On September 20th, 2017, a catastrophe impacted the island of Puerto Rico. With wind speeds of up to 140 miles, this natural disaster known as Hurricane Maria left the island in a crippled and ruined state. Now, over half a year later, those residing on the island are still in dire need of help and assistance.

Here, at the University of Dayton, many students who call the island of Puerto Rico their home were also heavily impacted by this disastrous storm. Though they reside here in the states, the unknowingness of their families and loved ones affected on the island, was something heavily felt throughout campus, even to this very day.

These students, with their hometowns and memories torn apart by Hurricane Maria, allowed for me to imagine a way in which their stories could be told: stories and experiences that need to be heard, now more than ever before.

Through this new project, I aim to provide a platform for those students who were impacted. I hope that by seeing their images and reading their stories, those who also reside within the University of Dayton campus and beyond can react and feel the emotions of that horrific day from those individuals who were personally impacted.

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Alexandra D. was kind enough to be the first student I was able to interview and photograph. Her story can be found in the following quotes below:

"I called off work and classes the day before the hurricane hit. And they sent us an email from Office of Multicultural Affairs and President Spina said to take it easy and send out prayers. And 3 days passed and I had no contact with my family. We live in the forest and the house was trapped in the middle of trees so people from the outside had to help my family because they couldn’t get out.

We live so deep in the mountains with three other houses. We were one of the last houses to get electricity. We just got electricity and it’s been shaky.

I was here, super nervous calling everyone who had a signal asking if they heard from my family. On Facebook asking people if they heard anything. The 3rd day I heard from people about my family.

The parents were trying to downplay the situation so we didn't get worried but the entire island is trees and it all crashed down. That’s how sinkholes happened and mountains fell on them. My parents have to pay thousands of dollars to fix the mountain that hurt our house."

"The way that the cities are built, there's always a church. We lived like 10 mins away from there, as well as the police and community so it’s far.

The government sucks. When my mom started a riot like last month because it has been months since the hurricane, they all gathered near the basketball field and began to riot. They would scream "hey give us water."

Everyone was sitting around waiting for the government to do something, but they wouldn’t do anything.

When I went in December we had no water or electricity. During the night we would turn on the generator but they would up the prices on gas. So every two days we would pay almost $100 for the generators to work and that was just at night.

From washing clothes and doing things without electricity was interesting, buying food we really couldn’t. It would spoil easily because it wouldn’t keep and you couldn’t buy a lot, and there wasn’t anything really left to buy anyways.

There was a Kmart that got robbed because no one had any money. The police stopped working because they weren’t getting paid."

"The hurricane had a path, definitely. It hit a lot of places where the houses were in the middle, where all around them were mountains. Did it affect the island? The entire island was devastated - a complete power outage. There wasn’t water because everything broke.

89%-91% of our foods are imported. Basically, we were fucked. Even during the crisis they would charge us tax.

My dad has a coffee farm and we have peppers. Now everything is done. He says it will take at least 3 years to start up with the hurricane damage to the soil.

Because we are on an island, we are completely fucked. One of our beaches was wonderful, now it's gone. When I went there in December so many people would tell us not to go to the beaches."

"Living here with another Puerto Rican, we were both nervous. So I wasn't the only person waiting to hear. I think it took her longer to hear even though we live in completely separate areas... but it was nice to have her.

I couldn't imagine being without communication out here in the states. Whenever someone heard something about Puerto Rico they would upload it on Facebook so I would always be checking. It would allow for you to gather info firsthand other than the news.

I went home in August for like 3 weeks, then in December. I could see vegetation starting to grow but I couldn't imagine the place so flat and empty.

My house used to have this huge tree probably 20 feet tall - I grew up with that tree. It was gone completely. It was like I was in a different place.

Since there were so many trees I felt so isolated, but now I look out and can see that I’m not so far from civilization."

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To help aid those still impacted by Hurricane Maria, please visit the following link(s):

http://www.unidosporpuertorico.com/en/

https://give.internationalmedicalcorps.org