A year after hurricane hit Puerto Rico, Rotary members continue to rebuild homes and lives
Faustino Rivera greets Eladio Montalvo, who was forced to live in his car before the Mayagüez Rotary Club helped him rebuild his home. Photo from Rotary International
By Vanessa Glavinskas
Rotary International
Eladio Montalvo faced a stark choice: risk drowning in his one-story home or climb through a window into the house next door.
It was under construction but had a second floor where he could escape the rising floodwaters. He boosted his dog through and scrambled in after him.
The two huddled inside an upstairs bathroom for 22 hours while Hurricane Maria raged over Puerto Rico. With 155-mph winds and torrential rains, Maria was the strongest hurricane to hit the island in more than 80 years.
After the storm, Montalvo went out to see what was left of the home he had lived in since 1958. The walls were standing, but the water inside had risen chest-high.
Everything was destroyed. Without any family nearby, he had nowhere to go. He moved into his car.
“But after the storm came the calm,” he says. “Good people came.”
Faustino Rivera pats Montalvo affectionately on the shoulder.
San Juan Rotary Club members distribute mattresses in Villa Santo. Photo by Gerry Cumpiano
It’s September 2018, a year since Hurricane Maria, and Rivera and several other members of the Rotary Club of Mayagüez have stopped by to visit.
Montalvo lives in a fishing town called El Maní outside the city of Mayagüez on the island’s west coast.
He invites his guests inside to see the progress he has made adding a shower to his bathroom.
There’s a pile of tiles that he plans to lay soon, and he has started painting the walls a light shade of blue. The home is neatly but sparsely furnished: a bed, a TV, and a few plastic bins, including one labeled camisas that has shirts and shorts tucked inside.
“He’s become my friend,” says Rotarian Orlando Carlo, who checks in on Montalvo almost every week.
The Mayagüez club paid $4,200 for the materials Montalvo used to add a second story to his home.
Made of concrete, outfitted with hurricane shutters, and built high enough off the ground to avoid flooding, the new addition contains a small kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. Montalvo did much of the work himself, calling on friends and neighbors skilled in construction when he needed help.
To find people like Montalvo who needed help but didn’t qualify for reconstruction aid from the U.S. government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Mayagüez Rotary club members worked with community leaders and screened each family.
“We are trying to help those who really need help,” Carlo explains. “Those who can’t get it from anyone else.”
By the time Carlo met him, Montalvo had been living in his car for nearly six months. A local church leader introduced the two, hoping Rotarians could help Montalvo find permanent housing.
“I could tell immediately that he was severely dehydrated from staying out in the sun and sleeping in his car,” Carlo says. “He seemed stunned and needed guidance on how to start rebuilding. We assured him we were there to help him.”
After the hurricane, Carlo was also living alone. His wife had gone to stay in Florida while he remained behind to run his construction business. But the lack of electricity and reliable communication meant his work projects were stalled, so he mostly spent his days volunteering. “It gave me a lot of time to help,” he says.
His home survived the storm, but the shortage of gasoline meant he had to plan his trips carefully. He rationed bottled water and food, eating what he calls a “hurricane diet” of canned pasta or sausage and rice.
“We didn’t have power back until the end of October,” says Christa von Hillebrandt-Andrade, president of the Mayagüez Rotary club.
“We could use one bucket of water per day. My teenage daughter learned that water is the No. 1 thing you need. She could live without electricity and even without her cellphone, but not without water.”
Mayagüez is home to 75,000 people and to the island’s second-oldest Rotary club after San Juan.
In the past, the club carried out smaller projects, but the massive devastation caused by Maria motivated members to do more to help their neighbors, especially the very poor.
“I’ve been a Rotarian for 40 years, and I’ve never seen so much help come from other Rotary clubs,” Carlo says.
After Hurricane Maria, clubs across the United States wired the Rotary Club of Mayagüez about $50,000 directly; more than half of that money came from the Rotary Club of La Jolla Golden Triangle in California and a group of clubs in New York.
As club treasurer, Rivera keeps track of every receipt and sends updates back to the donor clubs. A year after Maria, the club had helped 22 families repair their homes, mostly replacing roofs that were blown off by the hurricane.
Scanning the horizon from a hillside neighborhood nicknamed Felices Días — “Happy Days” — Carlo points out a less-than-happy sight: the many blue FEMA tarps that still stand in for permanent roofs. “There is still a lot of need here,” he says.
“But we are willing to continue to help as long as it takes.”
And for Montalvo’s part, he has remained optimistic in spite of all he went through. “Hurricane Maria gave me more than she took,” he says.