Javier Rivera-Aquino is a lawyer who supplemented his income by raising bananas on a 17-acre plot of land in the mountains of west-central Puerto Rico until five years ago, when Hurricane Maria plowed into the island and swept away his plantation.
For Rivera-Aquino, this week revived painful memories of 2017 as another powerful storm, Fiona, inflicted a fresh round of destruction on an island still struggling to recover from Maria.
Rivera-Aquino knows too well the challenges now facing his neighbors around Lares, about 62 miles southwest of San Juan, the capital city. "Maybe it'll be weeks, maybe longer in the mountains," said Rivera-Aquino, who feels fortunate to have installed solar panels on his home and a large cistern to catch rainwater to supply his family.Jonathan Berrios, a writer who lives in the small city of Cidra, said Fiona brought a deluge of about 30 inches of rain as the storm battered the island for hours with wind gusts at times up to 90 mph.