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In 2020, Barreto made his way to Notre Dame to study mechanical engineering. “This catastrophe definitely confirmed what I wanted to study, which is renewable energy, in order to create independence from the grid here in Puerto Rico,” Barreto says. Energy is still unstable on the island, and power outages are regular. Some homes, even today, five years after the hurricanes, are still covered by the blue tarps handed out by the government in 2017. Their home sustained only minor damage, so they were able to serve as a refuge for friends and family who were less fortunate. They were safe, while the storm and its aftermath took the lives of thousands of their neighbors. Still, Barreto and his family count themselves lucky. “We had no running water for about three months, no electricity for six months,” he sums in his head. “This catastrophe definitely confirmed what I wanted to study, which is renewable energy, in order to create independence from the grid here in Puerto Rico.” -Lucas Barreto Barreto recalls waking up early to wait in hours-long lines for water and gasoline for generators. Winds, rain and floods decimated homes, buildings, roads and Puerto Rico’s delicate infrastructure system. What hadn’t been destroyed by Irma skirting the coast came under direct fire from Maria. The island of Puerto Rico had suffered another hurricane, Irma, a Category 5 storm, just weeks before Category 4 Maria.
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“I think it was a week after the hurricane that I could get out of my neighborhood because there were trees that were blocking the way, electric cables, everything really you could imagine.” “After the hurricane, I went outside and I saw all the poles on the ground, trees on the ground,” Barreto recounts. Once the storm passed, the real trouble began. A river ran through the home as the family hurried to lift and save what they could.
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He and his father wedged towels and T-shirts beneath the door jambs to stem the tide of water from the house, but to no avail. He tied down the trees with ropes and used extension cords to secure the doors. During the moments of reprieve from 155-mile-per-hour winds and pelting rain, he ran outside to empty the gutters, hoping to spare his home even more flooding. Lucas Barreto remembers when the eye of Hurricane Maria passed over his home in Puerto Rico in 2017. Renewable energy could be a critical solution for Puerto Ricans who went months without power after Hurricanes Maria and Irma