Maria Cruz-Vega can sometimes hear the foundation creaking when she’s in bed at night. There are holes in her floor — and her walls — and she prays the blue-tarp roof that covers her home won’t collapse on her and her family. Nearly 30,000 households in Puerto Rico are still living like this, literally without a real roof over their heads, almost two years after Hurricane Maria pummeled the island.
So far, Cruz-Vega has only received about $3,000 from FEMA. She may be able to get more aid soon.
VICE News traveled to Puerto Rico to see what recovery looks like almost two years after Hurricane Maria, just as a new hurricane season is getting started.
Since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, the government has reported zero new cases of Zika. But doctors on the ground are finding an alarming number of new infections among pregnant women. The government’s claims that the Zika crisis is over is being called into question: Could there be no new official cases because officials have just stopped counting? For this PBS NewsHour report from The GroundTruth Project and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, Beth Murphy tracks the course of Zika in Puerto Rico over the course of two years. For more on this story, listen to the Reveal episode “The Storm After the Storm.”
