Two Andrews University professors and 16 architecture students have returned from Puerto Rico after spending a week there helping with hurricane recovery efforts. Professor Andrew von Maur tells WSJM News they brought along thousands of dollars’ worth of emergency supplies and went to a poor area of San Juan. There, they put tarps on homes and cleared debris. Von Maur tells us what his team saw in Puerto Rico was hard to believe. He says it seemed like every tree on the island has been ripped down by Hurricane Maria. Same goes for power lines.
“I was just there in July, and Puerto Rico was a very beautiful, tropical, lush, green place, and now, it’s brown and looks like it just got massacred,” von Maur said.
Von Maur says there was black water flooding into homes and streets in some areas, and virtually no power. The little power there is comes from generators, and the major gasoline shortage doesn’t help. Von Maur’s team didn’t see one FEMA crew there in the neighborhood where they worked, and he says help is certainly needed.
“You could send groups like us down for the next year and you’d still have need,” von Maur said. “It’s insane.”
Von Maur told us folks there did not appreciate it when President Trump talked down the extent of the damage. He thinks it will be months or years before things are back to normal, if ever. That’s because people were already leaving Puerto Rico before the hurricane hit, and he thinks the exodus may accelerate. If you want to donate to the Andrews University Puerto Rico relief effort, you can just follow this link.
