An emergency subscription fund was established by some of the city's wealthiest citizens. Betances and Basora had the city's unsanitary slave barracks torched and a temporary camp set up for its dwellers. A large field at a corner of the city was set aside for a supplementary cemetery, and Betances set and managed a temporary hospital next to it (which was later housed in a permanent structure and became the "Hospital San Antonio", the Mayagüez municipal hospital, which still serves the city). However, the epidemic struck the city soon after; Betances' stepmother and one of his brothers-in-law would die from it. By October 1856 Betances would have to take care of the entire operation on his own temporarily.