Cuevas/Gonzalez Disaster Relief

John and Maty Helmle are raising funds to help Matys family in Lares, Puerto Rico. John and Maty live in Caledonia, Wisconsin. Maty works in a oral surgeons office and John is a professional pilot. Maty moved from Puerto Rico many years ago, but her family still lives in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Irma and Maria  have left the island in a prolonged state of disaster, which proves to get worse before it gets better. As of some 37 days after Maria made Puerto Rico, we have had very limited and brief contact with her family in Lares, and only sporadic news from other relatives who live nearer the coast in Arecibo.
Our fundraiser is concerned with helping our family be able to rebuild and recover their lives. Funds will be used to purchase and ship much needed supplies, food and medicine. Additional funds will also be mailed via cashiers check to her father to go towards purchasing water purification units, and to help pay expenses until they can go back to work. Matys mother and father are surviving without grid power, by spending valuable gasoline on running a portable generator. They collect, bathe with, and drink rainwater. Her sister Irma and husband Arnaldo, and Maty' niece and nephew are doing their best but have no gas generator for power, only a small solar unit which was graciously donated my Kristin Allison of the California Forestry Service.
Restoration of power in the central parts of Puerto Rico may be as far as another 8 months off. If even much hardship and be very hard pressed to get back on their feet again. Funds raised here will be directly utilized for helping the Cuevas-Gonzalas family start to recover some semblance of their lives.