Islanders at low point after storms

2 suicides among Puerto Rico toll; officials worry for survivors

Manuela Libran, 67, and Maria Roman sit Wednesday under a damaged ceiling in a residence for low-income elderly people in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico.
Manuela Libran, 67, and Maria Roman sit Wednesday under a damaged ceiling in a residence for low-income elderly people in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Puerto Rico's government counted two suicides among its hurricane-related death toll, which now stands at 34, and with many communities still waiting for power and clean water, there is concern about others reaching a breaking point.

Students and staff members at Ponce Health Sciences University are visiting shelters and people in the hardest-hit communities to provide psychological help, among other services, said Alex Ruiz, special assistant to the university's president.

"People's whole worlds were taken from them," he said. "People will need the proper psychological help to get through this."

At a news conference Wednesday, Gov. Ricardo Rossello said the death toll jumped to 34 from 16 on the basis of a report that he commissioned to consult with hospitals and gain a more complete picture of the number of victims. He said 20 deaths resulted directly from the storm, including drownings and those killed in mudslides.

Click here for larger versions
Photos by The Associated Press

The count also includes sick and elderly who died in the aftermath of the hurricane, including some who died because oxygen could not be delivered because of power failures. There were also two suicides, but Rossello did not provide details of those.

One elderly woman took her own life Sunday inside a nursing home in Rio Piedras, a San Juan suburb. While the facility's director, Maria Betancourt, said she didn't believe the woman was distressed about the storm, the home was stifling hot Wednesday after power was wiped out nearly a month ago when Hurricane Irma sideswiped the island Sept. 7, though a generator has kept the lights on. Outside the home garbage and fallen tree limbs were piled on the side of the road.

Wilfredo Ortiz Marrero said administrators of his low-income residence for elderly people in the San Juan suburb of Trujillo Alta ordered inhabitants to leave because the building wasn't prepared to weather Hurricane Maria, which struck the U.S. territory Sept. 20 with Category 4 force. Some were picked up by family members, but Ortiz Marrero had no relatives to fetch him and had no choice but to stay in his Jeep until the storm subsided and a chain on the building's door was removed.

During the storm, Ortiz Marrero's Jeep was lifted off its wheels by floodwaters in the parking lot. He then endured days without enough food or running water.

[PRESIDENT TRUMP: Timeline, appointments, executive orders + guide to actions in first 200 days]

The lights are back on at the residence in Trujillo Alta, and food has started arriving, but he still waits as long as he can each night to leave the company of others in the lobby. Alone in his room, he sometimes starts to shake.

"You get really depressed," he said Wednesday.

Another resident, Felix Manuel Lopez, a 73-year-old U.S. Army veteran, said he has seen a Veterans Affairs counselor to help with anxiety that came back after he returned from a shelter to his darkened apartment.

"Everybody's drained," said Ruiz, the Ponce university official, who recently toured the city on the island's southern coast to assess people's needs. "Spirits have been broken."

On Wednesday, the governor said power has been restored to 8.6 percent of Puerto Rico's customers and the government is hoping to have power back on for 25 percent within a month. Power is being restored at hospitals, and he said the government is looking into which schools can reopen.

"While we are still in an emergency we are transitioning to establishing some components of normalcy," Rossello said.

Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. general overseeing hurricane relief in Puerto Rico, said the military will establish numerous hospitals there in coming days, as thousands of additional troops and dozens more helicopters arrive.

Buchanan described in a phone interview a mission that is still evolving and growing as the U.S. government grapples with an extended response to Hurricane Maria. Buchanan arrived Sept. 28 when there were about 4,100 U.S. troops involved in relief efforts on Puerto Rico, and said that number has more than doubled to 9,000, including about 4,000 members of the National Guard.

At least a "couple thousand" more troops will deploy from the mainland United States, Buchanan said. The Puerto Rico National Guard, whose members have been slow to activate as they deal with devastation in their own homes and carry out full-time jobs as first responders, also is expected to increasingly play an important role, he said.

"What I want to do is max out the mobilizations of the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard on Puerto Rico," Buchanan said of service members who call the island home. "Because that enables us to, first of all, get these people to work, and you know, they know the communities and understand the language. They can be very, very helpful."

The White House, meanwhile, formally asked Congress for $29 billion in disaster aid to cover ongoing hurricane relief and recovery efforts and to pay federal flood insurance claims.

The request comes as the government is spending almost $200 million a day for emergency hurricane response and faces a surge in flood claims for federally insured homes and businesses slammed by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

Administration officials and congressional aides had earlier told reporters about the plans.

Before the hurricane, Puerto Rico's government was negotiating with creditors to restructure a portion of its $73 billion in debt.

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Wednesday that Puerto Rico shouldn't expect a federal bailout of the debt -- which had caused infrastructure problems on the island before the hurricanes hit -- even after President Donald Trump spoke of the need to "wipe out" that red ink as part of the island's recovery.

Information for this article was contributed by Michael Melia, Danica Coto, Ken Thomas and other staff members of The Associated Press and by Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post.

A Section on 10/05/2017

Upcoming Events