With already well-established neighbourly bonds and organisation, the community was able to be flexible and agile and respond efficiently and effectively to disaster. Right after the hurricane, they changed strategy,” Méndez-Lázaro says. “Before the hurricane, they were trying to follow the governmental processes. He says he’s observed a shift in attitude in rural Puerto Rico since Maria and Irma swept across the island in 2017, and that many fundamental principles of resilience are organically evolving within the community of Tetuán.
For the past decade, Méndez-Lázaro has studied resilience in the face of extreme weather. Pablo Méndez-Lázaro has been visiting the rural community in the region of Utuado regularly since the storm, as part of his research at the environmental health department at the University of Puerto Rico. But if we want to make these communities healthy, we need to think of long-term projects and long-term impact,” says Valentín. “We can work to resolve the crisis and that’s all. He says the goal is not only to survive, but to thrive. To prepare for what could be more intense hurricanes, Valentín says his community in and around Tetuán is working on projects to cultivate more diversified power generation systems, more robust and accessible health systems, and a diversified, viable economy. We use the resources as we can, we don’t care, but it has consequences.” “We need to recognise that the planet changed … Humans, it’s not very proud to say, but we destroy the planet. We are living in the worst natural disaster in the last 100 years,” he says. Valentín, who is director of the non-profit organisation Corporación de Salud y Desarrollo Socioeconómico del OTOAO, says what would take a government-hired contractor a month to do, and cost thousands of dollars, the community members here built within four days, for a fraction of the cost. A few weeks after the storm, they decided to pool their knowledge and resources and rebuild it – slightly bigger – themselves. The loss of the bridge isolated much of Valentín’s community of several hundred residents. “We are in the highway of the hurricanes,” he says. Maria swept away most of the original 25-year-old concrete bridge. It crosses a mountain stream deep in the most rural hollows of the island. Tall and gregarious, Valentín waves his arms to show the length of the new bridge, made of freshly poured cement and rebar.
Four months later, Antonio “Tito” Valentín stands on a formidable bridge just outside his home of Tetuán, Puerto Rico. Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the US territory of Puerto Rico in the autumn of 2017.