Current Issue and Best Practices Hurricane Maria.pdf

Current Issue and Best Practices: Hurricane Maria

Miranda Fennimore

Helms School of Government, Liberty University

From September 16, 2017, to October 2, 2017, Hurricane Maria was one of the worst

Category 4 hurricanes to hit the Atlantic, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and billions of

dollars in infrastructure. However, the event was marked not by the severity in damage but the

manner in which the government of Puerto Rico and the United States responded, showing a

vastly incompetent emergency management and homeland security response. From massive

ongoing power outages to slow government response in waiving the Jones Act to national

political strife that greatly damaged recovery, Hurricane Maria showed which practices worked

Overview of Hurricane Maria

Hurricane Maria struck the Atlantic islands in September through October of 2017 after

Hurricane Irma on September 6, 2017. It would have winds as high as 155 mph with rainfall total

going as high as 38 inches and a death total of close to 3,000 (García, 2021). While Hurricane

Katrina is often cited for its significant damages and loss of life, Hurricane Maria saw to the

destruction of not only its cities but the entire country’s housing, infrastructure, transportation,

communication, and agriculture systems as the median income for the average citizen was low,

the infrastructure of poorer quality due to zoning and code restrictions (García, 2021). In Puerto

governments such as the United States (U.S.), the efforts were not organized and the individual’s

ability was severely overwhelmed as to not be able to get the aid they needed. However, there is

another impact to the five tenets of emergency management that heavily worsened the situation.

As seen with the Haitian Earthquake of 2010, political agendas and corruption often result in

massive fraud and political ideology battles that result in more harm to the people (Kratcoski,

2018). Due to Puerto Rico’s status as an unincorporated territory with its own system of

governance and legislation “FEMA had to coordinate and vet those goods for the purposes of

disaster response, further complicating an already inefficient, logistical nightmare” (Straub,

2020, p. 1609).

Prevention

Hurricanes are a common weather phenomenon near the equator. Since the 1950’s,

meteorologists, oceanographers, and paleotempestologists have been able to not only analyze

and study hurricanes but be able to project a hurricane’s intended path and its severity. The

National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center, which is funded by the

Department of Commerce’s agency the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

provides constant tracking and updates alongside information on how to prepare for hurricanes

(National Hurricane Center, n.d.). It is with this that hurricanes do not only become a local and

federal disaster declarations are related to flood events” (English et al., 2017, p. 06017001-1).

Paired with levees, which prevent the overflow of rivers and other large bodies of water, and

reinforced structures that can withstand high winds and heavy rainfall, hurricanes can be

weathered out (English et al., 2017). However, the average income of a Puerto Rican paired with

poor infrastructure and a substantial lack of flood insurance negatively impacted the mitigation,

preparedness, response and recovery (García, 2021).

While prevention and preparedness are often considered the most vital steps when faced

with any disaster, be it man-made or natural, the mitigation phase of emergency management and

homeland security is perhaps the most vital. It is during this phase that preparedness and

prevention are woven together to form a cohesive plan in order to reduce the impact and aid in

the response and the recovery. With events such as Hurricane Katrina and Harvey as guides on

how to mitigate disasters, there existed great frameworks to put into place to lessen the damages

to life and infrastructures.

Programs such as the Discretionary Financial Assistance to the U.S. Territories and

Freely Associated States is one such program and policy that existed prior to Hurricane Maria

(Discretionary Financial Assistance to the U.S. Territories and Freely Associated States, n.d.).

people as possible during a dangerous situation” (Harten et al., 2018, p. 219). However, Puerto

Rico’s geography was highly restrictive with any land evacuations as it was four feet below sea

level at the coast and

At the time of Hurricane Maria, President Donald J. Trump was in his first year of office

after a heavily contested and politically charged election. This would not only impact response

and recovery but mitigation as well as Puerto Rico, which saw the heaviest of losses in both life

and infrastructure, was not a state but an unincorporated territory. The Merchant Marine Act of

1920 (46 USC § 50101), commonly referred to as the Jones Act, is a century old federal statute

which regulates merchant marine activity between U.S. ports and U.S. waters, making trade

difficult between the U.S. and Puerto Rico (Rodríguez-Díaz, 2018). This was in place prior to the

landfall of Hurricane Maria, and it would not be until September 28, 2017, a full twelve days

later, that President Trump waived for response and recovery efforts. It would have greatly

benefited the people of Puerto Rico had the statute been waived when the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration (NASA) announced that Hurricane Maria was a Category 4 hurricane

with wind speeds and rainfall to match; however, unlike states, which have to ask for aid through

the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. §§ 5121-5206),

unincorporated territories do not have the same relief opportunities (Atoba et al., 2020). The

death. Thorough preparedness is not only a step for the government to take when considering

disasters but one that can and should be taken by the community as a whole. For the people of

Puerto Rico, emergency preparedness was severely lacking. This was not entirely due to the fault

of the government or the infrastructure. Hurricane Irma had struck the island previously on

September 6, 2017, causing the electric power system to collapse while inflicting significant

infrastructure damage to San Juan and the surrounding area (de Arzola, 2018). Thus, when

Hurricane Maria hit, it not only devastated the northeast but the entire island as radars, weather

stations, and cellular telephone towers across Puerto Rico went offline which in turn created the

largest communication vacuum in Puerto Rican history (de Arzola, 2018). Due to the collapsed

power grid, hospitals only had power thanks to generators, clean drinking water was severely

limited and only worsened by roads that were obstructed by fallen trees, landslides, and

floodwaters (de Arzola, 2018).

For disasters such as Hurricane Maria, there are several preparedness steps. Unlike

terrorism, there are signals that a hurricane will and has formed long before it hits. TheNational

Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center and the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration alongside NASA track and watch storms, sending updates to news

station owners such as Fox Corporation, News Corp, AT&T, ViacomCBS, and The Walt Disney

mentioned before, Hurricane Irma’s destruction of the power grid in San Juan had made it almost

impossible for the central government of Puerto Rico to get information out to its citizens in a

timely manner. Paired with the local governments in a deep fiscal crisis, Puerto Rico was

incapable of preparing for Hurricane Maria during the response and recovery of Hurricane Irma

(Farber, 2018).

For any disaster, there should be an effective, adaptable, and logical plan in place in order

to coordinate and execute the best response possible. At the forefront of emergency response are

first responders and local emergency managers who help coordinate efforts and materials. With

Hurricane Maria, the immediate concern was not so much the loss of property but the loss of life.

With over 3,000 dead, the goal for emergency managers became preventing more fatalities.

However, with cities such as San Juan’s electric grid destroyed, the response was doomed from

the start. The supply chain had already been broken prior to the response. In terms of Puerto

Rico, the largest impact on response was the flooding, mudslides, and fallen trees that blocked

emergency vehicles and personnel from reaching those in need. Transportation is crucial not only

for infrastructure but emergency response. “Transportation assets are needed for the movements

of people and resources for protection survival, search and rescue, and the provision of medical

With little support by the White House and the financial crises that the local governments

were having, FEMA’s aid came too little too late (Farber, 2018). FEMA utilized the National

Response Framework (NRF) in order to introduce a layered and supportive response through the

Incident Command System (ICS), but both the NRF and ICS can get convoluted and tangled as it

approaches it from an all-hazards approach. FEMA became a logistical nightmare in turn as it

was not up for a national crisis such as Puerto Rico as it is not enough to simply devote equal

resources to what appears to be similar events (Farber, 2018). Had they approached it as one

would terrorism, a singular focused approach, there may have been a vastly different response. It

is fair to say that the White House and FEMA dropped the ball. The best practice in this case

would be to tackle it with an adaptable plan that factored in sociological and economic

differences as experienced in the Haitan Earthquake. Additionally, the lack of a response by the

White House due to Puerto Rico being an unincorporated state must be addressed in further

incidents where acts such as the Discretionary Financial Assistance to the U.S. Territories and

Freely Associated States do not apply.

Despite the international attention that Puerto Rico received, recovery was a slower than

usual process. During the recovery phase, there are specific actions that must be taken in order to

fallen trees to restoring power to affected areas. Assessments would also be made during this

phase so as to identify what materials and supplies need to be provided in order to achieve

normalcy in the fastest and most economical way. Insurance, ranging from flood to car to life

insurance, would typically be considered during this as well as to evaluate how much

government funds would be given in comparison to private funds. Counseling would be

considered as well in order to prevent lasting psychological issues that could result in more harm

to the community. However, as mentioned previously, federal statutes such as the Jones Act

impede on such relief acts.