Families Desperately Try To Make Contact With Relatives In Puerto Rico
BOSTON (CBS) - Radio transmissions from Puerto Rico are what Robert Martinez and his family are clinging to now. "We don't have any communication, no cellphones. We are in the blind waiting for somebody to call us," said Martinez.
It seems like minute by minute checks of their own phones for word from loved ones that hasn't come. The pictures out of their flooded homeland are devastating and their relatives are in Yabucoa, one of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Maria. "The waiting is the hardest for all of us, just waiting for that call," he said.
They see videos posted on Facebook of the devastation, stripped trees a testament to the power of the wind in the hurricane that pounded the island for hours. Paul Craig found limited service in Old San Juan and was able to FaceTime with WBZ-TV. The Cape Cod businessman, on a trip to Puerto Rico, was caught himself in the Category 4 storm.
Unable to return on his scheduled flight yesterday, he hunkered down in a local hotel. "That's a concrete building, walls were vibrating, the doors were just flexing in and out all night long," he said.
Craig worries it will get desperate soon on the island that's completely without power. Also worried about his family is Izzy Moldonado, a native Puerto Rican who owns a restaurant in Cambridge. "They're going to be in trouble without light, water, no food, maybe very soon they'll be without food too," he said.