ARCHAEOLOGY AFTER DARK

Over a San Juan freeway overpass, near the low-income Playita community, there’s a sign that reads, “SOS Playita Needs Water and Food.”

It was a cry for help put up by residents who say they waited more than a week after the storm without receiving any outside aid.

There was a feeling, says 21-year-old Edison Rodriguez, that his community was “running out of time. That you can only have so much water, so much food [between] each other. That’s why they put out those signs outside.”

Now, like many other parts of the country ravaged by Hurricane Maria, there are small signs that the situation here is improving — but for the residents living through it, the progress is painfully slow.

Just five percent of the island has working electricity from the hurricane-devastated grid, and cellular service is slowly getting better but is still at about a third of capacity, according to Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló Nevares.

Infrastructure problems that predated the hurricane dramatically worsened the situation in Playita. There’s a small lake right behind the neighborhood, where pumps usually prevent the water level from reaching flood levels.

Slowly, Painfully, A San Juan Neighborhood Sees Small Signs Of Improvement

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