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Impressions of a Hurricane


Back in September, I took a needed vacation to Puerto Rico. My girlfriend and I had two beautiful days in Old San Juan when all the bars and restaurants were open, stores were open, galleries and churches were open, the historic landmarks and promenades were open, the windows weren’t boarded up, the streets were drivable, the trees still stood, the famous fountains still functioned, docks and airports still operated, and so on. We could still purchase alcohol. We could stay out past 7 PM. We even drove from Old San Juan to Rincon without anything but traffic blocking roads and obstructing travel. There were no billboards in roadways. Roadways weren’t flooded. Once Hurricane Maria hit, we were stranded in our hotel for two weeks, our only reliable means of travel by foot, our only reliable source of alcohol the complimentary wine our hotel put out every night along with cheese and grapes, our only entertainment walking around in the unbearable humidity talking to locals and taking photographs of the wreckage when we felt like doing so wouldn’t offend anybody. When I returned to Phoenix and work, “Stories in Medicine” suggested I write about that experience. Since then, I have been wondering what exactly to write about.

My girlfriend and I had several minor medical issues throughout the aftermath, including sunburns, blisters, dwindling medications, cabin fever, and a broken forearm. However, none of that was severe enough to focus any writing on. My arm was broken before I left Phoenix and the worst part about it was the cast, which wouldn’t stay dry in the humidity. Physically, we did okay. Drinking water could be difficult to come by, but we found it. We stayed hydrated. Most restaurants were closed following the hurricane and those that managed to reopen had limited menus. Still, we remained fed.

Next, I considered writing about the value of first responders and medical personnel, but to be honest we didn’t see many of them. Old San Juan got hit hard, but most of the buildings there are made of stone and the city is built on a hill. Nothing major collapsed. Nothing major flooded. Massive city walls protected us from storm surges. We heard of no major injuries in Old San Juan. Even the hundreds of stray cats survived. The only fatalities we saw were those of the iguanas, of which there were only a handful. Local responders spent their time in suburbs and rural areas, assuming they could get there. When responders from the mainland started to arrive days after the hurricane, they too went to areas in worse shape than Old San Juan. We only saw them from our hotel rooftop, coming and going in helicopters.

What continually stands out when I look back at those two post-Maria weeks is the kindness that people in Old San Juan showed us and each other. Everybody pitched in. Everybody helped out. Children carried toy machetes beside mothers and fathers who cleared trees and debris from roads. Those with generators offered their homes and kitchens to the rest of their block. People pooled food and resources. We heard about muggings and lootings, but we didn’t witness any of that. All we witnessed was sharing, generosity and collaboration. Strangers invited us into their homes to eat or sleep if we ran out of food or if our hotel had to evict us like many hotels did once they ran out of power, water and/or supplies. Nobody was selfish. We were all in it together, locals and tourists alike. We heard no complaining. Nobody wanted pity. They just got right to work trying to restore some sort of normalcy. There definitely seemed to be a lag in relief efforts from the mainland, but nobody we met dwelled on that. They did what they could to get by.

For several days following the hurricane, locals could escape their ruined homes and shattered lives by walking to one of the few bars that had reopened. Bars and alcohol were a distraction from the destruction, boredom and miserable conditions at home. Once the government started enforcing a “dry” law and a curfew, however, the bars had to shut down. My girlfriend and I missed those bars as much as the locals did, as we needed somewhere to go outside of our hotel room, which got smaller and hotter by the day. We had power, but no TV, no radio and no air conditioning. One day, we heard the sound of a generator from a block where we hadn’t heard one before. We followed that sound, which usually meant a new restaurant had opened. While they wouldn’t be able to sell us alcohol, even water and soda had become rare and valuable. We were thrilled to find that generator coming from outside a bar whose owner decided that he owed it to the neighborhood to open his doors, even if only for a few hours until the cops shut him down. There were no lights on in the bar, no a/c, no TV or radio, but there were a dozen people in the small room sitting on stools and at tables, a bartender handing out cold beers.

“Are you open?” we asked, as if looking at a mirage.

“We are!” a young woman replied. “Come in and join us!”

The bartender didn’t speak much English, so one of the other patrons explained that we could get three Medalla Light beers for $5. We pulled out a ten and handed it over, taking three beers apiece. Cash was hard to come by as well, with banks closed and ATMs without power and/or cash. However, we would have paid ten times that amount in cash for those beers. A man sitting in the corner of the room asked the bartender for cups and then poured everyone in the room a shot from his own bottle of rum. Normally, I would write about what happened as my girlfriend and I drank beer and rum with the locals of Old San Juan in a lightless bar during that dry-law period, what was discussed, what the others were like, the stories we heard, and the trouble we got into later with the Coast Guard, but I have a 1,500-word limit and anyway that’s a story for a different article.

Instead, what that day and the whole experience continually make me think of is how important simply being a decent human being with understanding and compassion can be. After we made up with members of the Coast Guard and joined them for drinks on our hotel rooftop, we heard their stories of bravery and heroism. Surely, there were countless other stories of first responders utilizing their training and ordinary citizens demonstrating courage. However, what really made an impression on me was how good and decent the locals were to each other and how accommodating they were to us. It seems to me, in retrospect, that camaraderie and compassion were as valuable as anything else during that time, providing hope and inspiration and making the tragedy not a personal one but a communal one. Thus, the recovery was not personal but communal. I have been trying to work that idea into the moral of this article, something along the lines of medical treatment could be communal and not personal or doctors treating patients with respect and compassion could be the inspiration they need to follow through with treatment and take care of themselves. But that seems like a reach and reaching isn’t the kind of writing I like to do. I like to write it all plainly, without making more of it than it was.

In truth, we had it pretty good during and after the hurricane. Our hotel was built in the 1600s, with walls and windows meant to withstand hurricanes. Hotel staff was incredibly accommodating, serving us coffee and breakfast when the eye hit and sangria with lunch just hours after the eye passed. They shared their cell phones with us, gave us information every morning, told us about their lives and families, listened to us when we spoke of our lives and families, etc. They were more like friends than staff members. The same is true of other hotel guests, whom we got to know very well. We finally got off the island on a humanitarian flight chartered by the Puerto Rican Department of Tourism. One passenger was in a wheelchair. Another passenger was in a neck brace. I no longer had my cast on because I used tin shears to cut myself out of it. We all smelled like dead bodies, but we were alive and relieved to be heading home. At the same time, we felt guilty for leaving while so many others had to stay. To pacify that guilt, I try to be more compassionate now than I was before, although I’m pretty much the same as I was, perhaps because it’s easier to be compassionate during a disaster.

 

Whose Behind This Story

Matt Stelling has an English degree from ASU with a focus in Literature. He has worked in higher education for about 10 years, including two years in the UA College of Medicine at both Phoenix and Tucson campuses. He currently has a novel accepted for publication. He has also completed several other novels, all currently unpublished.


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