News

Hello everyone!

These past weeks have been very busy! Projects #27 and #28 are complete, meaning the slope to the left side of the fort is now finished.

Projects #25/#26 are still being worked on but, luckily, there's only a few details to deal with before completing it. After these are done, we will stop working on sodding projects until later this year, since dry season is upon us and the heat will damage the grass before it takes root.

The next big projects will be more "structure-driven", focusing on the areas near the roundabout road and the road leading to the fort, where we will fix the area of the signs and trash cans at the entrance. We'll be updating more when we start on those!

These past couple of weeks the crews have been focusing on projects #25 and #26 which is going smoothly. Jurakan also started on projects #27 and #28 near the curve on the left side of the fort's entrance. 

At the moment, these are the areas we are working on, along with minor maintenance work. We'll keep you posted on any updates that might pop up in the following weeks!

We are happy to announce that our first project is now open to the public! It has truly been an experience, our journey so far has been filled with so many memories and surprises (some good, some not so much). Thanks to everyone that has been following our progress thus far, we've learned from everything that has happened and we'll keep going forward with this massive project.

Here's to more memories!

Work continues on Projects #25 and #26 as we start using sand and soil to level the area. What we're working towards is the creation of a natural slope that will prevent the water from forming pools and accelerating erosion. 

The project will take up our crews' time for the next few weeks as we keep preparing it for sod.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the park, the Jurakan crew has finished Projects #18-#22 and are currently working on the area between Projects #1 and #17.

As mentioned in the previous post, one of our objectives as an organization is community growth and development. Earlier this year, our group participated in CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) to learn and develop the skills necessary in order to aid disaster victims. 

The training took 3 days to complete, the last one being the simulation. During this training our team learned the procedures behind light search and rescue, basic medical operations, and management of small fires. We learned the tools necessary to aid in these processes and the methods used to identify whether a victim required immediate attention or they were stable.

The scenario presented was that of an earthquake during which a number of victims got trapped in their house; it was our job to get them out safely. The group did an excellent job during the simulation, saving all the victims and successfully identifying their condition to rescue them in the appropriate order. It was a great experience all around.   

As an organization focused on community development and environmental preservation, it's important for us to participate in activities relating to those fields. As such, these past couple of weeks we've been partaking in voluntary work.

Some of the activities we've been doing include:

-Cleaning debris in beaches

-Cleaning drains and repairing trails in el Yunque

-Planting native trees

Apart from that, we're also doing voluntary work within the national park itself as interpreters as a way to develop in other professional fields.

The erosion project is still under way.  The area we were working on last week has now been filled with compost (sod from previous projects) and is being cleared out and leveled. The complicated bit right now is cleaning the grass away from the walls, which is usually an easy task but, in this case, the edges around where the soil meets the wall have become the home of many crustaceans and spiders. Meaning, we have to be careful about them not getting on us.

On the other hand, projects #18-#22 are almost done with most of the sod having arrived this week.

Project #23 and #24

Mar 14-Mar 18:

Projects #18-#19 have been sodded and watered, with the grass growing steadily. While working on Project #23/#24, we discovered the wall extended further than we thought, which lead us to try and uncover as much as we could to work around the wall as carefully as possible.

Unfortunately, the wall has been buried for a long time and the brick is brittle, meaning that we need to be even more careful when dealing with it as one wrong move can damage the wall significantly.

Feb 28-Mar 4:

Projects #16 and #17 went underway, each having their own set of complications. For the former, detached pieces of the old wall were found underground in the area, making it hard to penetrate with shovels.

For the later, the ground had hardened to the point where we had to use the tiller and sharpened shovels to break down the surface of the soil. Apart from that, the fact that its a curved slope with grass attached to the wall still meant we needed to have a level of delicacy when working the area.

Project #16:

Project #17:

Mar 7-Mar 11:

The sod came for the projects mentioned above and we finished them promptly. 

We moved then to Projects #18-#21 and Project #22. The first ones are small areas were erosion has done minor damage, creating small bumps in the field. Now, Project #22 is a monster. Its located next to the cemetery's entrance and erosion has done major damage in the area.

Hello everyone! February has been a very busy month for us so we apologize for the lack of updates but we're back and here's what we've been up to lately!

Feb 7- Feb 11:

On this week, we started our biggest project yet: Project 12!

This one proved to be a bit of a challenge as the amount of soil needed to level the slope was greater than the previous projects. Its steepness also made it difficult, since we had to work against gravity to place the soil on the upper parts of the slope. 

We also started with Project #13, a smaller area near one of the walls in Parcel B. 

Feb 21- Feb 25:

Last week, we finally finished Project #12 getting it ready for sod and got started on Projects #14 and #15. Due to their proximity to the wall, these projects have yielded big stone fragments that, we assume, once were part of the fort. These stones have made the work in these areas a bit harder than usual, but we've managed to complete them.

Projects #14 and #15: