Felicita Sepulveda-Muniz has lived in Brockton for nearly two decades, but she keeps close tabs on the island where she grew up.
“Puerto Rico’s still shaking,” she said.
Little more than two years after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, a series of earthquakes rocked portions of it over the last two months. The first hit after Christmas and the strongest one — a 6.4 magnitude — struck on Jan. 7. There have since been more than 2,000 aftershocks.
Sepulveda-Muniz was on the phone with her brother in early February when he felt a tremor.
“You know, you get light-headed and he had to sit down when he was talking to me because he feels like it’s moving,” she said. “It’s not stable.”
Her family lives in Ponce, along the island's southern coast — one of the areas hardest hit by the earthquakes. Unlike Hurricane Maria, which wiped out much of the island in 2017, the earthquakes largely impacted the southern and western parts of the island.
“You wake up and wonder, not just, ‘Am I going to lose my home?’ but, ‘Am I going to die?’” said Chris Farrand, emergency disaster services director of the Salvation Army Massachusetts Division.
He traveled to Puerto Rico five times in the wake of Hurricane Maria and spent 11 days on the ground after the recent earthquakes. Many people he met had been impacted by both disasters and he said, some people were cooking on rocks — particularly in remote areas — because two years after Hurricane Maria, they were still waiting for power and running water to be restored.
“People who we had just helped rebuild their home from Maria, lost it in the earthquake, so there’s a lot of levels whether it’s physical, psychic or community-wide,” he said. “Every single person I met was in deep crisis."
Adding to that crisis were the ongoing aftershocks. Hurricane Maria ended, but it’s not clear when the earth will stop rumbling or if another major earthquake is going to happen. Many buildings and homes were completely destroyed, while other were damaged. It doesn’t feel safe to stay inside, so many people have moved outdoors.
The Salvation Army and other non-profits have set up shelters, but there are also people living in tents, said Farrand, in some cases, alongside the highway.
“I’ve been to the Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Michael, Boston Marathon bombings,” he recalled. “The thing that was unique [with Puerto Rico's earthquake was], this one hadn’t finished."
Two years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Sepulveda-Muniz helped about 200 people from Puerto Rico re-settle in Brockton. Once their homes were repaired, she said many of those people returned home to Puerto Rico. Now, some of those hurricane survivors have been impacted by the earthquakes.
“I got a couple a couple of people from Puerto Rico that was here, now they want to come back,” said Sepulveda-Muniz. “They want to come back to Brockton.”
