The third installment of the media series. In 2017 Puerto Rico was hit hard by Hurricane Maria, and there are a lot of things to be learned by our response.
In late 2017 Hurricane Maria hit the Southeast hard. I remember it clear as day. I just started college the month earlier, my parents were taking a trip to Toronto, and my brother and dog were still back home in Florida preparing for the storm. Luckily Northern Florida was not hit as hard as suspected. But, Puerto Rico wasn’t so lucky.
In late 2017, I remember President Trump praising himself on how successful his response was to Hurricane Maria. However, the Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to keep up with all of the disasters of the season. In late August, Texas was hit with Hurricane Harvey, a category 4 storm, and according to the FEMA Report, 80% of the houses hit by the hurricane did not have flood insurance. In early September, Hurricane Irma made its way through the Atlantic becoming the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic to date. Hurricane Maria was a category 5 hurricane as it passed by the U.S Virgin Islands and landed in Puerto Rico as a category 4. Soon after these hurricanes, there were intense wildfires in California. These three hurricanes combined with the wildfires affected 57 million people and caused over $265 billion in damages. According to the same FEMA Report, there were 4.8 million households that filed for assistance by May 2018, more than the previous 10 years combined!
So now that we have a little bit of the background, many of you might remember when there was a lot going around about the state of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. I have always thought that Puerto Rico has been fed the shorter end of the stick. They are owned by the United States, who prides itself on being the land of the free. Yet, Puerto Ricans are classified as U.S. Citizens but do not have the ability to vote for the President, only for the primaries. And they were not put under priority after Hurricane Maria. FEMA was not prepared to aid Puerto Rico. As stated earlier, the U.S. Virgin Islands were hit hard during Hurricane Irma, so much of the supplies that were in the FEMA Warehouse in Puerto Rico were used to help the Virgin Island residents. Once Maria came to Puerto Rico, FEMA did not have a good number of supplies to successfully aid the island. After Maria, there was an influx of people getting hurt and needing medical attention, but there were several clinics that did not have access to the emergency power that FEMA was supposed to provide. In the FEMA reports, the organization claims that they did the best they could with what they were given. They gave many people in Puerto Rico meals and aid. However, many Puerto Ricans disagree with this, stating that the “meals” provided were not meals at all and mainly boxes of candies and snacks. Also, the entire island wasn’t restored power until a year after Hurrican Maria hit. If you look up the death toll in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, you will find many different numbers ranging from the official toll of 64 to 3,000.
Every couple of years there is a stronger storm than the last, and we as a country and a community need to be prepared. Puerto Rico is surrounded by water in one of the most intense oceans in the world, and as a country, I believe that we need to protect them from what they may experience in the future. I think that there may have been a chance that FEMA tried to do the best they could in aiding Puerto Rico after the hurricane, but if they couldn’t successfully help them 3 years ago, who says they will be able to when hurricanes like Hurricane Maria become way more common and more severe. America let Puerto Rico down, and I think we need to change that.
Written by Dominique Agnew, Senior at Cornell University and Climate Justice Now Intern