A Puerto Rico resident describes his family's survival two weeks after Hurricane Maria: no power, water, or cell service. They run a generator twice daily, haul nine gallons of water from a neighboring town, and ration a single downloaded SpongeBob episode for entertainment. Hope is fading as basic services remain unavailable.
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Good morning, day 14 after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, and this is the setup that I got to keep my family alive for 2 weeks. No power, no water, no cell phone service. I got 2 of these 2 car batteries with a power inverter to power the fan. It lasts about 9 hours on medium speed. The only movie that we got downloaded, SpongeBob. I watched it like 21 times already, making me crazy. Uh, we're living in an island. Tropical island is during the day like 100 degrees, and at night is a sauna without a fan. I had a— we didn't have a fan for the first 2 days, and sweat was pouring out while you were sleeping. All right, uh, shower. We got about— we use about 9 gallons of water every day. We are 4— my wife, uh, my daughter's 7, and my kid is 6, and I. And we go here. These are all the water drops. We had to go next town to fill it up because thank God next town have water. We don't. Power generator, I use it twice a day. Like, I start at 8 before going to work and leave it on until 12 afternoon so the wife can make, you know, nice breakfast and lunch for the kids while I'm working. Then she turn off at 12. I got out of work at 6, I crank it up again till 10 PM. Got a little stove that I found at the trash and fixed it. And I got propane gas. I leave that outside while cooking, but I might have to, you know, bring it inside because I know it's gonna get stolen. We still got no water, no power, anything like that. I have a whole bunch of things to say before recording this, but I just don't know what to say. I'm losing hope over here.