Gloria Meléndez knew the women’s shelter had to close down. The building was so badly damaged after Hurricane Maria that the electricity didn’t work, and water no longer ran from the taps. With nowhere for the mothers and their children to go, she decided to wait until the new year before closing the door. Shortly before Christmas, local people donated one week’s worth of fuel for the generator.

“Christmas is a big deal in Puerto Rico,” says Gloria, who works for the charity Casa de la Bondad. “And so the children decorated the tree, and put lights on it, and then for a few hours each night they lit them up using the generator.”



Seven months after the hurricane, all that remains here is the Christmas tree and old boxes of dry food. The entrance is still blocked by piles of rubble, and the water and power are still down. Across Puerto Rico, at least 150,000 people are still without electricity. And a new hurricane season looms in just a few month.

As a US territory, an estimated 135,000 people have left Puerto Rico for the mainland. The remaining island residents rely on community efforts and aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the US body responsible for disaster response, to try to rebuild. But Gloria faces a different problem. Although the shelter was forced to close down because of hurricane damage, Fema only offers loans to businesses and organisations for hurricane damage, not aid. This means women’s shelters and charitable organisations that cannot afford loans and repairs, and suffered damage when the hurricane struck, are at risk of closure if they cannot find donations. “That just wasn’t a realistic option for us,” Gloria says.



Myra Lespier Cruz, a mother of two, is among those benefitting from the support of the few women’s services still operating on the island, such as mental health support and resources for survivors of sexual violence. She still suffers shock from the hurricane, and says it exacerbated her health issues. She believes she would have died without their help. “We were hungry, and they were the ones who gave me food. I went a month without medicine for my anxiety, but they were the ones who helped me,” she says.

Myra recalls President Trump’s visit to Puerto Rico. At the time, he spoke of a death toll then estimated at 64. But subsequent media reports and estimations suggest the true number is probably more than 1,000, partly as a result of ongoing trauma caused by the hurricane, including a huge rise in suicide rates.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman in Naguabo, on the eastern side of Puerto Rico, sits outside her home after Hurricane Maria damaged the electrical grid. Photograph: Alvin Baez/Reuters

“I remember him saying around 60 people were dead, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s not true.’ There are people I know still dying from having no electricity, people who need medical machines in hospitals.

“I felt a lot of rage and frustration about that. We are American citizens too, but why don’t they help us? They’re killing us. They don’t care about our lives.”

Gloria and other charities are fighting to have Fema protocols changed to help people like Myra. Earlier this year, they met with the agency to discuss putting arrangements in place to provide them with aid, not loans, if another hurricane hits.

In the meantime, Gloria wants to reopen the shelter in the coming months, regardless of the lack of electricity, because of the urgent need for shelters for women who need to leave abusive partners. The Christmas tree that still stands in the shelter, she says, was one of the few reminders of normality the women and children once had. “I hope by the end of this year, we can light up the tree without needing to rely on a generator.”