THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And while the Trump administration treats 3.5 million Americans on Puerto Rico as second class citizens, others with perhaps closer ties to the island are finding their own ways to provide what the island needs.

The pleas for help, arriving in text messages and on Facebook, have not relented, filling Lymaris Albors’ phone since the hurricane that roared across Puerto Rico, her homeland. The people on the other end were asking for all sorts of things: food, generators, solar lights, tarpaulins to take the place of roofs shredded by the hurricane.

As she assembled the items and looked for ways to deliver them, her corner office in the South Bronx had been transformed into a makeshift command center. A growing list of needs covered one whiteboard. The logistical details of how she planned to ship them filled another. And there was yet another list, this one with the people and groups on the island to whom she hoped to send aid.

“How and when,” she conceded, “I have no idea.”

Ms. Albors has a number of titles at the Acacia Network, a health and social services organization that is among the largest founded and run by New York’s Puerto Rican diaspora. She is usually the chief of staff to the chief executive officer and vice president of business development. But for the past few weeks, her work has boiled down to one all-consuming job: coordinator, putting together the nonprofit organization’s relief efforts for Puerto Rico.

Already, two planes loaded with supplies, including one with dozens of generators, had flown to the island, and Acacia employees had been dispatched there to help. Next, they planned to fill a cargo container, which would be sent by ship.

The work at Acacia is just one piece of New York’s vast official and unofficial response, as Hurricane Maria’s aftermath has, in many ways, both tested and underscored the bonds between the city and Puerto Rico.

There have been donation drives and fund-raisers. Masbia, a network of soup kitchens, gathered batteries, hygiene products, diapers and oatmeal, and SoulCycle has planned a “relief ride.” Tidal, Jay-Z’s music streaming service, chartered planes to carry supplies to Puerto Rico, and so did Bethenny Frankel, one of the “Real Housewives of New York.”

Ms. Albors, for her part, has been propelled by a sense of duty, her own bond with Puerto Rico. Work, though, has also given her a place to channel the despair and anxiety that the storm has stirred. She had heard from her nieces on the island; one, who spent the summer with her in New York, wiped tears from her eyes in a videochat with her aunt. Ms. Albors still had not talked to her mother.

“I can tell you that I can deal with everything in my life, except when my island is in crisis,” Ms. Albors said in her office a week after the hurricane made landfall. “There’s this deep-rooted love for Puerto Rico, and my family — everyone’s there. I’m the only one here.”

By a window, Ms. Albors had one more whiteboard. Any time she felt like Acacia had accomplished something, she wrote it there. She needed the reminder that progress was being made.

“We’re so committed to the island,” she said, her voice cracking. She repeated a line heard often in New York since the hurricane: “It is personal.”

It should not have to be "personal" to motivate people to help other Americans but in times like this it is as good as any other motivation.