‘We’ll Give You Whatever We Have:’ How Organizations Are Fighting to Bring Relief to Puerto Rico

The sixth-floor windows wouldn’t hold in the winds, they knew. So the doctors and staff at the University Pediatric Hospital in San Juan moved the entire neonatal intensive-care unit, the NICU, down three floors as Hurricane Maria closed in. The predicted damage came. Windows cracked, water poured in. The air-conditioning units blew away.

The entire hospital is now relying on one cooling tower. There was no running water for the first week; the dialysis machines had to be lugged to the adult hospital next door. All 12 elevators went out. The hospital relied on generators until electricity came back, last Wednesday. Only two elevators work now. The NICU, and its tiny, vulnerable patients, remain on the third floor, divided up among 20 rooms on the general pediatric ward.