Old San Juan area from Fort El Morro with views of Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery, Puerto Rico
Source: Victor Benito
Written by: Victor Benito
Edited by: Mila Cantar and Chukwuma Iwenofu
Hurricane Maria was a Category 4 storm when it hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. It decimated the power grid, destroyed homes, and wreaked havoc on the clean water supply.1 Throughout the disaster period, critics accused government agencies and officials involved in aid work of mismanagement, claiming they were mishandling appropriations, working without urgency, and purposefully hurting Puerto Rico and its people. On September 29, Mayor of the island’s capital San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz stood by pallets of aid inside a warehouse, addressing the media and the world saying,
“If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying. And you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy…And if it doesn’t stop, and if we don’t get the food and the water into people’s hands, what we are going to see is something close to a genocide.”2
Cruz’s emotional plea came after a week of disconcerted attempts by Trump administration officials, Puerto Rican officials, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate relief efforts for the island. As Cruz’s quote sharply clarifies, many people considered the relief efforts for Hurricane Maria subpar. In Views and Experiences of Puerto Ricans One Year After Hurricane Maria, a report prepared by Bianca DiJulio, Cailey Muñana, and Mollyann Brodie for The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, it is stated that “across the board, majorities rate the storm response of the local, territory, and federal government as fair or poor.”3 The chaos resulting from Maria and the ineffective emergency response to it has had lasting effects, including investigations into mismanagement allegations. Two years later new details are still being released and arrests of officials have been made.
Understanding Puerto Rico as an Unincorporated Territory
Prior to Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico was already experiencing political and economic distress from an economic crisis,4 to rickety infrastructure,5 and its general status as a de facto colony of the United States. Puerto Rico’s legal status as an unincorporated territory means that Puerto Rican citizens are citizens of the United States with the fundamental freedoms given by the Constitution. However, it also means that Puerto Rico’s residents must pay federal taxes without the ability to vote in federal elections.6 There have been political debates in Puerto Rico since its annexation from Spain about whether the island should keep its unincorporated status, become a US State, or separate from the US and become its own nation.7 This discussion can often lead to confusion amongst the general populace of the Mainland US and even US officials about whether Puerto Ricans are American citizens. These misunderstandings appeared during the Hurricane Maria news cycle and may have contributed to racial bias in the Trump administration’s response. While the issue often catalyzes fierce debate and emotional arguments, two benefits of becoming a US State stand out in the island’s case. Becoming a US State would allow Puerto Rico to restructure its debt beyond the current Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability (PROMESA) Act, and it would be eligible to receive additional federal funding for public projects. However, a referendum on statehood held in Puerto Rico does not have any legal power as it is ultimately the US Congress which must create legislation that designates Puerto Rico a State. Statehood, then, would potentially enable Puerto Rico to pay down its massive debt.
The Strains of an Island in a Debt Crisis
On August 3, 2015, the Puerto Rican government defaulted on its $70 billion debt and $50 billion in pension obligations.8 This default led to the PROMESA Act which operates as a fiscal oversight board tasked with balancing Puerto Rico’s budget and supporting economic growth on the economically depressed island. Since becoming a US territory in 1898, Puerto Rico has earned most of its revenue through tourism. Its position in the Caribbean would place it in an optimal position for trade under normal circumstances, but trade with the island is restricted to only US ships. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, only allows ports in Puerto Rico to interact with US-flagged or US citizen-owned ships. This bill severely limits Puerto Rico’s ability to trade with the nearby Caribbean and South American communities, thus prohibiting Puerto Ricans from what would likely be a significant source of revenue from which the island would otherwise benefit. To generate extra cash with rising debt, Puerto Rican officials raised taxes and offered bonds. These strategies devastated the local economy; people were unable to pay for necessities and the Puerto Rican government was unable to repay debts.
Even before the destruction by Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico’s power grid was weak. Power outages occurred frequently, consistently interrupting daily life so they needed to be addressed. Unfortunately, due to the financial crisis the island was facing, the Puerto Rican government was unable to tackle the island’s recurrent power grid failures. In late 2016, Synapse Energy Associates delivered their expert findings on the energy grid’s upkeep to the Puerto Rico Energy Commission (PREC).9 Their findings showed that the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was, at that point, incapable of attending to the power grid’s maintenance and repair. A few significant findings of the report include: PREPA’s reliability suffered since Fiscal Year 2014, PREPA operates in a cost-constrained environment, and PREPA’s capital and labor budgets may not support a safe and reliable system. The report warned that PREPA needed to immediately change its practices for maintaining the energy grid. Ultimately, though, the suggestions were not implemented due to cost; they were financially impractical. Introducing a major climate calamity to the myriad of political problems in Puerto Rico could only make them worse. Hurricane Maria created damage totaling $90 billion, serving to exacerbate the fiscal difficulties Puerto Rico was already facing. The storm also added new and immediate problems to the mix with over 50% of the island lacking access to water and a total electricity blackout in the months that followed.
Emergency Preparations for the Coming Storm
Hurricane Maria started as a tropical storm, forming in the Atlantic Ocean on September 16, 2017. Having just dealt with Hurricane Irma, Governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rosselló-Nevares declared a state of emergency on the 17th to get ahead of the next hurricane, and deployed the National Guard to provide support throughout the emergency.10 Rosselló also told residents to seek shelter immediately. President Donald Trump followed suit, declaring a federal state of emergency for Puerto Rico on the 18th which authorized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FEMA to coordinate all disaster relief efforts.11 While these declarations initiated emergency powers for district leaders on the island, they did very little in practice due to inadequate preparations by the municipality leaders involved, who were then succeeded in authority by FEMA officials. An independent report from the Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University sought to estimate the excess mortality from the storm.12 Through their research into the matter, they discovered a gross mishandling of emergency risk management by the government of Puerto Rico. NBC News’ Nicole Acevedo explains,
“The report found that island officials had no ‘written, updated agency crisis and emergency risk communication plans in place’ prior to the storm. In addition, the lack of clear, effective communications to the public ‘decreased the perceived transparency and credibility of the Government of Puerto Rico.’”13
Despite having Hurricane Irma pass through less than a month before, the government of Puerto Rico did not have the proper structures in place to handle the imminent emergency. Maria crippled communications across the island, taking out radars, weather stations, and cell towers.14 Typically, satellite phones would be useful in this situation. However, few were available to Puerto Rico’s officials, and the municipal leaders who had satellite phones did not understand how to use them. There were no fallback plans for communication between officials and communities, thus leading to misinformation or worse, no information about the actual extent of damage and effects in areas. Later, this lack of communication made it hard to coordinate relief efforts since officials did not know where they should go first. The officials did not even know what kind of aid they needed to deliver. Another mishandled item was medical aid because it was impossible to administer general or specified medical assistance without communication. In addition, the hospitals designated to deliver local aid while awaiting federal relief were low on supplies due to the economic crisis. Communities were required to fend for themselves amidst the disaster until FEMA could fulfill its legal responsibilities of providing bulk aid to destitute areas and work towards reinstating access to public utilities.
Lack of Crisis Management Plans
Responsibility for managing emergency repairs on essential utilities fell on FEMA after the Puerto Rican government failed to properly prepare for the disruption in communications systems, the power grid, and access to clean water caused by Hurricane Maria. The federal state of emergency declared by President Trump stated that FEMA now supervised and led emergency management of relief efforts. Invoking emergency protective measures under FEMA’s Public Assistance program gives FEMA the power to initiate functions designated “to save lives, protect public health and safety, and protect public and private property.”15 These measures are for when temporary, though immediate, emergency repairs are needed on utilities, infrastructure, or other systems necessary for effective emergency management. FEMA administrator William “Brock” Long was saddled with this task which he called “the most logistically challenging event the United States has ever seen.”16 This comment came in the wake of a relentless wave of critiques against FEMA and the Trump administration for its response to the disaster in Puerto Rico.
The criminally slow response to the disaster caused citizens and onlookers abroad to critique the agency. In its own defense, FEMA claimed that the island geography of Puerto Rico made logistics– and specifically getting supplies where they needed to go– difficult. Critics of this response said that previous administrations had plans in place in case a category 4 or 5 hurricane ever hit Puerto Rico. FEMA should have had logistics ready for when an island territory faced a crisis. FEMA’s own 2017 Hurricane Season After-Action Report admitted fault in their response to Hurricane Maria,
“Hurricane Maria caused widespread damage to island seaports, airports, and roads. These closures increased transit times and limited the territories’ capacity to receive commodity shipments. Thus, FEMA’s logistics effort featured notable and persistent coordination challenges in resource prioritization, resource movement and tracking, commodity distribution efforts, and contracting processes.”17
FEMA’s After-Action Report shows that common assumptions about the challenges of post-disaster logistics, such as the assumption that ports of entry will be inaccessible, were not adequately considered by FEMA. The report demonstrated that FEMA had underestimated the amount of food, water, and workers the agency would need to supply for a proper emergency response. The report also showed that FEMA relied on a five-year-old emergency management plan which had not been updated with the latest methods of crisis management for Puerto Rico. FEMA’s logistics were not the only hindrance in aid delivery since the Jones Act’s restrictions proved detrimental as well.18
Implications of the Jones Act
The Jones Act is a protectionist law, widely considered to benefit primarily Mainland US traders by prohibiting Puerto Rico’s trade with other nations. While the Jones Act gave Mainland US traders ample opportunity to benefit from the wealth of the island, it restricted Puerto Rican traders to only dealing with their Mainland counterparts, leaving them without the chance to benefit from excess streams of revenue from their strategic location in the Caribbean. When disaster struck Puerto Rico, the law was still in effect so nearby nations that wished to deliver aid to Puerto Rico were unable to do so. Representatives from Congress and Puerto Rican officials called on Trump to waive the Jones Act so that aid could arrive on any ship. Initially, Trump pushed back by claiming that many merchants did not want the Jones Act waived, though political pressure eventually forced him to waive it for ten days starting on September 28, 2017. Unfortunately, only twelve ships took advantage of the waiver to send aid at that time and their deliveries were hindered by mishandled distribution efforts.18
Distribution of aid by the Puerto Rican government and FEMA officials was stalled for excessive lengths of time. Towns in need across the island were not receiving aid, while the officials in charge of their area were left waiting for the promised supplies. We now know that many of the supplies that made it to Puerto Rico were not immediately distributed because it was nearly impossible to transport them safely or to know what areas needed which supplies. Camila Domonoske of NPR writes,
“Most of the containers coming in have never left. Crowley (a maritime merchant company which delivered containers of supplies during Maria) says it has more than 3,400 commercial containers at its terminal now. That’s just one shipping company, at one port. Several other ports are accepting shipments, and stranded crates total an estimated 10,000.”19
The Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration worked with truck driver unions and the Department of Defense to clear streets blocked by power lines and trees, but the impact was slow-to-start. The extra time needed to clear pathways to deliver aid was a serious factor in delayed relief efforts. Despite the attempts to mitigate the impact of these unforeseen issues, FEMA, the Puerto Rican government, and the Trump administration could not provide a satisfactory emergency response, as measured by the length of time it took to return basic faculties to the island’s utilities and the number of preventable deaths which occurred.12
Failure in Management Models
Hurricane Maria was a disaster which neither the Puerto Rican government nor FEMA were ready for and neither agency was able to provide an appropriate, timely response. Through insufficient resource management, failed communication efforts, and inadequate disaster preparation, the agencies involved ultimately failed. There were various sectors of disaster response where collaboration broke down or was absent throughout the crisis leading to inefficient emergency management. It was possible to alleviate these breakdowns with proper management systems, but the agencies had different models of managing networks in place. Agranoff and McGuire, in their essay American Federalism and the Search for Models of Management, explain that managers need to account for interactions with multiple government and non-governmental organizations.20 Their essay provides four different frameworks for these interactions; the top-down model, the donor-recipient model, the jurisdiction-based model, and the network model. The disruptions in the Hurricane Maria response stem from the use of different models without a single model holding up communication between FEMA and the Puerto Rican government. The Puerto Rican government is first in the line of responsive agencies for when a crisis hits the island. Their management model was predominantly jurisdiction-based and it proved unsuccessful.
In an emergency, the jurisdiction-based model calls for local managers to deliberate and coordinate relief efforts amongst governmental and non-governmental actors to make decisions for the area they oversee. The idea behind the model in an emergency is that localities can respond faster than the executive branch, so they should theoretically have the power to coordinate a timely and effective response. Governor Rosselló’s State of Emergency Declaration enabled, “all agencies and municipalities to activate the special ‘emergency procurement’ procedures to purchase any materials and services that may be essential to respond to the emergency,” thus placing emergency preparation responsibilities on the various district leaders.10 However, local municipalities and their leaders did not have the resources to combat the problems that arose such as loss of power on the island or the disappearance of communication methods such as cellphones, internet, and radios. These were issues that Synapse Energy Associates had told the PREC about back in 2016.9 As the executive branch of the Puerto Rican government is in charge of the PREC, it was the executive branch’s duty to set up backup plans of communication and energy provisions. The State of Emergency Declaration may provide buying powers to municipality leaders to help their communities, but it did not enable them to prepare backup communications in a short amount of time. That responsibility fell on the executive branch of Puerto Rico which did not follow through with emergency response plans due to the constraints they were already facing in reaching municipality leaders.
As pointed out in the independent report from the Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University, local municipalities did not have updated and modern emergency plans which considered cascading failures of critical infrastructure.12 Thus, any plans enacted under the jurisdiction-based model were out-of-date and out-of-sync with other regions nearby, leading to breakdowns in communication. When the power grid collapsed and there was no way to speak with other jurisdictions, FEMA and other municipalities in Puerto Rico should have been able to follow a streamlined and up-to-date island-wide plan to continue relief efforts, but there was none in place. FEMA, as the organization notes in their after-action report, appeared with an island-wide plan, though it too was out-of-date and incomprehensive since it was last updated in 2012.17 FEMA’s management model is top-down with directives coming initially from the executive branch of the United States federal government (with any additional directive powers afforded to FEMA Director, Brock Long). When FEMA entered the Hurricane Maria relief situation, they became the controllers of emergency management, the ones responsible for an effective coordination of the emergency response. When a federal emergency is declared, as was the case with Hurricane Maria, FEMA provides assistance and relief, but it needs to be coordinated and positioned from their end. FEMA becomes the ultimate driver of resource disbursement, dictating where and when things will be moved. While a State or Territory’s government can work with and listen to FEMA while navigating an emergency, their power becomes limited as their decisions must now be based on FEMA’s actions. This leaves the State or Territory government in a position where it is sharing legal responsibility for emergency management with FEMA, but awaiting to hear coordination arrangements from them as well. FEMA’s managerial structure effectively usurped the power of the Puerto Rican government’s executive branch from coordinating with and providing for its municipality leaders. FEMA did not ask Puerto Rican officials what they needed in aid. Following the top-down model of management, FEMA sent what it believed Puerto Rico needed based on an outdated emergency plan, not recognizing their aid would face transportation and distribution delays since it had not coordinated the effort with Puerto Rican officials.16 In the planning, pre-disaster stages, Agranoff and McGuire’s network model could have reconciled the difference in strategies between FEMA and the Puerto Rican government. As the writers explain, “The role of management in the network model is one of problem resolution by facilitating and furthering interaction, as well as creating and changing network arrangements for better coordination.”20 Had FEMA and the Puerto Rican government previously coordinated initial response plans for aid and relief efforts together, instead of following their own outdated yet stringent plans, they could have sidestepped many issues that arose. This possibility of the agencies working closely together weakened as time went on due to other factors outside the disaster itself.
A Lack of Collaboration
In their article, Collaboration and Leadership for Effective Emergency Management, William Waugh and Gregory Streib express the importance of collaboration between organizations to adapt their plans for emergencies,
“It is a mistake to assume that a response can be completely scripted or that the types of resources that are available can be fully catalogued. It is also a mistake to assume that any individual or organization can manage all the relief and recovery efforts during a catastrophic disaster.”21
FEMA assumed that they had sent enough aid to Puerto Rico without consulting the Puerto Rican government or the citizens about their necessities. This led to accusations that Puerto Rico received less aid due to racial bias.22 This was the first barrier to collaboration as the disaster response became framed in a manner that was not about working together but about the mistreatment of people in Puerto Rico. The second significant barrier around aid was not FEMA or the Puerto Rican government’s fault, but it impeded their coordination all the same. The Jones Act did not allow extra ships with aid to arrive, which would take some pressure off FEMA and the Puerto Rican government. Had the Jones Act not been in place, agencies involved would have had fewer tensions and may have collaborated sooner. Perceptions of racism against Puerto Ricans and legal frameworks hindered the reconciliation between FEMA and the Puerto Rican government that would have led to collaboration. The Puerto Rican government initially assumed it had given municipal leaders enough power and resources to coordinate local relief efforts, but they were wrong. They left their leaders without clear systems of communication such as phones or radios to convey their area’s needs and incapable of removing FEMA aid that was sitting in distribution centers waiting for them. Despite municipal leaders requesting quicker distribution of aid, the Puerto Rican government’s executive branch did not immediately coordinate with FEMA on distribution, which would have helped provide aid at a more satisfactory pace. Instead, Puerto Ricans chose to collaborate amongst themselves for disaster relief.
Conclusion
Due to mismanagement by FEMA and the Puerto Rican government, the people of Puerto Rico used a donor-recipient model to keep their communities alive. Neighbors would provide food and shelter when they could. The model came about during Hurricane Maria because FEMA and the Puerto Rican government did not collaborate appropriately during the storm to coordinate aid efforts. Both FEMA and the Puerto Rican government remained steadfast in their management models despite it being clear after the hurricane destroyed the power grid and shut down ports that their models were failing. Had the organizations utilized a network model approach, as explained by Agranoff and McGuire, during the pre-disaster planning stages then they would have been able to collaborate and discuss ways to work together to combat their most common barriers in relief efforts. In the response planning stage, the Puerto Rican government’s executive branch should be the primary driver under the network model, guiding FEMA and Puerto Rico’s localities to create cohesive emergency plans. Moving forward, FEMA and the Puerto Rican government must operate under a clear, agreed-upon top-down management model during an emergency to drive collaboration and a cohesive, more effective response. The agencies must operate under this model while still taking steps to alleviate concerns regarding biases and communications which arose during Hurricane Maria. During future emergencies, the organizations should adopt the top-down model with FEMA being directly in charge and the Puerto Rican government providing an advisory committee designated to ensure the issues regarding municipal communication, resource disbursement, and racial bias are dealt with. The advisory committee would be made up of representatives from the island’s municipal governments and the executive branch, fostering better communication and alliance. As Waugh and Streib’s ideas show, collaboration before and during emergencies provides flexible plans and open communication that was sorely lacking during the response to Hurricane Maria. FEMA and the Puerto Rican government must ensure active collaboration and communication between their agencies by working together closely on future emergency plans and their joint response.
References
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