In October 2017, weeks after Hurricane Maria’s winds peeled Dachiramarie Vila’s wood and zinc house off its foundation, the water and food she had stored began to run out. Supermarkets in her hometown of Las Piedras, Puerto Rico, started rationing goods. Gasoline became scarce. Clean drinking water was hard to come by.
Soon, mosquito bites would dot her children’s bodies. Then Vila’s son fell ill, most likely with an infection from contaminated water. The boy’s pediatrician told her he couldn’t conduct any tests to verify; the laboratory had been destroyed in the storm. That’s when, sitting with the doctor in an unlit hospital corridor, flashlight in hand, Vila broke down.
“I’m going,” she said she later told her family. “I can’t do anything else. I can’t live like this anymore.” Vila, her husband, and their two children—along with eight extended family members—fled to Orlando, Florida.
The Urban Institute
February 28, 2022