Natural disaster effects are exacerbated by economic inequality and poverty – hurricanes and floods devastate the territories and ensure catastrophe.

Climate disaster preparations in Puerto Rico, including efforts to mitigate damage and planning for effective responses, are increasingly important as hurricanes become more frequent and more destructive. After Hurricane Maria, U.S. federal agencies and Puerto Rican local authorities attempted to build an anticipatory response capacity to increase climate resilience on the island but did not provide adequate resources. Investments in sustainable infrastructure can help the most vulnerable communities, particularly in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The Biden administration has pledged to support Puerto Rico in recovering from Fiona’s impact and in building resilience against future tropical storms. Successful investments in resilience building, however, should also address the persistent social, economic, and political insecurities within Puerto Rico that contribute to the severity of the impacts of weather events.

Q1: Why is the devastation so severe?

A1: Puerto Rico, a “U.S. territory in crisis,” is navigating several concurrent crises. A large public debt and shrinking population have weakened the island’s economy and the island’s poverty rate of 44 percent is the highest in the United States, more than double of any U.S. state. These conditions have enhanced the vulnerability of the island's communities and infrastructure to the devastation of tropical storms, particularly the fragile electrical grid, which went down prior to the storm making landfall.

Puerto Rico has struggled to make a full recovery following Hurricane Maria’s devastation, due to its struggling economy, endemic political corruption, and U.S. government mismanagement of the response effort. Hurricane Maria caused extreme devastation to the 3.4 million residents across Puerto Rico. Electricity was cut to the whole island, access to potable water was limited, bridges collapsed, streets were in disarray, and roofs of houses were torn off. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands were internally displaced. U.S. and Puerto Rican authorities were underprepared for the Category 4 storm, which caused $94.4 billion in damages—including $780 million losses in agriculture yields.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) 2017 report to Congress, Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico was the largest and longest in the agency’s history. The GAO report indicated that 85 percent of communication towers were nonoperational, dozens of roads and bridges collapsed, satellite phones did not work, and many fuel tankers were lost. Basic safeguards were not put into place before Maria’s landfall, and the federal response was riddled with denial of the extent of the mortality, hoarding of vital resources, and a failure to invest in longer-term climate resilience. For example, although the death toll was initially claimed to be 64 people by the Puerto Rican government, a George Washington University study on the estimate of excess mortality found the death count to be 2,975 people. The study found responding agencies were not trained in risk communications and local hospitals were not recording all death certificates, which dramatically altered the hurricane’s direct and indirect mortality rates. Local communities, especially the elderly and impoverished, were exposed to extreme health risks due to major infrastructure challenges that reduced the ability to access health services.