The authors detail the status of Puerto Rico's communities leading up to Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the storms' impact on them, and 15 courses of action to improve their capacity for emergency preparedness, communication, and recovery planning.

Puerto Rico has suffered the compounded effects of multiple disasters since the devastating impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017. At the end of 2019, the island was impacted with recurrent seismic activity in the southwest region, and in January 2020 the unset of the COVID-19 pandemic. All these disasters are underscored by a crush¬ing debt crisis and a federally mandated austerity regime since 2016. Recent disasters have revealed serious vulnerabilities in Puerto Rico's prepared¬ness planning, institutional response capacity and coordination, resource management at various levels of implementation, data availability, and the lack of suitable and accessible mechanisms to sup¬port adequate local community engagement. The collection of studies included in this special volume of CENTRO Journal show evidence of how post disaster recovery is progressing in Puerto Rico, the challenges and opportunities for local participation in reconstruction programs, and the potential of nonprofit organizations, municipalities, and local businesses to contribute to post disaster recovery in Puerto Rico. To date, the available evidence leads to a portrait of an uneven recovery. The studies included in this volume indicate that the long-term impact of post-disaster federal funding for economic recovery is contingent on implementing a comprehensive strategy for reforming public policy to encourage and support nonprofit developers' participation in reconstruction programs, building industry capacity by strengthening intermediaries and CDCs, encouraging intra-industry partnerships and collaborations, and providing professional development for economic recovery.

After Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused widespread destruction across the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, FEMA tasked the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) to work with the government of Puerto Rico, federal agencies, and other stakeholders to write a congressionally mandated economic and disaster recovery plan. This report summarizes HSOAC's strategic planning process to support the government of Puerto Rico in its development of the recovery plan. The HSOAC team developed nearly 300 potential recovery actions (courses of action) that Puerto Rico could take to repair damage from the hurricanes and address longer-term economic recovery needs. The courses of action delineate potential activities, policies, programs, and strategies designed to further the goals prioritized by the government of Puerto Rico and other stakeholders. Each individual course of action describes an approach to addressing a problem associated with hurricane damage or with a preexisting condition that inhibits economic recovery. To develop the courses of action, the HSOAC team aligned 12 teams with the FEMA sectors supporting the National Disaster Recovery Framework, ranging from water to housing. For each course of action, the team estimated the costs that would likely be incurred and identified potential sources of funding for implementation. The extent of the hurricane damage, combined with the preexisting economic challenges, meant that the recovery actions identified covered every aspect of a modern economy. The hundreds of courses of action represent complex actions that need to be understood in context with how they redress these challenges, with insights into how they connect with the key interests of inclusiveness and innovation, what their contributions will be toward meeting the strategic objectives that the governor of Puerto Rico identified, and their impact on the total cost of the plan. To help the government of Puerto Rico select a cohesive and effective set of courses of action for its recovery plan, the HSOAC team bundled these courses of action into portfolios and developed a unique decision support tool to summarize and synthesize possible options. Ultimately, the analysis and support provided by the HSOAC team facilitated the governor's final decision on which courses of action and portfolios to select, but neither HSOAC nor the decision support engagements exclusively determined the content of the final recovery plan.

With its 155 mile-per-hour sustained windspeeds, the near-Category 5 Hurricane Maria brought catastrophic devastation and destruction as it diagonally crossed the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico from the southeast to the northwest on September 20, 2017. The official death toll estimate of 2,975 lost lives means this record storm became one of the most devasting hurricanes not only for Puerto Rico but for the U.S. Many of these deaths, as well as the prolonged human suffering, were attributed to what was described as inadequate disaster response and slow restoration of basic services (including running water, electricity, and the provision and distribution of food and medicine), and not to the direct impact of the hurricane itself. At the same time, Hurricane Maria made landfall when Puerto Rico had been confronting a severe economic crisis surging for over a decade. This crisis, referred to as La Crisis Boricua, was characterized by a significant loss of industry and jobs, a deteriorating infrastructure, record net outmigration, a shrinking and rapidly aging population, rising healthcare under-coverage, a bankrupt government, and federal legislation restricting fiscal policy decisions made by elected officials on the island. Thus, Hurricane Maria exacerbated the effects of La Crisis Boricua on the socioeconomic, health, and demographic outcomes affecting Puerto Ricans on the island and U.S. mainland. Bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines (including economics, sociology, demography, health, psychology, disaster research, political science, education, the arts, and others), this volume represents one of the first interdisciplinary sets of studies dedicated to analyzing the effects of Hurricane Maria on island and stateside Puerto Ricans. Specific topics cover Hurricane Maria’s impact on labor market outcomes, including wages and employment by industry; health implications, including mental health; changes in artistic expression; civic engagement; and disaster response and recovery. A common thread through many of the chapters was the destruction of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid and the prolonged restoration of electricity and other essential services that resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.

Disasters represent disruptions to stability and offer lessons about how climate adaptation is negotiated and acted on. Viewing adaptation as a negotiation helps understand recovery not just as actions taken to minimize harm, but a reflection of values and motivations surrounding adaptation. This research elicits these perspectives and considers them as part of an ongoing agreement for disaster recovery and adaptation in Puerto Rico. Previous research has characterized recovery as an opportunity for rethinking societal arrangements for climate adaptation and highlights the importance of how adaptation is conceptualized across actors. This study builds on past research by using distinct perspectives to understand recovery as an adaptation process and a co-production of a new "social contract" after Hurricane Maria. Community interviews and government documents are analyzed to understand who is involved, where change is happening, and what resources are necessary for success. The purpose of this is to consider distinct framings of recovery and adaptation, and what these contribute to long-term change. Community interviews give a perspective of local stability and show capacities for immediate and long-term recovery. Similarly, government documents discuss managing foundational vulnerabilities like infrastructure, while navigating recovery given geographical and economic obstacles. Findings show that self-organization and harnessing social capital are crucial components of recovery in the Corcovada community after Maria. They rely on bonding and bridging social capital to mobilize resources and reduce vulnerabilities for future threats. This transformative approach was also present in official recovery documents, though political and economic change were stressed as necessary for stability, along with modernizing infrastructure. While recovery documents suggest connecting physical and social resilience, community residents have cultivated this connection long before Maria. Unlike in Corcovada, the government of Puerto Rico is only starting to view disruptions as windows of opportunity and therefore mention plans for transformation but don't present actions taken. Further, the reality of vulnerable infrastructural, political and economic systems greatly affects recovery both in Corcovada and across the island. Both perspectives will likely affect actions taken in Puerto Rico and recognizing these unique framings of stability can help design transformative, adaptive social contracts for facing future threats.

This book deals with the immediate effects of, and response to, Hurricane María on the social, ecological, and technological systems (SETS) of Puerto Rico. The SETS approach to analyzing hurricane effects places into historical context the role of social and technological factors, and compares social and ecological resilience on the same temporal scales. Written from the perspective of a Puerto Rican scientist who experienced Maria's wrath first-hand, the book uses extensive empirical knowledge of the ecological effects of hurricanes on Caribbean forests and combines that knowledge with a detailed analysis of the effects of Hurricane María on the social and technological fabric of Puerto Rico. The comparison suggests that the effects of extreme events are dictated not only by the strength of the physical event, but also by the conditions of affected SETS at the time when the event exerts influence over them. Moreover, SETS have historical legacies that influence how resilient they can be when affected by an extreme event. Therefore, preparation and response to extreme events require an integrated social, ecological, and technological effort, known as the SETS response. The SETS response requires an understanding of the energetics of extreme events and their effects on the economy, which in turn determines social and technological resilience. Hurricane María demonstrated that the social and technological systems of Puerto Rico were not adapted to dealing with extreme events, in contrast with the ecological systems, which were. Hurricane María’s effect on Puerto Rico can be used as an example from which valuable lessons emerge for making SETS more adaptable and resilient to extreme events.

Resilient supply chains are crucial to maintaining the consistent delivery of goods and services to the American people. The modern economy has made supply chains more interconnected than ever, while also expanding both their range and fragility. In the third quarter of 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria revealed some significant vulnerabilities in the national and regional supply chains of Texas, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The broad impacts and quick succession of these three hurricanes also shed light on the effectiveness of the nation's disaster logistics efforts during response through recovery. Drawing on lessons learned during the 2017 hurricanes, this report explores future strategies to improve supply chain management in disaster situations. This report makes recommendations to strengthen the roles of continuity planning, partnerships between civic leaders with small businesses, and infrastructure investment to ensure that essential supply chains will remain operational in the next major disaster. Focusing on the supply chains food, fuel, water, pharmaceutical, and medical supplies, the recommendations of this report will assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as state and local officials, private sector decision makers, civic leaders, and others who can help ensure that supply chains remain robust and resilient in the face of natural disasters.