Grad Student Helps Build Resiliency in Puerto Rico

Kaya Peyton spent part of July helping Puerto Rico by documenting challenges and opportunities to better prepare for future emergencies.

Peyton is an online student who lives in Columbia, Maryland. She is in her second year of a master's program in environmental sciences at North Carolina Central University(NCCU).

In Puerto Rico, Peyton interviewed local residents in the community of Cabachuelas. She was accompanied by Anais Roque, Ph.D., academic mentor, who interpreted Spanish and supported her research project. Roque is an environmental social scientist at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

"I study how households and communities respond in the wake of emergencies and disasters," said Roque in a Zoom call from Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the Caribbean. Residents are U.S. citizens but cannot vote in federal elections.

Puerto Rico regularly experiences natural hazards, and over the past eight years has experienced a series of climate disasters, with Hurricane Maria in 2017 perhaps being the worst in recent years.

"It went through the middle of Puerto Rico," said Peyton.

"It was the longest power outage of any U.S. territory at that time," Roque said. There were issues with "water access, food quality and access. An estimated 4,000 people died. Recovery has been slow."

During her visit to the community, Peyton interviewed a resident who said that after Hurricane Maria, the flooding was so high that "people had to take a refrigerator and float it over to her house," she said.

This resident said she had climbed on top of the refrigerator and floated out of her house atop it.

Other residents told Peyton about their towns being flooded, their water drainage systems clogged, their animals getting lost or having drowned, and their houses being destroyed.

"They are deeply rooted in helping each other," Peyton said. "Even though they are a U.S. territory, they don't get the same benefits as here."

Peyton's biggest challenge was not speaking Spanish. She was pleased, however, by how welcoming residents were to her and Roque, both strangers.

"An older lady made us food, a traditional dish with cheese and ground beef," Peyton said. "That was really nice."

Peyton's ultimate goals are to report back to the Puerto Rican community with a list of organizations or government offices that can assist them, creating a plan to support capacity for community resilience and a developing a geographic information system (GIS) map to better illustrate challenges and pathways forward for future emergencies.