Many in Puerto Rico still under tarps as storm threat looms
Hurricane Maria ripped away part of the steel roof from Carmen Lidia Torres Mercado’s home in the Puerto Rican capital. Nine months later, she is still relying on a blue plastic tarp to protect her home, even with a new storm season already two weeks old.
Torres points out where rain seeps into the bedroom of her small house in a San Juan neighborhood known as Barriada Figueroa, where the narrow streets surged with floodwaters during the Sept. 20 storm. But the 60-year-old retiree says she has no money to fix it on her own and doesn’t have the documents proving home ownership that she needs to qualify for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“In truth, this isn’t a suitable place to live,” Torres said in an interview at her home on a recent morning.
There are thousands of people in similar circumstances across Puerto Rico nearly nine months since the most devastating storm to strike the island in decades. Blue tarps or sturdier plastic sheets installed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are still widely visible around the island, though FEMA and local government agencies say they can’t say for certain how many roofs still need to be replaced.
Read more: http://www.concordmonitor.com/Many-in-Puerto-Rico-still-under-tarps-as-storm-threat-looms-18325929