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Following the passage of Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean in September, Puerto Rico's federal authorities began delivering emergency relief to the hard-hit US Virgin Islands. The Puerto Rico warehouse was emptied of tarps and tarps. Almost all the blue roof tarpaulin was shipped, with 90% water and the majority of 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 of the island were forced to survive in primitive conditions with a fraction of the disaster relief available to other Americans who had been hit by hurricanes in Texas and Florida
. "Awareness of the situation" – which means that they did not know what was happening in the island, nor how to deal with the rapidly developing humanitarian crisis.
[Sin Luz: Life without power in Puerto Rico]
FEMA's hypothetical planners had anticipated and prepared in recent years was much less destructive FEMA envisioned a storm that would stun 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. The reality was 92%.
A damaged house during Hurricane Maria in Comerio, Puerto Rico, in March. (Erika P. Rodriguez for the Washington Post)
FEMA defended its efforts Friday, stating that it faced unprecedented challenges when hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria quickly crossed the Caribbean for a few weeks in August and September. "I think we were prepared," FEMA Associate Administrator Jeff Byard said Friday in an interview at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "We have not failed."
Byard stated that the public must take into consideration all the circumstances. According to the Harvard study, thousands of people have died in Puerto Rico because of Hurricane Maria.
After FEMA sent Puerto Rico supplies to He added that the agency has begun replenishing the warehouses in Puerto Rico. Then Maria cut the shipping lines.
For disaster response in the United States to be successful, Byard said all levels of government and the private sector must work together. This did not happen in Puerto Rico because of communication failures. He said it was not clear if 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 FEMA report examined all the hurricanes of 2017, which caused economic damage of hundreds of billions of dollars and caused nearly 5 million claims federal disaster assistance. The Government Accountability Office plans to publish its own report in August. Congressional Democrats Unsuccessfully Asked for Independent Review of 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 live in houses without roofs covered with rotting blue tarps.
The water service is back, but it continues to circulate. Many families who have asked for disaster help to rebuild their homes are still waiting for money.
"It's great that they finally say it," said Jesús Colón Berlingeri, the mayor of Orocovis, a city in the Central Highlands of Puerto Rico. "But we always feel that there is no urgency to solve the problems."
Nestor Serrano walks to the top floor of his house, where the walls were torn apart as a result of Hurricane Maria last year in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico. (Gerald Herbert / AP)
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 problems. Water for more than two months. The mayor said that a local businessman had used connections on the mainland to ship generators to Yabucoa.
The consequences of Maria angered survivors who accuse the Trump administration of what they consider a weak response. what they saw as unresponsive after the landing of the storm.
"It's really a part of a pattern where the rhetoric of the administration affects the priority and urgency put forth by a government agency," said Federico de Jesús , co-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 Yulín Cruz – who was furious with the slowness of disaster response. 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 provides details on 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. One week after the storm, FEMA and its partners had no information on the status of nearly half of the 52 island sewage treatment plants and more than half of them. 69 hospitals, according to the report.
lost track of the supplies as they went to Puerto Rico. FEMA accuses communication problems and lack of qualified personnel to monitor the movement of supplies.
Puerto Rico is far behind Texas and Florida in terms of 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
FEMA had no staff in 2017. In Puerto Rico's desperate conditions have resorted to what one might call promotions on the battlefield. These promotions "put staff in positions that go beyond their experience and, in some cases, beyond their capabilities," says the report.
Puerto Rico: poor infrastructure, economic misery and cuts in emergency preparedness programs. States, but the agency admits that she should have foreseen how much a big storm could damage Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
[ In the "last mile" of Puerto Rico, the power is still uncertain at the next hurricane season. ]
"FEMA leaders acknowledged that the Agency could have better forecast that the severity of hurricanes Irma and Maria would cause significant long-term damage to the territory's infrastructure," says the report. . Nydia M. Velázquez (DN.Y.) said that FEMA was "deeply unprepared for Maria, her response was hampered by incompetence and a lack of leadership and, tragically, the people of Puerto Rico suffered because of that. " [19659035] In March, houses were damaged by Hurricane Maria in Comerio, Puerto Rico. The city, located in the mountainous region of the island, was mostly without electricity for months. (Erika P. Rodriguez for the Washington Post)
Josian Santiago, 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 time . He complained that FEMA did not release the funds it needs to pay the 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's 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," Santiago said. 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 being better prepared to deploy staff members in areas stricken
"Can we do better?" "Yes, and we will do it."
Tim Craig contributed to this report.
