There has been a lot of focus on the devastation in Puerto Rico but 110 miles away another U.S. territory with close ties to New York -- the U.S. Virgin Islands -- is reeling after the one-two punch of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. NY1's Michael Herzenberg has been there this week and filed the following report from St. Thomas.

Splitting wood, Raynan Franklyn gets ready to cook dinner with a barbecue in the space that was his living room.

Hurricane Irma brought down the walls and ripped out the windows.

"I have some thoughts of well-being because i didn't lose them," Franklyn said about his wife Shenell and their two-year-old boy Jaleel.

"It was Irma well I'll say Irma-geddon because, as you can see, it's crazy," Shenell said.

The first wall destroyed by Hurricane Irma was in the bedroom.

They said they were on an air mattress and the wind picked up the air mattress so they ran out.

"That wall just tear right off it went foop we started panicking my husband he was like lets go in the bathroom," Shenell said.

In each room they sought shelter, they didn't find it.

"The walls they started to come in on us. So we have to come back out the bathroom," Shenell said.

They hunkered down in the concrete stairwell, surviving the storm.

"All we could see was white and after that, a week after, nobody came they didn’t say anything no water no ice no nothing but we've been surviving we try to make the best of the situation," Shenell said.

They sleep in their neighbor's apartment at night.

It still has walls and family took them in when Hurricane Maria struck nearly two weeks later.

"This is my home so I came back after the storm," Shenell said.

It’s a primitive existence.

By day they look for food, sometimes waiting in lines for handouts.

They hunt for wood and water to bathe in.

What they call home offers little relief.

Rotting garbage sits outside, trash carried here by the floodwaters, and left to bake in the hot Caribbean sun. 

"People are in need in here. We're not dogs, we're not animals, we're humans and that's how they have us living here like we're animals," Shenell said.

At the Tutu High Rise Public Housing Apartments, 12 of the 22 buildings look about as bad. With eight apartment units per building, many other families continue living here as well.

"It's a vexing issue but we still have to deal with it," said U.S. Virgin Islands Gov. Kenneth Mapp.

Mapp said he slated the whole development for demolition and maintains residents have been told to leave for shelters.

"It's very unsafe, it's very unsanitary and I'm going to have to push the housing authority to issue eviction notices," Mapp said. "Let's have a plan to help people relocate."

Residents say they don't want to live in shelters but actually praise the government for bringing fresh water every other day - something they can’t live without.

"I'm just glad to be alive. I'm glad to be in the land of the living. That's my main thing," Shenell said. "We will survive, we will make it, we will be the U.S. Virgin Islands again."

A timeline for the eviction was not given.

The governor said he offered vouchers for housing to these people but admits there's a shortage of secure structures.

He said he has reached out to the secretary of Housing and Urban Development for a solution to this specific situation.