CLEVELAND — Tuesday, Sept. 20 marks the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s catastrophic landfall on Puerto Rico. The U.S. territory once again finds itself in recovery mode after Hurricane Fiona hit the island on Sunday, Sept. 18.
The storm left millions of Puerto Ricans without power in the days following its landfall and kept many around the world worrying about their loved ones who remained on the island.
Àngel L. Reyes-Rodríguez, Ph.D. knows this feeling all too well. The director of the McNair Scholars Program at Cleveland State University has family who lives in Puerto Rico.
“My whole family, parents, my siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, all of that stuff,” Reyes-Rodríguez said. “And then I have, of course, many friends since I grew up there.”
The Puerto Rican native, who moved to the mainland more than 10 years ago to pursue his education, said his family is safe, but is still experiencing some inconveniences.
“I’ve talked to them and basically they have no power and no water since Sunday,” Reyes-Rodríguez said.
He added that it’s hard for a storm of this size not to be disruptive to people’s lives and the island’s infrastructure.
“It is very easy to think from the perspective of not just having power or water the same way that we would do it here. But if it happens here in the U.S., we have a few mechanisms to make life go back to normal fairly easily,” said Reyes-Rodríguez. “But back home in Puerto Rico, people don’t have access to those resources.”
Even though Reyes-Rodríguez is more than a thousand miles away from where the storm took place, he’s feeling the effects of the devastation himself. The director was recently selected as one of AmMore Consulting’s 100+ Latinos Cleveland Must Know 2022, but said he’s hesitant to celebrate the accolade.
“I cannot be celebrating when other people are struggling,” Reyes-Rodríguez said.
Instead, he’s choosing to put his celebrations on hold, so he can help with hurricane relief efforts.
“I’m just going to go through a list of nonprofit organizations that are working at the [local] level and start supporting them, however I can,” said Reyes-Rodríguez.
He urges people on the mainland to support their fellow citizens and find ways to get involved with outreach.
“Either through money or, you know, donations, or amplifying their messages and their voices because they have proven that they can provide solutions on the ground outside of the bureaucracy of the government,” Reyes-Rodríguez said.
