Posted: 9/18/2018
‘Nothing about Puerto Rico after the storm approached normalcy’
On the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, devastating the island and plunging all of its 3.4 million residents into a desperate humanitarian crisis. Roberto de la Cruz, MD, Parkland Health & Hospital System’s Chief Medical Officer sat glued to his computer watching a live video-feed from the island and fearing for the safety of his family and friends who reside there.
With sustained winds clocked at nearly 155 mph – just two mph short of Category 5 status – it wasn’t long before all communication with the island was lost. As he watched in fear for his homeland, Dr. de la Cruz did the only thing he could think of. He bought a plane ticket home.
Despite multiple attempts to communicate, a few days would pass before he was finally able to reach anyone on the island. Though relieved to hear their voices, he was even more determined to make the trip. “I need to see family and touch base,” he said at the time.
Weighted down with three bags, each weighing 50 pounds and packed with much-needed items such as solar lights, and armed with his medical license and stethoscope, Dr. de la Cruz boarded a flight the morning of Oct. 6 and headed to Puerto Rico.
As the plane made its descent into San Juan, tears filled his eyes. “It was shocking. There were no leaves on the trees; they just looked like matchsticks,” he recalled. Soon though, he had tears of joy. In a Facebook post he wrote, “Family is doing well! Tired and hot, but very resourceful and in good spirits.”
The five days he spent with family and friends went by all too quickly and Dr. de la Cruz knew he had to do more. Though back in Dallas, the pull toward Puerto Rico was great. That’s when he sat down with Parkland CEO Dr. Fred Cerise who, as the former Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, had experienced first-hand the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. “Dr. Cerise convinced me to stand down and wait until the island had moved from a rescue mission to a recovery one,” he said.
With support from Parkland’s CEO, at the end of January 2018 Dr. de la Cruz took a two month leave from the hospital to work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Puerto Rico.
“Nothing about Puerto Rico after the storm approached normalcy. The beauty I saw was in the rebuilding in the lives being lived with joy and grace in the most trying of circumstances. Being there was one of the most calming and soul-filling experiences of this trip,” he said, quoting from a New York Times article written by Jada Yuan.
His HHS assignment was to help determine the current state of healthcare on the island and the capacity to prepare for the next storm. He visited hospitals in the outlying mountainous regions. There were instances where machetes were required to cut through the thick brush that had enveloped the roads following the storm. Still, Dr. de la Cruz was amazed by the resilience of staff he met, some of whom had been trapped in the hospital for days caring for patients who were too sick to move in a building with a damaged roof, holes in walls and flooding an ever-present concern.
For an instant, he looked above. “There is a beautiful sky here. Nature is kind and exuberant. She has not disappointed. No paradox, there, accepting that she can be kind and punishing in no special order,” he thought.
During his trip Dr. de la Cruz and the team traveled from San Juan for more than two-and-a-half hours by car to get to Castañer General Hospital. This place held special meaning for Parkland’s CMO because as a medical student he lived in Castañer for a month while on his family practice rotation. There, the hospital’s Chief Medical Officer José Rodriguez described what things had been like in the storm’s aftermath.
“Our hospital’s maintenance director, Agustin Ponce, drove his four-wheel-drive Jeep ahead of the ambulance evaluating the way. Community members who accompanied him used rods to lift downed wires blocking the road, making it possible for the ambulance to pass. What was typically a little more than a 45-minute journey took over two hours,” Dr. Rodriguez said.
It was stories like Dr. Rodriguez’s that were repeated countless times during his two-month island assignment. And though recovery efforts seemed as if they were reduced to a snail’s pace, Dr. de la Cruz was inspired by what he witnessed in Puerto Rico.
“I was impressed by the leadership and the ways in which people learned to improvise. I saw a case where a hospital was trying to buy a gas station so staff would have fuel to get to work and instead of giving cash they were giving IOUs,” he said, his voice trailing off. “And it turns out that the main health need wasn’t medicines or doctors. It was communication, transportation and electricity. Once these needs were eventually met, the new normal had begun.”
As the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria approaches, Dr. de la Cruz pauses to reflect. “I believe nature will recover, but it will look different. This is not something that is going to take months; it will take years.”
For more information about services available at Parkland, please visit www.parklandhospital.com