Buena Vista, San Juan's destruction is shown in an Associated Press photo taken Sunday, Sept. 24.
"The devastation in Puerto Rico has set us back nearly 20 to 30 years," Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez told the Associated Press.
"I can't deny that the Puerto Rico of now is different from that of a week ago," said Gonzalez. "The destruction of properties, of flattened structures, of families without homes, of debris everywhere. The island's greenery is gone."
A congresswoman from New York is seizing on the issue by requesting the temporary end of a controversial law that dates to the 1920s.
U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York said she will request a one-year waiver from the Jones Act, a federal law blamed for driving up prices on Puerto Rico by requiring cargo shipments there to move only on U.S. vessels.
"We will use all our resources," Velazquez, who of Puerto Rican heritage, said. "We need to make Puerto Rico whole again. These are American citizens."
