Hurricane Maria exposes colonial abandonment
Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. A Harvard/NEJM study estimated 4,645 excess deaths. The federal response was catastrophically slow compared to responses to mainland hurricanes.
The Storm
Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane on September 20, 2017.
The Death Toll
The Puerto Rican government initially reported 64 deaths. An independent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated 4,645 excess deaths in the months following the hurricane — 70 times the official count.
The Federal Response
- FEMA approved $6.2 billion for Puerto Rico vs. $36.2 billion for Hurricane Harvey (Texas) and $16.7 billion for Hurricane Irma (Florida)
- Puerto Rico waited 43 days for a waiver of the Jones Act shipping restrictions
- The island went without power for 328 days — the longest blackout in U.S. history
- 60% of the island lacked drinking water for weeks
- President Trump visited on October 3 and threw rolls of paper towels to hurricane survivors
Structural Context
The inadequacy of the federal response was structural:
- Puerto Rico cannot vote for the president who controls FEMA
- Puerto Rico has no voting representation in the Congress that funds disaster relief
- The Jones Act increased the cost of importing recovery materials
- PROMESA austerity had already gutted infrastructure
Aftermath
An estimated 200,000 Puerto Ricans left the island in the year following Maria — the largest single-year population loss in the island's history.
Sources
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Primary Source
Kishore, N. et al. "Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria." New England Journal of Medicine 379:2 (2018): 162-170.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1803972