“I don’t feel safe in my home,” Belen said. “Not in this residence. Not in Guánica. Not in Puerto Rico.”
Since earthquakes rocked the island’s southwestern coastline this week, Belen has been living with friends and neighbors, unsure whether the frame on his house would hold, whether the roof would cave, whether another temblor — maybe an even bigger one — would destroy it. This is life in Puerto Rico during the past two years of hurricanes, earthquakes, power outages, political upheaval: unstable.
Hundreds of families were rendered similarly homeless by the latest natural disaster to upend this island, some because their homes were wobbly and others because they are afraid of what might come next. They were sleeping outside in tents and in hammocks and in cars, hoping to survive should another earthquake hit in the night. Tent cities have emerged in parks, baseball diamonds and parking lots across the pueblos of Guayanilla and Guánica, where the bulk of the earthquake damage is concentrated.
Still reeling from a horrifying hurricane two years ago, many of Puerto Rico’s residents are again in the dark, the island’s crippled power infrastructure again compromised, this time not because of what came from the skies but because of what came from beneath the earth. Read more>>>
