Agua y Luz para Utuado

Friends, In the absence of any communication with my family in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria, last week I decided to fly to Puerto Rico to find them. I found my family and friends and they are all fine but the country’s infrastructure was completely destroyed. I have to highlight the fact that the island’s infrastructure was destroyed but Puerto Rico wasn’t. Some media outlets are portraying an image of low morale with people basically waiting to die but that is not what I found there. I found people trying to assimilate the depth of the damage caused by the storm but at the same time moving forward and balancing the daily challenges of finding water, food and fuel with efforts to clean our town and restore what was lost. Among all the chaos and destruction I felt uplifted by the fact that I didn’t see anyone depressed or even crying. I found people moving and working hard every day. I saw a lady from our neighborhood working day and night removing mud from her house after it was flooded by the nearby river. The image that stayed with me was that lady removing mud from a flower vase in front of her house, getting it ready for a future when we will have flowers again. Based on everything that I saw, I consider that my hometown will be without running water and electricity for weeks or even months. Most of the power lines are on the ground and the water supply infrastructure was severely damaged. With a mindset of “think globally, act locally” I’m reaching out to you to help the people of Utuado. Your donations will be used to provide recovery tools including generators (to run at least a refrigerator), water purifiers, solar/dynamo crank radios (batteries are scarce and they don’t have access to the news), solar powered flashlights and solar lighting systems. The post office opened a few days ago and we can easily ship these items to Utuado. - Portable 2200-Watts Inverter Generator: $624 + $105 for shipping - Water Purifier: $59.50 - Radio/Charger Unit: $55.00 - Solar Powered Flashlights: $12.99 - Solar home lights system: $149.99 I don’t have a set goal because any contribution helps. Please help me share this request with as many people as possible. Muchas gracias, Martin