El Profe: Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico then and now
By Adrian Burgos
We knew it was devastating. Ask any Puerto Rican about Hurricane Maria and you would hear it in their voice in the days immediately following and in the months afterwards.
A quick or easy recovery from Maria was not going to be happening in Puerto Rico. The hurricane was too powerful, and it had made too much of a direct hit.
Unable to communicate with family and loved ones felt daunting. The not knowing haunted us. We wanted to do something, anything, to aid in the relief and eventual recovery.
That’s what I heard in Chicago Cubs Javy Baéz’s response when I asked about Puerto Rico at the postgame press conference following his Game Four heroics in the National League Championship Series last October.
Indeed, while so many Cubs fans worried about his swing and his postseason hitless streak, Baéz was working hard trying to keep his mind off of Puerto Rico.
“It’s hard to keep that away, but we have to take care of business. And after the season is over I will go home and help my people,” Baéz said.
Helping Los Nuestros
Even as the Cubs, Dodgers and Astros made their push deep into the 2017 playoffs, Baéz, Kiké Hernández, Carlos Correa, and Carlos Beltrán sprang into action. They were organizing relief funds, providing monetary assistance, and helping to coordinate the delivery of supplies.
They were not alone.
Edwin “Sugar” Díaz, Yadier Molina, and Martin Maldonado, and also retired players such as Carlos Delgado, Javier López and Hall of Famer Ivan Rodríguez also got to work on bringing relief to Puerto Ricans on the Island.
All of them were enacting the humanitarian spirit of the Great One, Roberto Clemente.
They were in their own ways, taking care of Los Nuestros, the Puerto Rican people that were in a land in crisis.
Puerto Rico Then
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico about two weeks after Hurricane Irma had struck the island on Sept. 6. It was too soon. Tens of thousands who had lost power during Irma still hadn’t had it restored.
Initial accounts of the devastation and the death toll were unbelievable, literally.
Satellite images showed that the powerful hurricane, approximately the size as the state of Ohio, made landfall and hovered over Puerto Rico. The grading of Hurricane Maria as a category 4 or 5 was pretty much moot at that point.
We worried. Then it seemingly got worse.
The silence was eerie. A day turned into two. Two turned into three days. What about our family and friends, the elderly and the infirmed?
Some of us didn’t get to speak to our family for a week or more.
Videos slowly filtered out of the island. What we saw brought tears to our eyes.
Homes and roads destroyed. Rivers and creeks overflowed their banks and gushed down the mountainsides into villages below. The beautiful rainforest El Yunque, which so many of us visited as returning Puerto Ricans or as tourists, was laid waste. The fertile fields where sugar, coffee, and tobacco had been cultivated for generations were also devastated.
What would happen to our beloved Borinquen?
Puerto Rico Now
Nearly a year has passed since Hurricane Maria.
The reports of the federal response are damning. A Politico study of FEMA’s response found that “FEMA provided roughly a third of the meals, half as much water and a small fraction of tarps to Puerto Rico than it provided to Texas after Hurricane Harvey in the first nine days after the storm.”
The New York Times noted on Sept. 2 that the delayed response from FEMA and the Defense Department also contributed to the loss of life on the Island, reporting “several weeks elapsed before FEMA and the Defense Department increased their presence on the island, even though airports and ports had reopened after a few days.”
Over the next few weeks we revisit the relief and recovery efforts that have taken place in Puerto Rico. We will speak to current and retired players about their involvement in aiding recovery in the land of Clemente, the importance of that work, and how their communities on the island have fared.
As seen most recently by the appearance of the Guayama team in the Little League World Series, baseball has been an important distraction from the realities of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria.
The success of Puerto Ricans from the Little League diamonds to the major league fields has brought much joy to the resilient people of Puerto Rico. Today, they continue to do the work of recovering in a manner that would have made Clemente proud.
Featured Image: Al Bello / Getty Images Sport