Families return to Puerto Azul after months in shelter

The morning cargo cranes were already moving when Rosa Mendez climbed the gangway back to her house for the first time since April. The two-story wooden structure, painted pale blue and set on stilts above the tidal zone, had been condemned after engineers found that the pilings had begun to rot. For six months, Rosa and her neighbors—roughly four hundred families whose homes ringed the commercial dock—had lived in a federal shelter in the industrial zone, three kilometers inland. Now, as the repair work finished, they were moving back.

The evacuation had been sudden. In late March, a routine structural inspection of the dock quarter discovered that saltwater intrusion and the cumulative weight of decades of container traffic had weakened the wooden pilings that held the residential buildings. The Federal Housing Authority, working with the Costa Mar Regional Government, ordered immediate evacuation and declared the district a temporary construction zone. Within two weeks, families had been relocated to a converted warehouse that the Federal Civic Affairs Ministry had hastily outfitted with cots, kitchens, and a medical clinic.

Now, as autumn deepens and the dry season approaches, the repairs are done. The pilings have been reinforced with treated concrete sleeves, the electrical systems have been upgraded, and the water lines have been flushed of contamination. The Federal Housing Authority released the first phase of homes for occupancy on October 20, and by the end of this week, all four hundred families will have returned.