Devastation

            I took a little tour around the house yesterday, just to see how dependent I am on electricity. The kitchen has appliances: stove, refrigerator, oven, microwave, and toaster, not to mention smaller things like a blender, a griddle, and can opener. In the living room there’s the TV and attached components and speakers, plus table lamps. My office has my computer and printer, a pencil sharpener, a cell phone charger, and more lamps. Bedrooms have lamps, too, and radio alarm clocks. There’s the washer and dryer in the laundry room, and let’s not forget the vacuum cleaner hidden away in a closet. And there’s the power that runs my heating and air conditioning and opens my garage door. These and more are the conveniences of a modern American home. And they all run on electricity.

            And now consider the island of Puerto Rico. The entire island is without power and will be for weeks and months to come. Stores shuttered, food markets shelves empty, garbage piling up outside, unrepaired roofs leaking, indoors insufferably hot, services of all kinds non-existent. The people can’t even charge their cell phones to maintain communications, except in their cars, which will stop running when the tank reads Empty, because gas stations, except the few with generators, need electricity to pump gas. Waiting for help that doesn’t come. Hope fading. Alive, but not living.

            Yabucoa, hit head-on by Maria’s 155 mph winds and 25-foot waves, no longer exists. My father-in-law, who was born there, would not recognize it. My wife, who has relatives in Puerto Rico, was able to reach her cousin Mary Joan in San Juan before her cell phone died. She was emotionally drained, desperation in her voice. None of the other relatives could be reached. Are they safe?

            Relief efforts are on the way, a trickle in a flood. Three and a half million people in Puerto Rico and thousands more in the Virgin Islands wait. How many can be reached with food and water? How will the sick and injured get help? My wife looks at the devastation on her TV screen and mumbles, “Oh, the poor people,” knowing her own people are among them. God help them.