One year ago today Hurricane Maria struck and devastated Puerto Rico, where ConsumersAdvocate.org is based and proudly calls home.
365 days later, while the sun shines peacefully, everyone here in Puerto Rico has a Hurricane Maria story. Ours is one we think represents the best of Puerto Rico: hope, helpfulness, and community.
The storm tore through our island from southeast to northwest and left a trail of destruction behind. We had floods, mudslides, and homes in tatters from the wind. Three million people lost electricity, some for more than 10 months. The storm resulted in thousands of fatalities and fundamentally altered the lives of hundreds of thousands more.
Fortunately, much of our team here was able to get out of harm’s way. We evacuated all of our employees who wanted to leave. Some of us decided to stay. We helped them with temporary housing since many were still having to pay for their now-uninhabitable homes. We became a virtual company for six weeks, with people working remotely from Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Washington, Germany, and Curacao.
I left Puerto Rico three weeks after the storm hit. But I’d invested my life here, and I was determined to return and finish what I started.”
As a team, we built a lot of comradery over instant message and video conference, continuing to work from our spread-out locations. We continued our commitment to our teammates who stayed on Puerto Rico, even though they couldn’t do much work without electricity and an internet connection. Communications were hard for everyone who remained on-island.
We spent many anxious days until we heard that our people were all safe and accounted for.
I don’t blame anyone who left after the storm, but I’m proud that I stayed. It showed me how strong I was.”
Meanwhile, we started to mobilize for our beloved home. Almost immediately, we started raising funds for helping our community and everyone in need after the hurricane. Our CEO, Greg, and cofounder Sam generously offered to match any donations to our effort. Many of our partners generously donated.
Early funds went to people on the ground with immediate need. A youth baseball team made up largely of kids from poor families. Trinity Church was helping people in all forms of distress in the early days of the disaster. Organizations like Hogar Esperanza de Amor and Family Meal PR were also leading critical efforts here on the ground.
Yes We CAN-ine rescued dogs who were left homeless after Maria and found homes for them in the States.
Electricity was down, water supplies had failed, and the banking systems were offline. We watched the weather, and the repair work. Eventually, we couldn’t take it anymore, we had to be back. By the first week of November, power, water, and internet service had been restored to our office—with frequent outages, but enough to get by—and we began to reassemble our team in Puerto Rico. By January, we were all back together.
Many of us spent weekends and evenings to help out with the relief effort. Scott rescued stray dogs and helped them find forever homes in places as far away as Wisconsin and Maine. Another teammate helped a church group distribute food, clothing and diapers to people whose homes had flooded—and also spent Christmas morning at a home for mentally disabled young women. Another painted a damaged school, made food for relief workers, prepared water filters, and loaded trucks.
We packed boxes of relief supplies. Jim drove doctors up into remote mountain areas to perform health checks, tarped roofs, and passed out water filters. He also filled his apartment with a group of volunteer pilots who had come to airlift supplies to the small Puerto Rican island of Vieques. We bought generators and sent them to group homes in the hardest-hit towns.
It is a silver lining of tragedy that it can strengthen community”
A member of our community outreach team and his wife were married just days after the storm. Faced with an abundance of wedding gifts, they couldn’t think of anything other than to donate them to relief efforts. They took it further and raised more money from friends on Facebook, while hosting relief workers in their apartment.
It is a silver lining of tragedy that it can strengthen community. Lifelong friendships were built. Lives were saved. Communities started to rebuild.
Eventually, the headlines faded from the front page, the relief effort continues. Our focus has shifted away from immediate needs to the long-term task of joining with the people of Puerto Rico to build a sustainable future for the island.
Our fundraising efforts totaled more than $200,000 for Puerto Rico.
With the remaining funds left after immediate needs, we have helped Unidos por Utuado with a grant to provide water filters, solar electric lighting, and medical care to vulnerable populations in the hard-hit Utuado area. With help from ConsumersAdovcate.org, Save-a-Sato.org continues to ease the suffering of Puerto Rico’s homeless and abused animals. And our donation to Nechama will help them keep teams on the island rebuilding homes and entire communities for years to come.
In the end, our story of Hurricane Maria is one of being inspired. The outpouring of help from our team, our friends, our partners, and our communities is humbling. So many people in Puerto Rico have put aside their own hardship to help their neighbor, and we are so grateful for everyone who contributed.
As the years continue to advance away from Maria, maybe some of the memories will fade. But the determined spirit of our communities in the face of incredible adversity is something we will never forget. The road ahead of us may be long, but we are humbled to be here for the journey.