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 25
th
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.
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| The lamp saved by the cord from breaking completely |
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| 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.
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| An electric pole on my home street |
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| 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.
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| FEMA box contents |
