Generous Spirits: Residents Keep Watch for One Another Across Puerto Rico

Editor's note: Volunteer Winnie Romeril from Wheeler, Steuben County, is currently in Puerto Rico supporting the Maria relief efforts. Click here to learn more about the response and how you can help. 

“You can’t get your Red Cross truck up the road to El Salto, it’s too steep,” said the people waiting in line for supplies in the wake of Hurricane Maria’s devastating blow to Puerto Rico. One after another echoed concern for these neighbors who weren’t present for the relief distribution of water, tarps, flashlights, baby formula, hand sanitizer and other items.

“El Salto” consists of 10 remote homes on a hilltop, all made of wood. It’s hard to imagine homes more remote than this valley. San Lorenzo, Morovis, is a town of around 1700 people, nestled deep in the center of the island. Red Cross relief workers drove for hours up and down mostly one lane roads to get here. Toppled electrical poles and broken bamboo forests, recently cleared mudslides and swollen, muddy waterfalls threatened this route around every dizzying, hairpin turn. 

If El Salto homes were all made of wood, this is bad news because the hurricane’s path

Red Cross distribution site in Barrio San Lorenzo

went directly over this area. Additionally, “home made of wood” is practically code for “I have no roof” across Puerto Rico. By and large, cement homes held up better, unless a tree or electrical pole fell on it. Everyone suffered water damage regardless, but Red Cross teams in this area were particularly targeting families missing a roof over their heads.

It’s dusk when the team finishes helping the last families in line. Still, none of the families from El Salto have appeared. Many hours of difficult driving on unlit winding mountain roads to get to a main artery leading to San Juan await the team. Suddenly, a pickup pulls up alongside Red Cross volunteers clearing away boxes and plastic wrapping from around empty pallets of unloaded supplies. “Please take this to another community that needs it more,” the driver points to the back of the truck. 

Volunteer Rut Gonzalez, Distribution Team Lead
in Barrio San Lorenzo

“They received more baby formula than needed by all the mom’s in this town,” explains 20 year-old distribution team lead Rut Gonzalez. “The military dropped it off and now they want the Red Cross to give it to people who are worse off than they are. All the mom’s here with infants say they have enough to feed their babies right now.”

“I am so touched by their selflessness,” reflects Rut, who joined the Red Cross after Hurricane Maria shut down her university. Her uncle is a Red Cross zone leader and encouraged her to get involved. She is working 15-hour days, 6 days a week, riding in the front of a box truck with a Teamsters driver, delivering supplies to town after town. Several cars of Red Cross volunteers together with Teamsters and FDNY volunteers complete each of the 15-20 convoys that spread out across the island each day. The Red Cross has reached every one of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities, but due to the limited supplies available until now on the island, more trucks and supplies are needed to adequately care for every affected community.

Just as the team is about to shut the door on the truck, a woman from El Salto is flagged down by San Lorenzo residents. At the Red Cross team’s request, and at the urging of her valley neighbors, she agrees to deliver 16’x20’ tarps to each of the families. Happy to have succeeded in helping Puerto Rican families people who needed help the most, the community members eagerly loaded the tarps into her car and disperse. As darkness falls in the mountain valley, and the Red Cross departs for San Juan, only the truck’s headlights— and the flashlights the team just handed out— light the night. 

-Story and photos by Winnie Romeril, American Red Cross