A Prayer For Peace

Ayyy Puerto Rico. Bendiciones y paz. Praying for peace, calmer days and steady ground to go forth, literally. 🇵🇷 Tato bien ahora? Is everyone safe, albeit awake and in the dark post-earthquake?

I’ve been sitting here across the world feeling helpless, texting friends/fam on island and wishing there were more I could do to settle Mother Nature. Puerto Rico doesn’t deserve to have its people, its natural treasures, its buildings, its power grid 🤦🏻‍♀️, its systems rattled, shaken, tested, broken. No place or population deserve to live in fear or danger, not in the face of any natural or manmade threat or force. Pero ya tu sabes, nothing can break the spirit and resilience of boricuas. With you today, tomorrow and always. 🙏🏾🇵🇷

Sending love from a quiet 🤞🏼 fault zone across the country to one that hopefully will soon be quiet again once more — and sipping creamy coconut cocoa and spooning myself chocolate coconut pie in your honor… call it my Bay Area hippie vegan version of coquito and tembleque?! 🤷🏻‍♀️ Ni idea. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Besos. ♥️

The earthquakes sadly keep coming, so updating (here and mostly Twitter @ErinSchrode)…

I’d be cool with no middle-of-the-night news alerts or WhatsApps about natural disasters or power outages hitting Puerto Rico ever again. 🙏🏾🇵🇷 Bendiciones a todos.

Oh these images of destroyed homes, buildings, churches, roads, bridges and more from our beloved island are horrifying, tragic, frightening. I continue praying for Puerto Rico and all affected by the earthquakes.🙏🏾🇵🇷

I’m checking in on friends in/near Yauco and the areas most affected by tonight’s earthquakes (yes, plural). I just got this answer: “Thank you... ESTAMOS bien Gracias a Dios. Te avisamos.” And that really is the precise thing I want to hear from everyone in Puerto Rico.🙏🏾🇵🇷

Yet another earthquake just hit Puerto Rico. Magnitude 6.0, after many smaller aftershocks. 🙏🏾♥️ The first death has also been reported by Telemundo PR, when a wall fell on an elderly man. More injuries are confirmed. Damage appears serious across the south and southwest of the island.

The sun is rising on Puerto Rico after multiple overnight earthquakes that have devastated towns across the south of the island. 🙏🏾🇵🇷 Bendiciones. Prayers. Be safe, all.

More images from the damages caused by the overnight earthquakes that shook Puerto Rico are coming in after daybreak, including a school in Guanica. Warnings about widespread structural faults have long circulated. Thank goodness there were no students when the building fell at 4am. What horrors, destruction and disruptions these children have had to and continue to endure across Puerto Rico. 🙏🏾🇵🇷 I continue to pray for all and for the island as a whole.

A seismologist told CBS News' David Begnaud the chances of an earthquake greater than yesterday’s 5.8 magnitude hitting Puerto Rico again were less than THREE PERCENT (3%!!)… yet it happened this morning with multiple quakes around 6.0 and even up to 6.4 rattling the island. Prayers. 🙏🏾🇵🇷

I sincerely hope (and pray and demand) that the CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES in Puerto Rico who are newly suffering from these earthquakes and still suffering from ongoing recovery or lack thereof post-Hurricane Maria receive the swift, adequate, coordinated, just, comprehensive aid, help, assistance and otherwise that is necessary (not to mention legally obligated and formally required) from the local, islandwide and federal governments.