The Daily - Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018

Episode Date: February 8, 2018

Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 20, flooding neighborhoods and villages and cutting power to 3.4 million people. More than four months later, much of the island is still in shock. A recent visit to a suicide prevention center shows the long-term toll on mental health in a place struck by the overwhelming impression that the rest of the world has moved on. Guest: Caitlin Dickerson, a national reporter for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, a visit to a call center shows the long-term toll on mental health in a place where the storm has long passed and the rest of the world has moved on. It's Thursday, February 8th. Caitlin, describe for me what you see as you walk into the call center. It's almost like walking into a teeny little elementary school classroom. Caitlin Dickerson is a national reporter for The Times. There are low

ceilings, tile floors, fluorescent lighting. There are signs posted with thumbtacks up on the desks that remind the call center workers to speak with compassion, to speak with love. And they're sitting in these little cramped cubicles right next to each other. They have a computer, and then they each have multiple phones because sometimes they have to pass phones back and forth to one another in an emergency so that two or three people can be working

with one caller at a time. And the phones in this room just ring constantly. I was standing next to this woman named Maria. She's worked there for four years. She's got curly hair and a really big smile. She's expressive when she talks. And every day she comes to work, she sits down at a cubicle and she starts taking these phone calls. Hola, buenas, ¿con quién hablo? And when I was there, she got a really intense one. Okay. Okay.

Okay. She's saying, I need to practice breathing with you. And I can tell you're distressed. And I need to help lower your levels of anxiety. Okay. So let's practice. Okay, you're going to inhale smoothly through your nose and then exhale through your mouth. And we're going to do it three times on the count of three, okay?

One, two, three. This helps us, right? This helps us, right? This helps us calm down a little. She says, I don't know you, but your life is important to me. I want to ask you, these plans, are they structured? Do you want to take your life by taking pills? But you do matter. You are important.

She's saying material things, those can be recovered, but your life, you can't get that back. Caitlin, what do we know about the person on the other end of this phone call? So Maria told me that she's a 45-year-old woman. She was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She's been working at a department store. She lived alone. And about six years ago, she saved up enough money to buy her own house. So she was really kind of living the dream.

And then the hurricane hit. Hurricane Maria making landfall in Puerto Rico. The island is getting pummeled with life-threatening winds and widespread flooding. We're down here on the street level where conditions are just getting worse. The winds are so powerful and they're only getting stronger. Tapping trees and tearing off rooftops. 150 mile an hour winds ripping buildings apart, knocking out power everywhere. All of the electricity is out tonight. One official saying the island is destroyed.

The department store is so damaged in the storm that it shuts down. So this woman loses her job, the job that helped her buy this house and have this life. She loses her job, she loses her car her buy this house and have this life. She loses her job. She loses her car in the storm. And she was evacuated. She'd been staying with a friend. So on this day, this is the first time she actually returns to her house and she plans to start cleaning, start going back to life as much as she can.

But she finds that the house is devastated. The roof is gone. The windows are gone. Her possessions are completely destroyed. And she has this bottle of pills, this medication that she takes normally, but that if she takes enough of it, it could kill her. And so when she starts to think about doing that is when she makes this emergency phone call. And what number is she calling? Who does she think she's calling? We actually don't know who she called because in Puerto Rico, if you call 911 or if you call a police station or if you call an emergency room and you say that you're suicidal, all of those phone calls are routed to this one call center that I visited. It's open 24 hours a day. It's run by the Puerto Rican government. And ever since Maria hit, the calls have increased really dramatically.

Kaitlin, how did you end up reporting from inside this call center in Puerto Rico? Well, I got there because I'd spent a few weeks covering the storm. And it was, you know, traditional natural disaster coverage. We're looking at how many people were killed, how many people were injured. What does the infrastructure of the island look like? But as time passes, it starts to become clear that this is not like the other hurricanes that hit Florida and hit Texas earlier this year. This is a really specific situation that Puerto Rico is dealing with. This morning at San Juan's main port, critically needed supplies and thousands of shipping containers are just sitting there and not getting to people who need them in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

there and not getting to people who need them in the wake of Hurricane Maria. We're on an island. Resources and supplies aren't coming in from the mainland as quickly as people would expect them to. 85% of Puerto Rico's cell phone towers, landlines, and internet cables are disabled. The infrastructure isn't coming back. All of the electricity is out tonight. And some areas may not have it restored for months. The power grid isn't coming back online. I'm just concerned that we may not get to everybody in time. And it's not clear who to blame. It's been exactly five weeks. Almost two months.

Four months since hurricanes swept through the Caribbean, about half of Puerto Ricans remain without electricity. And at the same time, there's this sense on the island that the rest of the world has sort of moved on, that the public is not paying any attention, and that nobody really cares. And so as I'm talking to people, it's kind of against that backdrop that I start to hear over and over again. People telling me about having panic attacks, about not being able to sleep, about feeling depressed and anxious. Some people who struggled with mental illness before, but a lot of people who'd never experienced anything like this. And now we're

talking about suicide. And so I started asking around and sure enough, emergency rooms said they had been filling up with people who had suicidal thoughts. And then I went to the Puerto Rican government and they acknowledged that there were signs of a full-blown mental health crisis. Is that an entirely new phenomenon in Puerto Rico as a result of the storm? The idea of a mental health crisis? Well, remember that Puerto Rico has been dealing with a 10-year economic recession that has caused massive unemployment. Nearly half the island was living in poverty. Huge numbers of people had fled the island.

And so the island's mental health was steadily getting worse. And in many ways, the storm just added to that in really dramatic fashion. And you see it in the ways that people's daily lives have been upended, but soon as I see the rain, as soon as I see the sky turn gray or a little bit of water start to puddle on the ground, I'm brought back to Hurricane Maria and people were having what they call catastrophic thoughts where they would think, I'm going to drown, I'm going to lose everything, I'm going to die. So that to me was a really clear illustration of how much worse Hurricane Maria has made the circumstances on the island. So when this woman's call lands at the center, what is Maria trained to do in this moment? So Maria has to establish a couple of things right away. She needs to find out whether the woman has a structured plan for how she might hurt herself.

And the second is, when is the last time she's thought about the plan? When does she think she might actually do it? And in this case, not only does the woman have a plan, she knows exactly how she wants to do it, but she's telling Maria, I'm going to do this right now. So this is the most dire type of phone call that comes into the call center. This woman's life is in imminent danger. So Maria has to get someone else involved, and she doesn't even have time to turn to the police. So she asks the woman on the phone, can I talk to somebody who's nearby, someone who you trust?

And the woman sort of refers to a neighbor, but she resists putting the neighbor on the phone with Maria. And Maria's sort of pleading with her about it because this is really her only option. The phones are ringing really loudly in the background and Maria actually raises her voice and she starts to say kind of forcefully, You know, please, I need you to put me in contact with your neighbor. Okay, what is her name? She repeats it. What is her name? Okay, can you connect me with her? Okay, so you're going to walk outside and you're going to connect me with your neighbor, okay? me with your neighbor, okay? The situation in Puerto Rico seems insurmountable at the moment. So what can these hotline workers do or say to actually make things better?

Well, here's the problem. I mean, the main tool and the training that they have is to convince somebody not to do something drastic, not to take their own life. You do it by telling them that whatever it is that they're dealing with right now is going to pass, that it's only temporary, and that things are going to get better. But is that true?

But these workers don't know that. Nobody knows that. I mean, it's very unclear how the economy is going to recover in Puerto Rico. It's very unclear how people are going to get electricity back and get warm meals again. And a lot of the workers at the call center themselves are living without electricity, living without water. Their prospects feel bleak. And so they feel like they're working with their hands tied behind their backs because that most compelling argument that they tend to make, they can't really do it honestly.

Kaylin, how does this phone call that you've been telling us about, how does it end? So Maria finally convinces the caller to walk outside and put her neighbor on the phone. And then Maria starts talking to her. She says, I asked your neighbor to hand you the phone because she's having suicidal thoughts. They're structured thoughts. She's planning to commit suicide and to use medication. And so that's why I'm asking you not to leave her alone. And in fact, if you can accompany her and find the pills that she has,

ask her where they are and make sure that you have them on you and that she can't touch them. And then she says, please do not leave her alone. And then she says, please, do not leave her alone. So eventually the neighbor hands the phone back to the caller. Maria explains that she's going to the hospital, that she's going to get mental health care. You're not alone.

She says every problem has a solution. And she ends the call by saying, we're here to help you. Everything is going to work out, okay? Kaylin, thank you. Thanks, Michael. Thank you. Nearly four months after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, roughly one-third of residents are still without power. roughly one-third of residents are still without power. And while officially 64 people were counted dead as a result of the storm, Time's analysis of federal data has told a much different story.

On tomorrow's Daily, the true cost of the store. We'll be right back. Thank you. bipartisan, bicameral negotiations on defense spending and other priorities have yielded a significant agreement. On Wednesday afternoon, on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a sweeping two-year budget deal that could break the cycle of fiscal crisis and government shutdown that have plagued Washington for the past year. This bill is the product of extensive negotiations among congressional leaders and the White House.

No one would suggest it is perfect, but we worked hard to find common ground and stay focused on serving the American people. The proposal delivers the increase in military funding demanded by Republicans and the higher spending on domestic programs sought by Democrats, adding up to hundreds of billions of dollars. To accommodate the new spending, the deal raises the national debt limit. After months of legislative logjams, this budget deal is a genuine breakthrough. After months of fiscal brinkmanship, this budget deal is the first real sprout of bipartisanship.

In the House, Speaker Paul Ryan said he would support the proposal, Paul Ryan said he would support the proposal, but minority leader Nancy Pelosi said she would oppose it unless she is guaranteed a vote to extend DACA, which expires in three weeks. Honor the House of Representatives. Give us a chance to have it vote on the floor. In a dramatic protest, Pelosi held court on the House floor for more than eight hours. I just got word that the House, which historian confirms, you have now set the record for the longest continuous speech in the House since at least 1909. I wonder what that was. It's not clear if enough House Democrats will join Pelosi to endanger the bill, which the Senate, then House, are expected to vote on on Thursday.

And a senior White House official has resigned amid allegations by two ex-wives that he physically and emotionally abused them. The official, Rob Porter, served as Trump's staff secretary, controlling the president's schedule and what documents reach his desk. Earlier this week, one of his ex-wives released a 2005 photograph showing what she said were bruises from Porter punching her in the face. Rob has put out a statement, which I can read to you now, and I think it will address some of those other questions. These outrageous allegations are simply false. I took the photos given to

the media nearly 15 years ago, and the reality behind them is nowhere close to what is being described. At the White House on Wednesday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Porter. I can tell you that Rob has been an effective in his role as staff secretary and the president and chief of staff have had full confidence and trust in his abilities and his performance. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.