Under a brilliant, sunny sky, hundreds of townspeople bade an emotional farewell Saturday to four members of a family killed when Hurricane Hortense engulfed their canyon-bottom home in a violent flash flood.
Mourners filed through the Pedro Funeral Home to pay their respects to the dead and to the five members of the Gomez Rodriguez family who survived after a dramatic rescue Tuesday. The line stretched out onto the street.Esteban Gomez Rodriguez, 50, and his wife, Genoveva, 44, were buried in the same grave at Guayama's municipal cemetery. Nephew Miguel, 18, and daughter-in-law Luz Miriam Cruz, 25, were placed in nearby plots.
"It just tells me that my father was a very well-loved man," a shaking Wanda Garcia-Gomez, 33, of Miami said of the crowd that had come to mourn Esteban, a popular fruit juice vendor.
Nineteen people died in Puerto Rico and five died in the Dominican Republic when Hortense's unrelenting rains triggered flash flooding and devastating mud-slides Tuesday. Damage surpassed $155 million in Puerto Rico alone.
Electricity was restored to 90 percent of households and businesses in Puerto Rico on Saturday, including San Juan, which was finally back online, five days after the hurricane struck.
Hortense's winds dropped to 90 mph as it sped northeastward through the north Atlantic. It was expected to pass within 60 miles of Nova Scotia late Saturday. Rains ahead of the storm caused scattered power outages in Halifax.
Twenty-six Puerto Rican towns and cities were declared disaster areas, making residents eligible for federal emergency aid. U.S. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena surveyed the damage Saturday.
In Guayama, residents remembered the Gomezes as a hard-working family who had lived in the single-story, pink-and-white house in the canyon community of Culebra for at least 12 years.
Richard Cruz, 35, and his four children - Cassandra, 1; Christian, 2; Miriam, 5; and Richard Jr., 7 - holed up in a closet for nine hours as the flood blasted through the home. Private citizens Miguel Ariel Rodriguez and Jose Luis de Leon saved the five by pulling them along a rope tossed across the torrent.
Richard's wife, Miriam, and the other three victims had been swept away hours earlier. Their bodies were recovered as far as 10 miles downstream.
Esteban was well-known in town for selling fresh orange and grapefruit juice. His delivery trucks were fixtures on Guayama's hilly streets.
"He was a nice guy. He was always at his work. He was always making that juice. The guy worked hard," said a family friend, Willie Ruiz.
A family photo showed a smiling Esteban and Genoveva, stirring a pot of beans, at a recent family beach picnic.
Relatives said they called for help repeatedly Tuesday, to no avail. Richard Cruz said he tried to call civil defense authorities and no one answered.
"What good did civil defense do? Nothing," said a Culebra neighbor, Carmen Vasquez. "They came without equipment."
Lt. Eliecer Colon, who was among the first officers on the scene, said that police initially couldn't reach Culebra because a bridge was submerged in the river.