For Poor, Hurricane’s Cruelty Lingers

Juana Maria Molina lies awake nights at a Red Cross shelter here, worrying about what will become of her and her family. She also stands guard--flashlight in hand--against scorpions she fears may enter the schoolroom where she and 10 family members sleep on a bare cement floor.

Molina, 43, blamed the conditions and lack of sleeping cots for her 2-year-old grandson’s bout with pneumonia. She and others also say the poor quality water furnished to the shelter has led to an outbreak of dysentery among more than a dozen children there.

The shelter at Loiza in many ways typifies the problems of poor Puerto Ricans, who are struggling to recover from the massive blows of Hurricane Hugo earlier this week.

The water shortage is reaching “critical” proportions, not only at the shelter but throughout the Loiza municipality just east of the capital city of San Juan, said Jose Miguel del Valle Lopez, a representative from the territorial legislature.

“If we don’t get more help, we could have an epidemic on our hands,” he said. “Four days without an adequate water supply has caused great concern among the townspeople. If it continues much longer people will become desperate.”

Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon has warned that similar potable water shortages across the island could deteriorate into a health crisis. He also strongly criticized the Red Cross earlier this week for its failure to provide such basic necessities as cots for thousands of homeless families and shelters across the island. Red Cross officials responded that the cots were on their way.

At the Red Cross shelter in Loiza, located at a three-story school building, homeless families who sleep on concrete floors say the toilets are impossible to keep clean without adequate water supplies.

“We’re just surviving, waiting for help to arrive,” said Carmen Vasquez Saez, 41, who had spent four days at the shelter with her husband and two children. “We have no beds and we need water. We also are waiting for the government to help us rebuild our homes.”

According to Del Valle, more than 60% of the homes in Loiza and neighboring rural municipalities were lost in the hurricane, leaving about 6,000 families homeless. And he said that some small towns were left isolated by the storm damage and were still waiting for National Guard work crews to clear roads to reach them. Only then can water be delivered to them by truck.

While water is trucked into some of the more remote towns in the area, the townspeople in Loiza have managed to supply their own.

A group of local churchmen pooled their resources to purchase a small portable generator, which they use to draw water from wells in three neighboring towns in the municipality.

“In a sense Hurricane Hugo has united us,” said Jacinto Ortiz, one of the group’s members.

Townspeople stood in line to fill plastic buckets with water pumped from a well in a neighbor’s side yard.

Many in town have taken in homeless relatives and have organized work crews to clear streets of fallen trees, utility posts and storm debris.

Tears streamed down Molina’s face as she recalled what was left of her two-bedroom cinder block home after the hurricane struck--a shell of a structure “that looked like nobody had ever lived there. . . .

“My neighbors tried to console me but I couldn’t stop crying for my family and for them.”