text: In Punta Santiago, It's A Microcosm Of A Battered Puerto Rico | WBUR News
  It was two weeks after Hurricane Maria had made landfall, not far from the town of Punta Santiago in the southeast of Puerto Rico, and Arroyo still hadn't heard from her partner, who was in grave condition with a failing heart. She said he'd been transferred to a hospital in another city, the day before the storm, and with communications down across the island, she hadn't heard from him in weeks.
  "Regular las cosas," she replied, which I translate roughly to "so-so."
  Angelina Arroyo sprays her driveway down during a hot afternoon in Punta Santiago. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
  Arroyo's neighborhood was hit particularly hard by the hurricane. Maybe 100 yards away from her house, there's a canal with stagnant water, and when the floodwaters came in they swept away entire homes. Some of them remain abandoned, a stubborn reminder of the worst hurricane in living memory. Arroyo's home stayed mostly intact, but the floodwaters rose more than 6 feet high, and everything she had was soaked in the salty, brackish water.
  "Nobody came to help me fix the house," she said. "So I went back into my house, with the black water still inside, and I just continued living there."
  "Nobody came to help me fix the house. So I went back into my house, with the black water still inside, and I just continued living there."
  Angelina Arroyo Rivera
  "My daughter said, 'Mami, come stay with me,' and I said, 'I'm not leaving, I'm not leaving, I'm not leaving.'
  "I can't adapt to life over there [on the mainland]," she said. "I like freedom, to be free like a bird. I can't stand being holed up inside all the time like people do in the States. I'm happy here cleaning — with my plants."
  "It's hard, but as long as you have 'Papito Dios' in your heart and your soul, you'll be standing tall," she said. "That's what gives me, the strength to stay alive."
  A man fishes off the edge of the pier in Punta Santiago. Hurricane Maria's storm surge and high winds ripped apart the dock, sending the wooden planks two and three blocks into town. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
  "The reconstruction effort in Puerto Rico has been slow," Morales said, standing on the few planks that remained intact. "The agencies responsible for the reparation of the whole island have moved extremely slowly, compared to other events that have occurred in Puerto Rico, like Hurricane George and Hurricane Hugo."
  Morales is vice president of the nonprofit PECES, which deals with everything from education to economic development. In Maria's aftermath, like many nonprofits across the island, PECES became a de facto relief organization, receiving donations from initiatives like Massachusetts United for Puerto Rico, which has raised $3.8 million for groups helping Puerto Ricans on the island and in Massachusetts.
  But not everyone who believed they were entitled to federal relief dollars actually received any — including Morales himself. He raised an issue that's become one of the most controversial aspects of the government's response to the Puerto Rican disaster: FEMA's rejection of applications for individual relief.
  "The most important criteria to FEMA was whether people had titles, not the damage they suffered," he said. "To qualify you have to prove that you are an owner."
  It sounds like a reasonable requirement — and FEMA notes that it's the law — but Morales said it's an impractical demand for owners of land passed down through generations.
  "Because they lived their whole life there," he said. "They lived there since their grandparents owned the land … but they did not have the documentation to being owners. And they were immediately rejected [by FEMA]."
  The problem spreads across the island of Puerto Rico. In an August letter to FEMA signed by both Massachusetts senators, a group of Senate Democrats said FEMA had rejected 61 percent of the more than 1 million applications for relief. More than 43,000 appeals to those rejections came in, according to figures cited in the senators' letter, and FEMA denied 79 percent of the appeals.
  Facing criticism over the home ownership verification process, FEMA defended its work in March, saying in a statement that it was "exhausting all options ... to help Puerto Rico disaster survivors for whom proof of ownership is slowing their recovery."
  According to a FEMA spokesperson on Thursday, its appeal denial rate in Puerto Rico is nearly 75 percent, which is "in line with appeal denial rates of other current open disasters," including Texas 77 percent and Florida 74 percent.
  However, FEMA did not provide the initial denial rates for the three jurisdictions, citing the "complex nature of home ownership in Puerto Rico."
  "FEMA has been in the community. We can't deny that," he said. "But the appeals process can take months and people don't have time to wait. This is humanity we're talking about, people who want to return to their houses, people [who] want to work." And in many cases, he added, "we're talking about children."
  "We can't just tell people, 'Hey, don't leave.' This was a truly grave situation, and everybody needs to look out for their family's well being," he said. "If we were in their shoes we would probably do the same."
  Morales laments Punta Santiago's problems — the decrepit infrastructure, the economic challenges, the slow recovery — but he sees a way for things to turn around.
  His call to the federal government is this: "There should be investment in mitigation, so people can install flood-proof doors and windows. ... If FEMA is proactive, then when the next hurricane comes, the people will be ready. And after the next hurricane, people will say, 'Thank you to FEMA for allowing me to make my house resilient.' "