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CNN: La Ruta De María: A journey along the path of the hurricane
john d. sutter
Feb 14, 2019
Data analysis by Sergio Hernandez, CNN
Video by McKenna Ewen and John D. Sutter, CNN
Updated 3:13 PM ET, Thu February 1, 2018
On the path of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (CNN)Each morning before work, Héctor Luis Rodríguez Nieves showers with a garden hose behind his tattered home. He uses the jungle as his restroom.
He sleeps on a mattress in what once was the kitchen. Above the bed, clothes hang from the rafters -- like Spanish moss from trees. The floor in his old bedroom turned to cardboard and sags like a trampoline. A hole opened up. Few places in the house stay dry. That's because, three months after Hurricane Maria, he still doesn't have a functional roof. Others might have given up, or moved away, but Rodríguez, a 35-year-old with boyish freckles and a ruler-straight hairline, lived in this house as a child. After his father passed away a few years ago, he says, he moved back in. This is home; he doesn't want to leave. So he's saving up paychecks from his part-time hardware store job to buy cinder blocks to rebuild. A couple dozen or so are piled in the yard. And he tried to install a tarp on his own. It doesn't do much.
Where Americans live without roofs
Three months after Hurricane Maria, a CNN investigation shows tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans have applied for temporary roofs -- and still don't have them.
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