looked even more dire than at Caño. Entire houses had been destroyed, we encountered several people who were in need of water, and there was evidence of sewage from the storm surge along the walls of buildings and homes. La Playita was a manifestation of the horrors caused by Maria. As we made our way through the narrow, winding streets, we met several people, walked through their homes and listened to many harrowing stories. 
One old man described his roof being ripped from his house, and the feeling of being completely exposed to the elements. He told us that a group of carpenters from Heart 9/11 had rebuilt the roof, and two days later it was ripped off again by a freak tornado. An older woman described her house being split in half by a fallen mango tree and feared it would not be rebuilt. Many of them lived alone, and it seemed they were barely hanging on.
On my third day, we drove to Punta Santiago, one of the most devastated areas in Puerto Rico. Effectively ground zero for Hurricane Maria, this small impoverished fishing community was ravaged by eight-foot storm surges. We visited the town with a family friend, Elias Rivera, who grew up in Punta Santiago and now works as a social worker for the city of San Juan. From New York we had brought 100 apples donated by an East Village CSA as well as batteries of all kinds, headlamps, lanterns, and clothes. We met Elias’ brother in law and father who described being awakened on the night of the hurricane by the sound of rattling at the front door. When they opened the door, a rush of water swept through their tiny house. Unable to open their back door because of the force of the water, they had to break their window and swim out into the raging storm surge. Miraculously, no one was hurt, however one of the young children was almost swept away and had to be rescued by Elias’ father.
Another old man we met told us he lived alone with his wife who has Alzheimer’s, and he expressed his concern about being unable to get her to a hospital if anything happened to her. Many of the town’s buildings were in shambles, and large piles of broken tree limbs, leaves and debris littered the roads. The strength of the wind had snapped dozens of enormous concrete electrical poles along the main road as if they had been mere sticks. The streets were quiet and subdued. Everyone seemed as if they were just trying to survive and had resigned themselves to the destruction around them. I noticed a small semblance of life amidst the destruction: a small outdoor bar called El Limon. We stopped here for a pastelillo de chapin, a fried fish turnover that is famous in the area, and it tasted so good. Here was a haven of Puerto Rican identity, music, food, and laughter, reminding me of the tranquil and happy days of my childhood when I bounded along the beaches with my brother.
I know that it is going to be long road to rebuild Puerto Rico. Moody’s Analytics Risk Management Company estimates a $95 billion investment will be needed to rebuild Puerto Rico’s infrastructure. Already close to 90,000 people have left since Maria, and some estimate there will be 500,000 leaving over the next three years. This exodus will have a profound effect on both the island’s already severely damaged economy and the rehabilitation of its institutions. Although I saw a lot of devastation, during my visit I was impressed with the resiliency of Puerto Rican people. I left with a sense that the island is going to rebuild and return stronger than ever before.