Hurricane Maria Refugees In Hartford Predict Long Recovery

Oct. 10--Back in Connecticut two days after he took a congressional trip to Puerto Rico, Sen. Richard Blumenthal said firsthand accounts of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria would be key to mustering political pressure to speed up relief efforts.

"We are given information by FEMA, by the military. I'm sure they are doing their best to get us accurate information," he said. "But the most accurate information comes from people who have direct contact. ... I want to avoid being in any way misled."

Blumenthal convened a meeting Monday morning at the Capitol Region Education Council in Hartford to share what he learned during his trip and to hear from those who had just returned to or arrived in the state from the areas hit hardest by Maria.

One of those first-person accounts came from Milagros Davila, who left Puerto Rico with her husband. The couple, who live in Salinas on Puerto Rico's southern coast, is staying with her brother, Noel Valentin, in Windsor.

With her brother translating, Davila described long waits for food and medicine. The price of some items at grocery stores has doubled, she said. Even getting money has been a challenge. Banks aren't fully reopened and with the overwhelmingly majority of the island without power access to ATMs is limited.

State Rep. Minnie Gonzalez, D-Hartford, asked Davila about food that was being distributed by relief workers. People are waiting for hours, Davila said, only to receive a bottle of water, a can of spaghetti and two cookies.

Blumenthal said he and other senators surveyed storm damage from above in a Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter.

"I have never seen this kind of destruction," he said. "Homes were completely flattened -- thousands of homes. ... Just a tableau of utter and complete destruction."

Blumenthal has been critical of the Trump administration's response in Puerto Rico, and again on Monday said it was "too little and it was late."

Jeanette Hernandez and Pedro Bermudez returned to their East Hartford home from the town of Yabucoa in southeast Puerto Rico. Hernandez -- who used to work at CREC -- moved to her native Puerto Rico five years ago to teach English. Booking a flight back to the area was difficult, but the couple eventually got here, albeit on separate planes.

People with food stamps have had difficulty accessing their benefits because many grocery stores can only accept cash, not EBT cards, Hernandez said. The demand for gasoline has gotten so high, she said, that some people were driving more than an hour to find a station that hadn't run out. Her nephew, a police officer on the island, worked a 24-hour shift only to return home and find his house completely destroyed.

Hernandez predicted a protracted recovery from Maria, and said it was critical to paint a clear picture for lawmakers and others about what Puerto Rico's 3.4 million residents were experiencing.

"My hope ... is to be the voices of those people," she said. "We're going to make sure that our town and every other town gets what they need to survive. This is not going to go away in a year or two. We're looking at five years or more for Puerto Rico to stand on its own."

Julie Deterville attended the meeting to remind people that the U.S. Virgin Islands were similarly devastated by the storm. The decision to relocate her kids to Connecticut became easier after she learned hurricane-force winds had sheared the roof of her daughter's school in St. Croix.

Deterville's cellphone is filled with photographs of downed trees and tangled power lines.

"Life has changed in an instant," she said. One of those changes was the decision to come back to Connecticut, stay with her mother in New Britain and enroll her three children in local schools there.

Deterville, a teacher, expects it will be months before schools in St. Croix reopen. She plans to return by the end of October to help with that effort, but keep her kids enrolled in New Britain.

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