As if it were a brigade of these home renovation programs, but not from the magic of television, but from the solidarity that social networks sometimes inspire, a community in Puerto Rico came together after the passage of Hurricane Fiona to help a man after a video of him asking for help after the storm went viral.
“I ask nothing else. A help, right?” Don Julio said in some images that quickly went viral on TikTok. “Help me clean my house even if I’m left with no furniture, nothing but it’s clean,” said the man in the middle of the mud. In the video, taken outside his home in Añasco on the west of the island, the man claimed he received no help from federal authorities in the United States or from local authorities in Puerto Rico after Hurricane María passed through the island before five years after that storm left the country in the dark and relived the trauma of many Puerto Ricans.
Don Julio confessed that because of his advanced age he could not clean his house alone or remove the furniture and objects damaged by the water and the force of the storm. Then social networks: thousands of likes and shares and the magic of the community. Last Saturday a crew of mostly young volunteers came to his house with brooms, cleaning supplies and a new mattress, they helped him repair his house and removed everything that was no longer usable.
“The city has arrived,” one of the volunteers is heard saying as they work on the video showing the home’s renovation. Don Julio’s story had a happy ending, but the island continues to suffer the devastation of Hurricane Fiona, which left at least eight dead and much of the island in darkness. The blackout caused by the storm revived unrest against the management of the power system by Luma Energy, the private consortium that the government awarded in 2021 a 15-year contract to transmit and distribute power on the island.
It was revealed this week that Hurricane Fiona damaged 50% of transmission lines and distribution lines in Puerto Rico, where hundreds of thousands of people are left without power or water two weeks after the storm.