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Following the passage of Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean last September, Puerto Rico's federal authorities began delivering relief supplies to the hard-hit US Virgin Islands. The Puerto Rico warehouse was emptied of tarps and tarps. Almost all the blue roofs were shipped, as well as 90% of the water and the majority of the emergency meals.
Then Hurricane Maria.
In an after-action report released Thursday night, the Federal Emergency Management Agency exposed its failure to prepare for what nature delivered in Puerto Rico last year. The government planned to deal with a hurricane, not two.
"Existing plans were developed for the occurrence of a single incident rather than concomitant incidents," says the report
. A few weeks after Irma's near-failure in Puerto Rico, Maria caught the color of the island, wiped out the power grid, shut down the cell phone network, shut down ports and airports and killed a number still unknown to people. The 3.5 million inhabitants were forced to survive in primitive conditions with a fraction of the disaster assistance available to other Americans who had been hit by hurricanes in Texas and Florida
. of "situational awareness" – which means that they did not know what was going on in the island, nor how to deal with the rapidly evolving humanitarian crisis.
The hypothetical hurricanes that FEMA planners had anticipated and prepared in recent years were far less destructive than the one that happened on September 20th. FEMA has considered a storm knocking out 73% of the population, according to the report. Maria destroyed the entire grid – much of it for months.
The hypothetical storm would require search and rescue resources on 75% of the island. Maria asked for 99% search and rescue
The plan provided that 56% of hospitals would be affected. FEMA defended its efforts Friday, saying it faced unprecedented challenges when hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria swept through the Caribbean in quick succession for a few weeks in August and September.
We think we were ready, "said Jeff Byard, Associate Administrator of FEMA, Friday during an interview at the agency's headquarters in Washington." We have not failed "
Byard said that the public must take into consideration all the circumstances.After the agency had faced several distinct disasters, Puerto Rico presented a" unique challenge. "
After FEMA sent supplies from Puerto Rico to the US Virgin Islands, the agency began replenishing the Puerto Rico warehouses and Maria cut the shipping lines
. Mr. Byard said, all levels of government and the private sector must work together.This did not happen in Puerto Rico because of communication failures. 39, it was not clear s the territorial government even had a disaster plan.
"I do not mean that they had no plan," Byard said. "But I have not seen a plan."
The new FEMA report looked at all the hurricanes of 2017, which caused economic damage of hundreds of billions of dollars and caused nearly 5 million claims. Federal aid in case of disaster. The Government Accountability Office plans to publish its own report in August. Democrats in Congress have unsuccessfully pushed for an independent review of the federal response.
The FEMA report was met on Friday with a collective shrug of Puerto Rican leaders, who said the agency's shortcomings were already evident. In Puerto Rico, about 2,000 customers still do not have access to electricity and thousands of them live in roofless houses covered with rotting blue tarps.
The water service is back. Many families who have asked for disaster help to rebuild their homes are still waiting for money.
"It's good that they end up saying it," said Jesús Colón Berlingeri, the mayor of Orocovis, a city in the Central Highlands of Puerto Rico. "But we still think that there is no urgency to solve the problems."
Rafael Surillo, the mayor of Yabucoa, near the place where Hurricane Maria touched the southeast of the island, said: and they still fail. "
Surillo said that while he had waited for FEMA to supply the generators to power the water pumps in his city of 35,000 inhabitants, his people would not have had any water for more than two months ago.The mayor said that a local businessman had used connections on the mainland to ship generators to Yabucoa.
Maria's consequences angered survivors who accuse Trump administration of what they consider to be a weak response. "This is really only one part of a scheme where the rhetoric of the administration affects the priority and urgency put forth by a government agency, "said Federico de Jesús, co-head of the operation, founder of BoricuActívatEd, an advocacy group for Puerto Ricans in the diaspora
Trump is engaged in a debate on Twitter with the Mayor of San Juan – Carmen Yul N Cruz – who was furious at the slow response to disasters. During a visit to the island shortly after the storm, Trump scored a few points among the residents by returning rolls of paper towels to the survivors. He downplayed the death toll, described the Puerto Ricans as too needy and wrongly stated that Maria was not a disaster of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina.
This new FEMA report offers details of the chaos and confusion of these early days and weeks. after Maria hit the island. With the extinction and destruction of the cell phone network, FEMA was operating in the dark. A week after the storm, FEMA and its partners had no information on the status of nearly half of the 52 sewage treatment plants on the island and more than half of the 69 hospitals, according to the report.
The agency lost track of her supplies while she was traveling to Puerto Rico. FEMA accuses communication problems and lack of qualified personnel to monitor the movement of supplies.
Puerto Rico was far behind Texas and Florida with respect to FEMA field staff. A week after Harvey's arrival in Texas, FEMA deployed about 5,000 people. But Puerto Rico, miles away from the continent and still isolated by the closure of ports and airports, initially received an emergency safety net. One month after Maria's attack, FEMA deployments in Puerto Rico numbered only 2,000, much less than Texas and Florida [19659002] FEMA did not have staff in 2017. In Puerto Rico's desperate conditions have resorted to what one might call promotions on the battlefield. These promotions "place staff in positions beyond their experience and, in some cases, beyond their capabilities," says the report.
Puerto Rico's poor infrastructure, economic misery, and cuts to emergency preparedness programs are preventing Maria United States, but the agency admits it should have planned to how bad a big storm could damage Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. "FEMA leaders acknowledged that the Agency could have better predicted that the severity of hurricanes Irma and Maria would cause long-term, significant damage to the territories' infrastructure," the report says. [19659002NydiaVelázquezDNYsaidFEMAwas"deeplyunpreparedforMariaherresponsewashamperedbyincompetenceandalackofleadershipandtragicallythepeopleofPuertoRicosufferedbecauseofthis"
In the mountain town of Orocovis, Berlingeri workers repaired roads, but their long-term security funding has not yet been disbursed, he said. added. "People perceive that they do not care about us," said Berlingeri.
Josian Santiago, the mayor of Comerio, said that he has more than 200 families living in homes where the canvas is the only thing between their head and the weather.He complained that FEMA has not released the funds it needs to pay contractors who cleaned the debris and roads 10 months ago. If they're not getting paid soon, he says, he can not count on their help if a new storm comes this summer.
And it is still hurricane season. Santiago said that his request to the Commonwealth authorities and FEMA for a generator and supplies to prepare it gave nothing.
"They did not even try to work with us," said Santiago,
. the agency has trained hundreds of residents as emergency managers to fill the gaps. The report includes many recommendations for improvement, including increasing the amount of relief supplies staged in remote locations, and better prepared to deploy staff members to the affected areas.
"Can we do better?" he said. "Yes, and we will do it."
The Washington Post Tim Post contributed to this report.
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