Puerto Rico native works to raise awareness after hurricane destruction

The devastation in Puerto Rico is nothing short of catastrophic, according to one Southeast Missouri State University student from the city of Dorado, and she’s doing what she can to help.

A bake sale at the Arts Council in Cape Girardeau during First Friday was one effort. Funds will go directly to organizations on the ground in Puerto Rico.

Angelica Rivas brought a Puerto Rican dessert she’d baked that afternoon, pastelillos, a puff pastry filled with Nutella, strawberry, or both, and powdered sugar.

“Usually we’d use guava paste,” she said, “but that’s not too popular here.”

Rivas said this bake sale came together quickly, a statement echoed by CENET culture in the community director Danielle Henry.

Henry said several people were brainstorming ideas of what they could do to help Hurricane Maria victims, and Rivas said she could make some desserts, so the bake sale seemed like a logical next step.

“It’s something local we could do,” Henry said, “to easily get a little manpower behind it.”

They’re hoping to spread the word and gain momentum in their efforts to help storm victims, who since early September have been struggling, Henry added.

Rivas said her parents live in Dorado, on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, about 15 miles west of the capital, San Juan. She said Hurricane Maria sat on the northern region for about eight hours, and the damage is severe.

“Our houses, my parents’ and grandparents’, are made of cement, so the actual structures are OK,” Rivas said, but anything else, including plants, outbuildings, even trees that had been planted there for years, are gone.

Even the bark on the trees was stripped off, she said. “That’s how strong the wind was.”

Puerto Rico is like a rainforest, Rivas added, but since the hurricane, “it’s like a desert.”

Rivas’ mother is a nurse at a dialysis clinic, she said, and that clinic’s roof was destroyed. Efforts to repair the roof have been hampered more than once, she said, by continued rain.

Heavy rains are typical of the Puerto Rican climate, Rivas said, but it’s unfortunate during efforts to clean up and rebuild.

For 15 days after the storm, Rivas added, a foot of standing water in the clinic made any kind of cleanup impossible.

Now, Rivas said, the issue seems to be one of logistics.

She knows of one man who owns a dairy farm and has offered Federal Emergency Management Agency the use of trucks and manual labor, but so far the trucks and workers haven’t gone out.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” Rivas said.

Most of the assistance hasn’t been from the federal government that she knows of, she said.

Celebrities, companies, private donors are all stepping up, Rivas said, and the local community efforts in Puerto Rico are “inspiring,” but she’s heard several people express frustration at the paperwork required by FEMA.

She said some people are being told by FEMA to produce documentation to prove they’re citizens, “but these are people who’ve just lost their house,” Rivas said.

She said infrastructure damage is severe, too. A recently rebuilt dam has helped contain the flooding near her house, she said, but the bridge her mother takes to get to work collapsed.

“There are lots of back roads, ways to get into towns,” Rivas said, and if supplies could be brought to central locations beyond the ports, she said that would go a long way toward helping the situation.

Rivas said her parents and grandparents have been without electricity since Hurricane Irma hit Sept. 6, and expect to be without power until Christmas.

But they’re lucky, she said, because they have a generator, powered by diesel fuel. It’s increasingly difficult to get diesel on the island, Rivas said, because each station has a purchase limit, and prices have gone up because of the shortage.

“It’s making it so difficult to survive,” Rivas said, although she understands the limits so more people have a chance to get something.

Still, it’s hard to hear reports from her family about her home.

“It’s not going to fix itself in a couple of weeks or even months,” she said. “We’re doing whatever we can think of.”

mniederkorn@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3630

Pertinent address:

16 N. Spanish St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Dorado, Puerto Rico