Massachusetts ‘sister community’ in Puerto Rico still hurting days after 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Guu00e1nica, Puerto Rico before dawn on Jan. 7, and was followed three hours later by an aftershock measuring 6.0. They are the largest in a series of quakes that have struck the U.S. territory in recent days and caused heavy damage in some areas.

“We’re sister communities Puerto Rico and Massachusetts and Western Massachusetts in particular," State Sen. Eric Lesser said.

According to The Hill, both Gov. Wanda Vu00e1squez and President Donald Trump have declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico. Vu00e1squez has already allocated $130 million to disaster relief efforts and is in communication with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We are OK. We don’t have [any] power [or] electricity,” Carmen Santiago, a Sabana Grande resident, told MassLive in an interview. “We are having so many earthquakes. This morning we had two big ones.”

Sabana Grande is a small city, a few miles to the west of where the epicenter of the earthquake hit in Guu00e1nica.

“The people are afraid to enter their homes,” said Guu00e1nica Mayor Santos Seda in an interview with El Nue Vodia. “The emotional health of our town, as I said from moment zero that occurred on Dec. 28, is what concerns me the most because of the immediacy of the emergency. How we are living is horrible.”

According to Seda, there are more than 174 homes in the town, and approximately 50 have completely collapsed, with the rest being damaged and close to collapsing.

“Some cities don’t have water like Yauco, Guayanilla [and] Guanica,” said Santiago on Thursday. “People are coming from those cities are camping here in Sabana Grande because their houses are destroyed, and they are scared.”

Lesser posted a tweet on Thursday in solidarity with the islanders.

“A lot of our community members have close ties, family or friends on the island and are often traveling back and forth," said Lesser. "For personal reasons, for business and a whole lot of other things, so it's really a community that we're close to as a commonwealth.”

There has been a long history of close ties with the island from the Western Massachusetts community in past disasters.

It was estimated by Gov. Charlie Baker’s Deputy Communications Officer Sarah Finlaw that at least 7,000 Puerto Ricans migrated to Massachusetts after Hurricane Maria swept through the island territory.

“If in a similar way to what happened with Hurricane Maria, if we see an influx of people or an increase in people coming to Massachusetts, either temporarily or permanently, because of issues that happen on the island, we will be prepared to make sure that that transition is smooth [by] making sure that there is Health Care access [and] housing assistance. [It’s] something I'm watching very closely,” Lesser said.

One of the most damaging earthquakes occurred in Oct. 1918, when a 7.3-magnitude quake struck near the island’s northwest coast that later caused a tsunami that killed 116 people.

___

(c)2020 MassLive.com, Springfield, Mass.

Visit MassLive.com, Springfield, Mass. at www.masslive.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.