Skip to main content

Sending Relief by Air and Sea to Puerto Rico From the Bronx - The New York Times

posted onOctober 17, 2017
>

Article snippet: The pleas for help, arriving in text messages and on Facebook, have not relented, filling Lymaris Albors’s phone since the hurricane that roared across Puerto Rico, her homeland. The people on the other end were asking for all sorts of things: food, generators, solar lights, tarpaulins to take the place of roofs shredded by the hurricane. As she assembled the items and looked for ways to deliver them, her corner office in the South Bronx had been transformed into a makeshift command center. A growing list of needs covered one whiteboard. The logistical details of how she planned to ship them filled another. And there was yet another list, this one with the people and the groups on the island to whom she hoped to send aid. “How and when,” she conceded, “I have no idea.” Ms. Albors has a number of titles at the Acacia Network, a health and social services organization that is among the largest founded and run by New York’s Puerto Rican diaspora. She is usually the chief of staff to the chief executive officer and vice president of business development. But for the past few weeks, her work has boiled down to one all-consuming job: coordinator, putting together the nonprofit organization’s relief efforts for Puerto Rico. Already, two planes loaded with supplies, including one with dozens of generators, had flown to the island, and Acacia employees had been dispatched there to help. Next, they planned to fill a cargo container, which would be sent by ship. The work at... Link to the full article to read more

Emotional score for this article