Hurricane maria12/28/2023 If we don’t heed those lessons, recovery will only put a bandage on underlying challenges. Hurricane Maria offered important lessons in disaster recovery and rebuilding. Such support is critical to helping Puerto Rico address its most immediate needs, but it will be some time before residents and experts can fully grasp the scale of Fiona’s damage. The Biden administration has taken swift action by issuing a disaster declaration for Puerto Rico to ensure that federal disaster assistance is available for recovery and rebuilding by announcing $60 billion in additional rebuilding aid through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and by waiving the Jones Act to ensure that a shipment of diesel fuel is allowed on to the island to power generators and critical facilities. Given past experience, Puerto Ricans are rightfully nervous that this will slow the flow of federal aid, diverting resources away from Puerto Rico when it remains vulnerable. Now, on the heels of Fiona, Hurricane Ian is devastating much of the Southern United States. Indeed, more than 40 percent of the territory’s overall population lives in poverty, unemployment stands at 5.8 percent, and the median household income was $21,058 from 2016 to 2020. The crisis is more acute, however, as Puerto Rico has long struggled with economic challenges: Following years of recession, the island is in a debt crisis and has filed for bankruptcy relief. Rebuilding efforts since Hurricane Maria have been slow, inadequate, and incomplete, leaving the island ill-equipped to weather another major disaster. In the longer term (the next decade or so), Puerto Rico will need to focus on key resilience challenges: Address economic conditions that precipitated population loss, worsened storm damage, and currently inhibit recovery pursue municipal priorities for economic development and recovery scale housing, social service, health, education, and infrastructure systems for current and future populations reduce the vulnerability of infrastructure in Puerto Rico to natural hazards and build it to 21st-century standards address building-permit and code-enforcement gaps that reduce the effectiveness of Puerto Rico’s utilities and perpetuate activity in the informal sector and report timely and accurate data on the commonwealth’s economic and fiscal status.Almost five years to the day after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm-killing nearly 3,000 people and causing an estimated $90 billion in damage-Hurricane Fiona made landfall on the island, deluging it with destruction that is all too familiar to the more than 3 million American citizens who call Puerto Rico home.In the short term (within two years of publishing the recovery plan), Puerto Rico needs to address remaining cross-sectoral recovery priorities: Complete damage and needs assessments that remain incomplete, repair critical infrastructure that remains nonfunctioning or in disrepair, promote efforts to improve governance and fiscal accountability, update emergency-preparedness plans, clearly establish responsibility for infrastructure assets and services, and repair homes that remain damaged or destroyed.Prehurricane conditions and damage to lifeline infrastructure affected response and recovery in every sector.Hurricane Maria caused catastrophic damage to Puerto Rico’s lifeline infrastructure systems and housing.Puerto Rico faced extensive and deep-rooted stressors prior to the 2017 hurricane season.They identified short- and longer-term needs for Puerto Rico to recover and to build resilience to future storms economic, social, and environmental trends and ongoing governance challenges. To support development of Puerto Rico’s short- and long-term recovery and resilience plan, experts conducted a comprehensive assessment of the commonwealth’s challenges and the damage caused by the 2017 hurricanes.
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