On Thursday, one year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, the Puerto Rican Student Association and International Students Union hosted an open panel between students and faculty to talk about the crisis and its ongoing consequences that plague the island to this day.
Andres Quijano ’22, who was in Puerto Rico during the hurricane and experienced the storm firsthand, recounted the first two weeks after the disaster as a “grueling experience.”
“The simple act of walking outside of my household and seeing debris everywhere was surreal. The fabric of our everyday lives suddenly stopped,” Quijano told The Sun. “My daily tasks consisted of finding appropriate food, water and [standing in] 4-6 hour lines for gas. The local government wasn’t present, so we relied on grassroots support to get by.”
This article originally appeared in the Cornell Daily Sun.
