No power and growing anger at ground zero in Puerto Rico

HUMACAO, Puerto Rico — The world-renowned resort community here is a ghost town. No one sits by the three-tiered pool even though it's high tourist season. At the area's largest hospital, four of the five floors are closed. Long lines still form for ice and water. Livelihoods have disappeared. "No hay luz" (there is no power) is a repeated refrain from almost everyone.

It has been three months since Hurricane Maria entered Puerto Rico like a battering ram through Humacao, sweeping through this southeastern coastal city and into the island's history as its worst natural disaster.

But the catastrophe continues. Still largely without electricity and clean water, people who withstood the hurricane's force feel abandoned and question whether the U.S. government cares about their survival.

Just about 45 minutes from the capital of San Juan — longer with the heavy traffic now on the main highway — Humacao used to draw tourists and Puerto Rican vacationers every year. Charter yachts took passengers through the warm waters to the smaller Puerto Rico island of Vieques. It is known for the world-class golf course at the Palmas del Mar resort and its pharmaceutical and medical supplies industry.

But as of mid-December, the U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb — which manufactures cardiovascular and anti-diabetes products and employs about 300 people — was still running on generators. More than half of the city's schools were closed, along with an untold number of businesses, including Humacao's major shopping center, which housed Walmart, J.C. Penney, Marshall's and the local Capri department store, among others.

"We are still in Maria. Maria has not left Humacao," said Jahaira Paris, owner of a local drugstore, Farmacia Central, in Humacao's city center. Although her business is operating on generators and seeing a spike in sales because the big shopping center is closed, she waits for electricity at home and only recently got running water.

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