As the city of Goanica, Puerto Rico prepares for a tropical storm, the earth shakes again the National

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Michelle Morales was washing dishes at her home in Guanica, Puerto Rico, on Saturday morning as the ground began to shake.

She ran outside the house with her three children and her husband, as they always did whenever they felt a strong earthquake.

“We don’t stay inside when it’s shaking,” she said.

First came El Trueno, “Thunder,” which is known colloquially for the low, thundering noises of earthquakes. It could sound like the sound of a bomb, a truck passing through the street, or a plane flying overhead.

“Suddenly, the house started shaking from side to side, and it kept shaking for a while,” she told the Miami Herald newspaper about the magnitude 3.4 earthquake.

Morales, 37, is a resident of Barrio La Luna in Guanica, a coastal town in picturesque southwestern Puerto Rico. In late December 2019, faults activated in the area, and the earth began to shake and never stopped. Since then, thousands of tremors have already occurred in the area, often multiple times a day.

But the ground shaking on Saturday was not Morales’ only concern. Forecasts of Tropical Storm Laura showed that the system had shifted south. Laura is expected to bring 3 to 6 inches of rain to Puerto Rico during the night and Sunday. Southern and eastern Puerto Rico can receive up to 8 inches of rain by the time the storm travels away, according to the National Hurricane Center. The commission says the heavy rains may lead to landslides and floods in rivers. The storm has winds of 50 mph.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicated that this hurricane season could be “very active” in the Atlantic basin. For all of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, the coronavirus pandemic has made storm preparation even more difficult for emergency management officials and residents alike. People who live in Guanica and neighboring cities like Guayanilla, Penuelas, Yauco, and others must deal with earthquake risks and damage as they put in place contingency plans to weather the storm.

Saturday morning’s earthquake presented a potentially terrifying scenario: What if a strong earthquake happened during the Laura?

“Imagine if there was an earthquake of 4 or more in heavy rain, where would we go?” Morales said. “The safest thing is to go out. But there will be rain. So we cannot set up a tent because the yard is full of rain.”

Morales said the Barrio-La Luna region is prone to flooding.

As of early March, more than 8,000 homes had been affected by earthquakes. In Guanica, the mayor told the Herald that 517 homes are slated to be demolished.

Morales’ house was damaged by earthquakes. She said the FEMA had not approved her family’s request for repairs and funding, but that her husband had fixed most of the damage. With the subsequent vibration, new cracks appeared, which are corrected when they appear.

Several leaders of the Guanica community told the “Herald” that the Barrio-La Luna region was among the worst affected by the series of earthquakes. Morales told the Herald that most homes are at risk of structural leakage and that there are two entire buildings in her neighborhood where each home is uninhabitable.

At least one family continues to spend the night outside, and three of their immediate neighbors live in heavily damaged homes. She always checks them after the vibrations to make sure they are fine.

But Morales is optimistic that they can weather the storm. She said managing so many devastating conditions simultaneously had prepared her neighborhood for contingency planning.

“Since we are survivors, we deal with many things at the same time,” she said. “We are ready.”

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For years, seismologists have warned that under the region’s translucent seas, green peaks and forests lurk at the potential for deadly earthquakes. The Puerto Rico Seismic Network noted seismic activity in the region in its annual reports.

At 4:24 a.m. on January 7, just hours after the island wrapped up the Feasts of Three Kings, seismic activity culminated in a 6.4-magnitude earthquake hitting southern Guanica in the Caribbean. The earthquake killed one person, leaving the island without electricity and at least 250,000 people without water.

By the end of January, more than 3,000 earthquakes had been reported within 20 miles of the epicenter of the 6.4 magnitude earthquake. A United States Geological Survey report said people in affected areas will continue to experience daily aftershocks, which will eventually become a weekly aftershock, which will eventually disappear in the coming decades as an intermittent reminder of the time the Earth shook each day.

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Besides the epidemic, earthquakes presented a very difficult scenario for municipal authorities in Guanica and its neighboring towns.

In early summer, Maria L. McDougall is certified as a hurricane shelter, even if only one of its three buildings can be used, according to the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, or CPIPR. However, due to damage from recent earthquakes, all buildings were deemed unusable.

No of the town’s seven schools can be used as hurricane shelters, said Robin Cruz, the municipality’s director for Goanica’s emergency management. According to CPIPR, the municipality, along with Penuelas, Sabana Grande, Guayanilla and Yauco, are “virtually left without schools” after earthquakes “have disrupted more than thirty schools” in the south of the island.

Emergency and municipal authorities revitalized the former Franklin Delano Roosevelt School, which closed in the 1990s but is structurally sound, according to the director of emergency management.

It’s on the same street as the infamous Agripina Seda Middle School, which collapsed like an accordion during the January earthquake. Guaniquenos admits that a tragedy would have occurred if the tremor had occurred on a school day.

By midday Saturday, only four people had attended Franklin Delano Roosevelt School, but Laura’s influences had yet to reach the area. Cruz told the Herald that the new shelter could hold up to 50 people, and was equipped to handle Tropical Storm Laura and other simultaneous emergencies.

“There is 6 feet between each bed, and we provide people with masks, gloves and hand sanitizer for their personal use. We also have a tent in the school yard, so if there is severe shivering, we can move people under the carp,” Cruz said.

Santos Seda, Mayor of Guanica, admits that emergency planning for his municipality and the surrounding towns is complicated, and that the frequent shaking has taken an emotional toll. Since the earthquakes began, government mental health personnel have visited townspeople.

“This is an unprecedented situation; it is historic, but we manage it,” said Santos Seda. “Our municipal government has done everything it can to manage this crisis, and we just want everyone to do their part.”

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As government authorities in Guanica prepare for the arrival of Laura, neighborhood leaders and local organizations are working with their communities to prepare people for the storm.

Team 781, a coalition of 15 community leaders from various neighborhoods in the municipality, formed this year in response to earthquakes.

Dagnes Lopez, 47, is a resident of Barrio Voyage and a member of Team 781. On the night of the 6.4-magnitude earthquake, she spent the night at her mother’s house with her children and pets. She had heard old stories of landslides at her home. That night, after the earthquake, a boulder over 20 feet tall destroyed its kitchen, and rubble destroyed other rooms. Since then she has been living with her family in her mother’s house.

But losing her home hasn’t stopped Lopez, who is also a cancer patient, from working as a community leader. To prepare the residents of Barrio Fuig to weather Tropical Storm Laura, she and her team visited 400 homes in the neighborhood.

She was concerned about the difficulty of reaching residents, including the blind, deaf, and bedridden in emergency situations. Most of them, she said, are not on social media. So Lopez created an online group with the children of several Barrio Voyage where she could provide updates and connect with her older neighbors.

Team leader 781, Yeisimar Leon Martinez, is proud to make her alliance work and reach out to all parts of the entire city. During the height of the earthquake crisis, MSF was able to coordinate relief operations and distribute aid across some of the worst affected areas of Guanica. Their relief and organization work continues citywide as they prepare for Tropical Storm Laura.

The team has identified 781 families still living in tents in front of their homes, many of them completely destroyed, and is helping them find housing and provide the resources they need. They are also providing them with information about available shelters and community centers that receive people during Tropical Storm Laura.

The team is also focusing its efforts on building temporary wooden houses. Just this week, the organization built a makeshift log house for a man who lost his home during Hurricane Maria in 2017. The homes are designed to withstand tropical storms, even if they are not able to withstand hurricanes. At the moment, they provide a roof over people’s heads. More homes are in the works for the displaced families.

Leon Martinez, 42, has lived in Guanica all her life, and Morales shares the views of many other Guanica community leaders: the tide of disasters in recent years has greatly affected the city, but also highlighted the resilience of its residents.

But she is concerned about the government’s ability to handle all emergencies and disasters, especially one at a time.

“I can’t really tell you that Guanica is ready to take even showers, because maybe the mayor, municipality and emergency department do their best to keep the town not suffering any more,” she said, “but Guanica won’t be ready for anything for many years. many.”

On a Saturday morning, she was at home with her husband when the 3.4 quake struck the district.

“I told him, oh my God, this is difficult. We have the storm, we have earthquakes, we have an epidemic,” she said. “Every time it rains, it breaks my heart, when I think of people in tents from earthquakes, people who have had temporary blue roofs since Hurricane Maria.”

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