Feature
A Helping Hand
BY ANGELA MATUA
AMATUA@QNS.COM
Long Island City resident Michael Bu-cella
has no ties to Puerto Rico but after
hearing about the devastation plaguing
the island weeks after Hurricane Maria
hit, he decided to take action.
Bucella, who works in finance, was at
a work meeting discussing the island’s
debt when the group began to talk about
the lack of power and clean water in the
area. Soon after, he booked a flight to
Puerto Rico and for three days traveled
around the island handing out supplies
and meeting those most acutely affected
by the hurricane.
“I’m not Puerto Rican,” he said. “I don’t
have any friends in Puerto Rico. The
reaction I got from everybody was, ‘Are
you crazy? There’s nothing left.’”
Bucella left on the morning of Oct.
6 with two bags of supplies and stayed
in a hostel called The Mango Mansion
in Condado, Puerto Rico. He landed on
an island with no power, no drinking
water, no diesel and where temperatures
topped 90 degrees everyday.
“I got a bed, one of four beds in
a corner room with no windows, no
ventilation,” he said. “I had to leave my
door open all night. It was probably 90
degrees and we were eaten alive by
mosquitoes.”
Though Bucella registered with
several volunteer organizations “last
minute” he hadn’t heard from them and
four hours into his stay, he began to
get antsy and decided to chat with his
hostel mates.
The people he met came from all over
the country and for different reasons.
He met a nurse, Glenda from Connecti-cut,
Dan Matias, a 70-year-old Chicago
resident who was born in Puerto Rico
and a couple from Chicago who came
down to try to find their mother— who
they hadn’t heard from in three weeks.
Matias, who was also a Vietnam vet-eran,
decided to rent a truck to hand
out supplies himself. Bucella joined him
and the pair — on some days they were
accompanied by Glenda and others —
traversed the island to help in any way
they could.
What Bucella saw throughout his stay
was “terrible, enlightening, inspiring, sad
but also unifying,” he said.
26 NOVEMBER 2017 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
The group left the hostel around 7:30
a.m. every morning and visited a number
of towns including Arecibo, Utuado,
which Bucella said was one of the worst
hit, Carolina, Rio Grande and others.
Many people Bucella came across
asked him if he was from FEMA or the
Red Cross. Many also told him that they
hadn’t seen anyone from agencies since
the hurricane hit.
“They said, ‘We haven’t had drinking
water. We’re waiting on rain water to
come down to drink it,’” he was told.
Bucella said the people he spoke
to lived too far from grocery stores or
gas stations. Many were elderly or had
children and could not travel far for
supplies. The desperation was most
starkly apparent when he saw one man
snacking on cat food.
“I went initially with the thought of
helping and being excited to do it and
left angry,” he said. “There are a lot of
folks that have not seen any support
whatsoever.”
When the rain did come, it was tor-rential.
The streets would turn into rivers
and people scrambled to pump water
out of their previously flooded homes.
Bucella and other volunteers would
visit grocery stores every morning
to purchase supplies and the only
place he could take cash out was at
a casino in San Juan. While casinos
and major hotels had power — they
were housing military officials, Red
Cross and FEMA personnel — so
many other places he visited were
powerless.
“Supplies are not getting distrib-uted
as quickly as they need to be
or as equitably as they need to be,”
he said.
The Puerto Rican government has
been updating the website status.pr
with progress it has made in terms
of getting power, water, diesel and
hospitals up and running. Though
government officials report that 45
people have died as a result of the
hurricane, disaster experts and Puerto
Rican media are arguing that the fig-ure
could actually be in the hundreds.
Since diesel is scarce for people
who are not in major cities, those who
need medical care cannot access
the services they need. On his way
back to New York, Bucella spoke to a
