This archive report was first published on 10 January 2020.
Into The Dark: Puerto Rico After the Earthquake ¶
GUÁNICA, P.R. — The third interminable night living on the edge of a road in their wrecked Puerto Rico town was a welcome distraction for three boys huddled on an inflatable mattress. A flat-screen TV perched on milk crates allowed them to play Mortal Kombat 11, hooked up to a portable generator on the bed of a pickup truck parked on a grassy patch off a highway exit.
As cars whizzed by just a few feet away, Ana Ayala, 37, the mother of two of the boys, lamented, "The night has arrived. This is the longest part." Many families like Ms. Ayala's, afraid to go home to buildings that could collapse in future quakes, have insisted on setting up camp in other public spaces — posing a new challenge for strained government services and aid workers.
On Thursday, Rafael Rodríguez Mercado, the Puerto Rico health secretary, urged the evacuees roughing it on their own to move to the government-run camps for their safety — and to avoid an outbreak of gastrointestinal disease. Encampments like the one on the side of a highway in Guánica have no access to running water or bathrooms.
Ms. Ayala and the five other families camped there — all relatives, friends or neighbors — do not want the assistance provided at a government-run shelter. José Luis Casiano, Ms. Ayala's husband, wanted to be on higher ground and closer to the highway leading out of town in the event of a tsunami, perhaps the biggest fear among residents following more than a week of unsettling tremors.
Complicating the return home, about half of the island — 850,000 customers — remained without power on Thursday. José Ortiz, the director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, said the public utility hoped to fully restore electricity by Sunday, but his rosier estimates earlier in the week have proved wrong.
At the roadside camp in Guánica, municipal workers have come by every day to fill a huge potable water container, which Ms. Ayala and her friends and neighbors use to rinse silverware and wash up. On Wednesday night, the Rev. Luis Vidal Ortiz from the Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal pulled up in a small yellow school bus and delivered packs of chips, cookies and personal hygiene products.
At the nearby sports complex where the government is running a local camp, evacuees had access to indoor bathrooms — albeit without running water — as well as to a mobile clinic, a dinner of arroz con pollo, volunteer physicians and a group of psychologists offering art therapy and crisis counseling.
