Once the extreme winds ceased, some residents of Barrio Higuillar faced a new storm in their lives: the loss of their homes.
Nelly Nieves has been 10 years living in the La Aldea Sector of Higuillar in Dorado, Puerto Rico. “There’s no way to explain it”, she stated while going up the stairs to see, for the first time, how her home was left. “Look at this! Nothing was left, nothing, nothing!”
Nelly remarked about how her home was tied up, but the hurricane being a category 4, she decided to stay in with her niece. It was her best decision. “We started to cry. We felt like our house started to break away, and we heard the furniture moving downstairs.” Nothing remained of her house. Only ruins that evidence that, at a point in time, there was a home there.