Thursday, October 26, 2017

Homecoming

The night has fallen. I’m sitting in my bedroom, lit by a camping torch, headlamp, and a line of owl-shaped Christmas lights. I hear the humming of the neighbor’s generator and whistles of frogs and crickets. I’ve used one and a half evenings cleaning up my fridge that still smells like a dead animal, probably because of some creepy creature(s) that sheltered inside it and died there. Half of the evening passed in a defensive warfare for a bathroom that got conquered by an army of termites. Their fortresses rose along the edges of the wooden door and the inner corners of a closet that used to withhold towels on the upper shelves and tools on the lower ones. The first time I touched the bathroom door, a few termites dropped on my hand. By the end of the chemical warfare, the poison had done its job, and I couldn’t see any more movement of the tiny light-yellow creepers. I decide to leave the battle of pantry for tomorrow and use tonight to recollect energy.

When hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico over a month ago, I was safely in Riga, Latvia. Hurricane Irma had hit the Eastern parts of the island only two weeks earlier. I had flown away from the island a few days before Irma for a work and a family meet-up trip to Finland and Latvia, as planned months ahead. My return flight was due five days after hurricane Maria, on the 25th of September, but all the commercial flights were cancelled until the end of September so there was no way for me to get back. And despite the slow return of the commercial flights to their regular schedule in early October, I got strong recommendations from various people (bosses, mum…) to stay off the island for a while, and ended up doing so for four weeks longer than planned. Luckily, I was able to take shelter on my brother’s sofa in Finland for a few weeks and had another scientific conference in Utah in mid-October. All that time, I was eager to get back to help my community, to take care of my pets that I had had to leave in the good care of my neighbors. But all I could do was to read the horrifying news reports of the people on my dear island dying for lack of electricity to keep their medicines cold or life support equipment going, or for lack of food or water for being stuck in their homes, roads blocked by trees and electric poles. Nevertheless, the news let me get mentally prepared for the return to home.

I landed back to Puerto Rico on the 23rd of October. A friend picked me up from the airport. We drove to a nearby mall and a supermarket for lunch and to buy food and other supplies. The mall had electricity and, although it was early afternoon on Monday, it was packed with people. All restaurants had a line. Some shops were closed because their payment systems were still not functional. 80 % of the population was still without electricity, almost half of the population without regular water supply. The days of 8–10-hour long lines for gas and food had passed some weeks ago, but many stores were still out of water and some food items that used to be grown in Puerto Rico, until 80 % of the crops had been flushed or blown away by Maria.

Driving on the expressway revealed the still evident damage to the nature. The trees are starting to grow their leaves back, but the difference to the old, lush dark-green jungle is shocking. With every other tree uprooted or tilted and all leaves stripped, I could easily see the rocky hillside where the trees grow on. Before, the hills had been covered by solid layers of green leaves and bright-colored flowers. Most palm trees still had their long, spiky leaves, but now growing only on one side of the trunk, as a reminder of the direction of the hurricane winds. My friends told me that some days after the hurricane, the air was covered with bees that were confused of the lack of vegetation. And not only bees, but the fumes of thousands of generators, and sand flying from Sahara had been filling the air as well.

We arrived to my house in the suburbs of the city of Arecibo when the sun had just set. The bigger roads had street lights, and some intersections even traffic lights. A few people had stopped on the edges of the expressway for cell signal near the ramp to the city. My home street was completely dark but the last rays of sun light revealed some remaining damages. An electric pole in a 45-degree angle above the street, many of my neighbors’ fruit trees gone, but houses mostly intact.

The lamp saved by the cord from breaking completely

Termites had enjoyed the bread crumbs and the bacalaíto flour


I took my flashlight before entering the dark house. My cat ran to the door to greet us when we stepped in. My three dogs were on the back yard tied up. A lamp in the living room had fell down from the ceiling and is now hanging by its cord. The only thing I heard of my house before arriving was that the house’s roof survived but the porch roof was gone. And as I saw with my own eyes, only a few pieces of aluminum that made up the porch roof were still in their old places, and even some of those badly bent. The rest had been scattered all over my backyard, but the landlady and her family had cleaned up the yard only two days earlier, as my neighbors reported. The porch roof wasn’t even near the only damage. An on-ground pool (which was in a bad condition even before the hurricanes) had bent from circular into a crescent shape. The most major damage was caused by my neighbor’s 30-meter breadfruit tree that had fallen directly on my yard, luckily not on anyone’s house. It had squished the fence, and due to the size of its trunk, lifting it away from my yard and the fence would require some relatively heavy machinery.
An electric pole on my home street

Almost every aluminum panel had detached. But Bubbles is fine!

As expected, my house had no power nor water nor cell signal. My neighbors provided me with a jug of observatory water, and the next day helped me to get my car out of the garage. The door is very heavy and usually works with electricity. I gave them a solar panel charger, and a UV pen for sanitizing water.

The Arecibo Observatory is an oasis in the middle of the disaster, more than ever. There are generators for electricity, and even more importantly, pumps for clean ground water. When all other water is scarce or completely unavailable, the observatory provides the whole surrounding community with water. Anyone can fill their water canisters at the gate, and the employees take some for their neighbors. There’s also a helicopter pad, which helps FEMA, national guard and other aid organizations to get relief packages to an area far from San Juan, or pick up those who have trouble travelling themselves. The water is, however, dependent of the diesel deliveries. If the fuel runs out of the generators, also the pumps stop working.

The observatory equipment itself suffered some damage, but much less than everyone feared. The world-famous, 305-meter radio telescope is composed of the dish of metal mesh panels, and a gigantic platform hanging on top of the dish in a height of 130 meters with three concrete towers and 39 massive cables. The platform sustains various receivers, and the world’s most powerful radar transmitter inside a gray dome that is a size of a two-bedroom house. The wind and pressure measurements during the hurricane showed that the eye of the hurricane passed through the observatory, and the sustained winds were near the maximum theoretical limit that the platform can take.

But to everyone’s amazement, the 54-year-old platform and the 22-year-old dome survived the winds! One receiver, called the line feed, broke off and punctured holes to the mesh panels of the dish on the way down. Luckily, only a very small fraction of the panels got damaged, and they are relatively easy to change. The million-dollar line feed requires some more effort, but it is only used by specific atmospheric measurements, or less than a quarter of all measurements that the observatory does regularly. Radio and radar astronomy are able to continue their observations as soon as the situation on the island stabilizes, the staff can safely return, and the electricity gets back. The world’s most powerful radar transmitter requires three times as much diesel as the rest of the observatory to run, so when fuel is needed to support life elsewhere on the island, radar observations will wait.

FEMA box contents


P.S. Electricity returned to my neighborhood last night, the lucky 26th percentile. Water is back occasionally but it is not drinkable as such so carrying from the observatory continues. The observatory got an internet connection back yesterday. Progress is slow but certain.

The white space used to be covered by a huge breadfruit tree (now lying on my fence)

Avocado tree is not much more than a match stick right now


A stripped breadfruit tree

An ex-pool. (The neighbor's palm trees are fine though!)