Volunteers offer help to Puerto Ricans psychologically rattled by earthquakes

Two Long Island-based mental health clinicians are members of a team of dozens of professionals from New York who traveled to Puerto Rico to help that island’s residents cope with mental stress as damaging to their health as the massive earthquake that struck the territory a month ago.

“We’re here to support them and help provide needed resources,” said Yamith Soacha of Ronkonkoma, an employee of Farmingdale-based Catholic Health Services who flew into San Juan on Monday and is scheduled to stay for a week. “If a person is actually in crisis, we try to get them the medical attention that they need.”

Soacha, a licensed clinical social worker, is paired up with fellow CHS employee Karen Camargo of Farmingdale, a licensed master’s social worker, to respond to a 6.4 magnitude earthquake that not only struck the island just a month ago – but continues to wreak havoc.

“For us, what really has put things into perspective is the fact that it hasn’t stopped,” Soacha said of the aftershocks, including a 5.0 magnitude temblor that hit on Tuesday. “The earthquakes haven’t stopped. We are still in crisis here because the earthquakes don’t stop.”

Camargo said during a phone interview from the island that Puerto Rico’s residents are perhaps less able to manage through the current crisis than they were in September 2017, when Hurricane Maria caused an estimated $100 billion in damage because this natural disaster -- unlike Maria which swept across the island and went out to sea -- has not yet left.

“That retraumatizes an already vulnerable population,” she said. “With each earthquake, the houses become even more compromised . . . They live in this constant fear that if they go inside, the roof will collapse.”

The pair is part of a team of about 30 volunteering professionals dispatched to Puerto Rico through the Greater New York Hospital Association, and the team members work at various local institutions on Long Island and other parts of the state.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who traveled with the group, on Monday met with Soacha and Camargo along with the other volunteers and toured several towns including Yauco, Guayanilla, Peñuelas and Ponce, posting pictures of herself and the GNYHA contingent on her Twitter page.

They have been counseling hundreds of people a day in 16 hard-hit towns, their days beginning at 7 a.m. and riding from San Juan to locations up to two hours away to treat residents with injuries more psychological than physical.

They travel in vans and split up into teams to find shell shocked residents relieved to see someone who cares.

“A lot of the individuals will see us arrive and they would look at us and tears would start coming down their faces,” Camargo said.

“They’re grieving the loss of anything -- their life, their property, their community,” Soacha said, adding that the common ailment is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. “They’re just stressed out.”

But Camargo and Soacha said that they have also come across victims with physical injuries, including someone whose arm was hurt when a door fell on her.

“People are so overwhelmed and begin to neglect their own health,” Camargo said. “They are just too confused and traumatized.”

The mission is the first of its kind for both Soacha and Camargo, neither of whom had previously traveled to a disaster zone to use their skills to help.

“I was really excited to help,” Camargo said. “I want to help in any way I can.”

Soacha said she felt compelled to work to help a part of her community living over 1,500 miles away from Long Island.

“As a human being and a professional, I always wanted to be involved and do something of this magnitude,” she said. “And I am very involved with the Hispanic community through CHS . . .  I know the dire need for bilingual therapists. I felt it’s my duty to stand up for my Hispanic community.”