Yasmin Morales Torres, 41, washes laundry by hand in her yard in Playa El Negro, a neighborhood in the town of Yabucoa. As of March the area had still been without power since the storm.
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Months After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Still Struggling

The new death toll from the worst natural disaster to affect the island is a reminder of the longest blackout in U.S. history.

ByDavid Brindley
Photographs byCarol Guzy
10 min read
This story appears in the July 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine and was updated on August 30, 2018, to reflect the new death toll from Hurricane Maria.

Nearly a year after Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc in Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló, the island’s governor, raised the storm’s official death toll from 64 to 2,975. The figure comes from a new study by the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Rosselló commissioned the study and acknowledged this week that he made mistakes. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the federal government did a “fantastic job” in responding to the storm.

But in February, Yamary Morales Torres, 41, told me, “The fishermen here are suffering,” as she stood in her yard overlooking the pounding surf on Puerto Rico’s southeastern coast. Setting out before daybreak, Yamary and 14 other fishermen in her neighborhood have to prepare their boats and fishing gear in the dark. In addition, “there’s no place to refrigerate the fish we catch, so we need to sell them immediately.”

flooding at the northeastern coastal town of Loíza.
Two days after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, flooding continued in the northeastern coastal town of Loíza, where Liz Maries Bultron (at left) and her neighbor Alana Bepizarro live.
Photograph by Carol Guzy, Zuma Press
power lines leaning over the route leading north from Punta Santiago
Power lines and palm trees lean ominously over the route leading north from Punta Santiago, Humacao, five months after the storm. Punishing winds and a massive storm surge crippled the area.

On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria struck land not far from Playa El Negro in Yabucoa, where Yamary and her extended family live. The storm knocked out power to the entire island, a United States territory that is home to 3.3 million citizens. Five months later this neighborhood of only 14 homes—all damaged and flooded by the storm—still had no electricity and no sense of when it would be restored.

A third-generation fisherman, Yamary lives with her elderly parents in their dilapidated concrete home. The house next door was all but leveled in the storm. Her twin sister, Yasmin, lives two houses down, next door to a brother and his family. They all had to evacuate before the storm, but with no other options the family returned to their lifelong homes. “Life is very sad now,” Yamary says. “But I’m not leaving. I’m staying right here.”

Irma Torres Rodriguez, the 75-year-old matriarch of Playa el Negro
Without electricity, Irma Torres Rodríguez, the 75-year-old matriarch of Playa El Negro, relies on lanterns to do chores in her kitchen at night. She and her husband, now blind, have lived in this home since the 1960s and have nowhere else to go.
the Edenic beach community after Hurricane Maria
Dawn breaks over the house next door to Irma’s. Hurricane Maria made landfall not far from this once Edenic beach community.
Berenanda Martinez playing with laundry at her grandmother's home
Visiting her grandmother Berenarda Martínez Morales, Angeli Herrera Medina, three, plays with drying laundry. Water was restored to the neighborhood, but there is still no power to run washing machines.
Berenanda Martinez Morales' badly damaged house
The stresses of living without power in a badly damaged house wear at Berenarda Martínez, 64. She shares her two-room home in Playa El Negro with three of her children.

A third-generation fisherman, Yamary lives with her elderly parents in their dilapidated concrete home. The house next door was all but leveled in the storm. Her twin sister, Yasmin, lives two houses down, next door to a brother and his family. They all had to evacuate before the storm, but with no other options the family returned to their lifelong homes. “Life is very sad now,” Yamary says. “But I’m not leaving. I’m staying right here.”

That spirit of resilience is helping Puerto Rico rebuild from the massive destruction left in the storm’s path. Power and water were restored within weeks to the island’s major urban areas, but with spring approaching, more than 100,000 residents—all in rural, poor areas much like Playa El Negro—remained in the dark. It’s going to take more than determination by the island’s residents to fully recover, if that’s even possible.

Carmen Torres Rivera fishing off the destroyed pier
Carmen Torres Rivera, 56, fishes off the destroyed pier in Punta Santiago. “This is a hobby; it helps time pass,” she says.

The strongest storm to hit Puerto Rico in 89 years, Hurricane Maria battered the island with tornado-­force winds. Massive rains brought catastrophic flooding, washing out bridges and inundating entire neighborhoods. The island’s infrastructure, already shaky after years of neglect, was devastated.

students at the Jose R. Barreras school at Morovis
Eating lunch in a darkened cafeteria, students at the José R. Barreras school in the central highlands of Morovis eagerly await the power to come back after five months.
Carmen Morales Bruno joking with colleagues at a neighborhood in Manati.
Carmen Morales Bruno, 43, jokes with friends and electrical workers at a bar as crews check lines to restore power to this neighborhood in Manatí. The lights—and music—came back on February 23, 2018.

With no power, running water was cut off for much of the population. Communications to and from Puerto Rico were nearly impossible for days. Airports were shut down, delaying recovery efforts, since supplies had to be airlifted or shipped in. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency, charged with disaster relief, was already stretched thin after historic storms earlier last summer in Texas and Florida.

The result was the longest major power outage in U.S. history, and many communities on the island were left without running water for months. Toilets couldn’t flush; there was no water for showers, baths, or washing clothes. People had to rely on bottled water, but supplies were limited. Useless electric stoves had to be replaced with propane ones. Without refrigeration, food rotted and vital medicines spoiled. Only those with gas-powered generators could ward off darkness after dusk—for a few brief hours. Forget about air conditioners to relieve the sweltering heat. All the modern conveniences we take for granted were left behind.

On February 19 the power finally came back on for a neighborhood on the outskirts of Morovis, a small town in the island’s central highlands. When the lights turned on in her house, Marysol Rivera Rivas, 51, jumped up and down, hugged her neighbors, and hoisted a can of beer. “There’s the last clothes I have to wash by hand,” she exclaimed, pointing to a line of laundry flapping in the wind in her yard. “This is the first time in five months we’re able to celebrate. We’re alive now!”

a young dog scampering in the sand at Playa El Negro
Undeterred by the damaged and destroyed homes along the beach in Playa El Negro, a young dog scampers in the sand. Irma Torres Rodríguez rescued and bottle-fed the dog when it was a tiny puppy.

Even after power and water are restored across the island, people will still be dealing with the storm’s effects. “The storm takes away the foundations of society. Everything you thought gave you certainty is gone,” says psychologist Domingo Marqués, 39, an associate professor at Albizu University in San Juan. “You see people anxious, depressed, scared.” Marqués estimates that 30 to 50 percent of the population is experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or anxiety.

Still, Marqués is guardedly optimistic. “We saw a lot of resiliency. We’re not going anywhere. We’re rebuilding,” he says. “We’ll be OK. But we shouldn’t try to get back to normal, because things will never be normal again.”

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