Comprehensive Emergency Planning

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Comprehensive Emergency Planning Hurricane Irma and Maria The disaster under consideration, in this case, is Hurricane Irma and Maria, which made landfall in Puerto Rico, causing widespread destruction and numerous challenges in a region already facing numerous economic challenges. The hurricanes devastated the remote Islands spread throughout the Caribbean. The damages caused by the hurricanes were estimated at $100 billion and had a long-term impact, especially in Puerto Rico (Cortés, 2018). The disaster revealed the fragility of the existing infrastructure and the response readiness. The disaster wiped out about 90 percent of Puerto Rico's and the communication grid for more than 3.4 million people.

Further, it complicated the recovery and rescue efforts that depend on connectivity to flow information effectively to the emergency responders and the affected communities

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(Cortés, 2018). The response to this natural disaster required federal, local, and state efforts. For example, stakeholders such as NetHope (which entailed participants across all levels) deployed a team to Puerto Rico to help first responders, member organizations, and local government agencies re-establish Internet connectivity.

Mitigation tools and impediments to mitigation There were plans in place, especially for healthcare teams. Before the hurricanes happened, hospitals and their residency programs followed emergency preparedness protocols which are said to have included ensuring the adequacy of the supplies, reducing the number of patients, and formulating contingency plans for the staff to cover the hospital services during the storm, among others. All the residency programs organized teams of residents and faculty members who stayed in the hospitals for at least three days. The residents on the outside electives were called and instructed about safety. They were also told to report to the hospital when the weather and roads safely allowed them to travel. The parking lots were evaluated, and the cars were to be transferred to safer areas.

Reports were to be prepared to ascertain all the underlying factors. In response to the hurricanes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sent a mitigation assessment team in order to evaluate the damage, document the observations, and offer recommendations and conclusions on the performance of the buildings as well as other structures affected by flooding, wind forces, and other hazards as a result of the hurricanes (Cortés, 2018). The team included engineers and representatives from Federal agencies, government officials, and experts from academia and the construction industries. The recommendations were supposed to guide the stakeholders with information and technical steps that could be used in order to reduce future hurricane damage.

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The arrangements were further made with gas stations for the residents, physicians, and health care personnel to have priority in the lines. Some of the hospitals paid for gasoline for residents and faculty. In order to address the communication challenges, satellite telephones were made available at most hospitals. The system did not work well on all the sites. However, it served as an alternative for some until communication could be re-established. Next, landlines were made available, followed by cellular phones.

As for the impediments, it was evident that many of the damaged buildings observed did not have a continuous load path. Buildings that were observed by the assessment team, which experienced total or partial failure of their structural systems, did not have a continuous load path (Cortés, 2018). The most common type of failure took place when a connection between two structural members failed. Many building owners also had limited awareness of hurricane hazard risks and vulnerabilities. The vulnerability of their building to wind, floods, and other hazards was unknown, and many assumed that a specific building type or location ensured their safety.

More so, corrosion of fasteners and connectors contributed to building failures throughout Puerto Rico. Staged construction is still exposed to elements, degrading the exposed structural elements over time.

Preparedness efforts (local, state, and federal governments; and volunteer groups or nongovernmental organizations) The Puerto Rico government did not adequately prepare to face Hurricane Maria. As a result, it lacked urgency and a sense of comfort, given that it did not affect the Island as expected. Initially, Puerto Rico was given a hurricane advisory for Hurricane Irma from both State and Federal stakeholders, which indicated that the hurricane was going to strike the Island straight through the middle as a major hurricane. As such, the Puerto Rico government made

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some steps to prepare for Hurricane Irma. The efforts made by this government to prepare underestimated the severity of the hurricane.

At the local level, the Island residents, in conjunction with the government, had already prepared and mobilized to face Hurricane Irma. The sense of urgency for Hurricane Irma was much more than for Maria, given that many people on the Island felt greater confidence in their level of preparedness and security (Cortés, 2018). As such, people thought they were prepared for Hurricane Irma.

Similarly, the government was not prepared to face a Hurricane of the magnitude of Hurricane Maria. The fact that the hurricane could have been in the category of hurricane 4 was overlooked in the preparation process. People did not imagine that it could have caused the kind of damage that it did. The Puerto Rico government also failed to follow the catastrophic plan, including the methods of communication that were supposed to be used. They only depended on the satellite communication systems, which broke down during the hurricane, leaving no alternate communication method.

Response efforts (local, state, and federal governments; and volunteer groups or nongovernmental organizations) AEMEAD could not effectively respond to the disaster because it did not fully follow the catastrophic and emergency operations plan. Initially, the plans were designed to ensure that the government effectively responded to the disaster. During the past few days of the response, the Island was in chaos. This has been attributed to the lack of familiarity between AEMEAD's leadership and other agencies with the emergency plans. Even the distribution and crisis management plans were not followed to distribute and handle food and donations properly. Most of the responses that were being put in place were more improvised as opposed to being pre-

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planned. As a result of the lack of preparedness, the Puerto Rico government trusted FEMA to be the only primary response for many weeks. Under normal circumstances, FEMA has not been designed to be the first response and should not be (Cortés, 2018). It was only brought on board because Puerto Rico's emergency protocol could not comply with its primary responsibilities during the disaster, proving itself unresponsive.

Recovery efforts (local, state, and federal governments; and volunteer groups or nongovernmental organizations) The period of recovery from the disaster was uncertain. As a result of the magnitude of the damage caused, the government was unable to fulfill its promise of achieving about 95% power restoration by December 2017; it only achieved 63% of the same (Pullen, 2018). The unsuccessful efforts were attributed to the severity of the destruction and the lack of materials.

During this time, the financial situation on the Island was not good. After the hurricane, the need to rebuild the power grid of the Island became the main financial burden for the government. The government had to rely on the federal government’s financial support for most of the expenses, yet there was still much delay in the recovery. The delay in the power restoration resulted from the government's inability to disburse funding for the restoration efforts.

The organization that was actively involved in recovery efforts was also limited resourcewise. FEMA had to deal with the unprecedented resource needs of consecutive response operations. This is because FEMA was also dealing with the hurricanes Irma, Hurvey, Maria, and the California wildfires. FEMA had exhausted the commodities at hand and renegotiated contracts to provide water, meals, and resources during the responses to hurricanes. As a result, most of its resources had been depleted. The allocation of federal funding was also unequally distributed among the affected territories and states.

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Other humanitarian stakeholders came on board for recovery purposes. For instance, a humanitarian organization called Habitat worked to implement an advocacy agenda that supports scaling up and replicating the housing-recovery programming on the Island (Pullen, 2018). In addition, the UN-Habitat monitored and evaluated the program to continually improve and measure the impact. It also worked with the University of Puerto Rico to conduct an in-depth evaluation of the existing land trust, hoping the research could lead to new legislation.

Communications for response efforts and the various methods of communication with the affected population Data collected for communication assessment from different angles, e.g., conducting interviews with government officials and key stakeholders, including the community leaders, key stakeholders, reviewing the press releases, first responders, and media stories, among others, was considered. However, it became apparent that telecommunications and power outages without effective communications contingencies caused major disruptions and delays, and there was a substantial information vacuum. For example, Puerto Rico did not have a formal written crisis and Emergency risk communication plan at the time of the storm, and the critical information spokespersons and personnel had not been trained then. The government officials also failed to call the subject matter experts, monitor and counter the resulting spread of rumors which emerged in an attempt to fill these gaps (Pullen, 2018). In addition, the post-disaster media environment, with many unofficial death counts and contradictory information from government officials, likely influenced the stakeholder perceptions that the government's communication about mortality was not transparent or credible.

The federal agencies faced many challenges in their response to Hurricane Maria, which caused extensive damage to the Island. The part that was to be played by the Federal

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Communication Commission (FCC) included gathering the network outage information and creating the task force that was tailored towards supporting the restoration of the communication.

However, there was role confusion in the recovery efforts (Gay et al., 2019). The FCC's disaster response role could have been more precise, even though the government states that all levels of government should understand their respective roles.

From the above descriptions, it is apparent that the communication was haphazard, and there were no clear channels for conveying information. The lack of proactive communication led to poor coordination. In addition, some of the means that could have been used for communication purposes were further sabotaged by Hurricane Maria since the communication infrastructure was destroyed.

Future effects and influence on the implementation of emergency management.

There are efforts to work on smarter aid distribution. For example, there was only one warehouse before the hurricane, and FEMA struggled to distribute supplies across the territory.

Therefore, warehouse capacity becomes an essential element. Since then, Puerto Rico has increased its warehouse capacity from 84,295 to 315,000 square feet. There are also plans to stock six times as much water and generators this year compared to 2017, and other aspects such as seven times as many meals and eight times as many tarps (Gay et al., 2019).

There are various future effects and influences arising from this disaster as far as emergency management is concerned. In the period before, during, and immediately following a disaster, there is a need to maintain open lines of communication between all stakeholders. These include residents because they are always on the front lines and are likely to provide valuable contributions (Zorrilla, 2017). In addition, emergency management is tending to a time when there will be the need to think about it to reduce redundancy.

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For effective emergency management, there is a need to strive to maintain alternative energy sources. Even though Puerto Rico looked like an ideal demonstration site for the renewable energy grid, the access to generators and fuel ran out quickly, hence leaving the community without alternatives. In addition, the limited redundant power sources, such as water, were available for the public utility plants, which allowed for sewer overflows (Kwasinski et al., 2019). Power is increasingly becoming necessary to provide medical and other critical lifesaving services that are jeopardized during the storm.

The disaster recovery program helped to build the capacity in Puerto Rico and strengthen health facilities to be in a position to meet the changing needs of the communities and patients.

There was more emphasis on disaster preparedness, psychosocial services, mental health, and the decentralization of health services in order to reach the most excluded. With the support from American Red Cross, Americarers has been able to train over 1,200 health workers and staff across Puerto Rico in disaster preparedness (Pullen, 2018). They have strived to build capability in resource management and resilience and develop communication and coordination skills in order to maintain health services ad save lives during and after disasters.

Conclusion Hurricane Maria has been the worst natural disaster that has negatively impacted Puerto Rico in modern times. It caused a lot of damage (approximately $90 billion). The participating agencies could not take the necessary procedures to effectively deal with the phases of emergency management before, during, and after the catastrophe. The actively involved organizations, such as FEMA, also ran out of resources. The magnitude of the storm, the previous financial struggles, and the lack of preparedness were some of the main factors influencing the emergency management process. Some of the emergency planning procedures

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used were outdated hence the need for the stakeholders to update their emergency plans during the hurricane crises. There is a need that proper actions such as effective planning, routine training, and responsible mitigation procedures should be implemented to responsibly correct for previous emergency management failures.

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References Cortés, J. (2018). Puerto Rico: Hurricane Maria and the promise of disposability. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 29(3), 1-8.

Gay, H. A., Santiago, R., Gil, B., Remedios, C., Montes, P. J., López-Araujo, J., ... & Burnett III, O. L. (2019).Lessons learned from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico: practical measures to mitigate the impact of a catastrophic natural disaster on radiation oncology patients. Practical Radiation Oncology, 9(5), 305-321.

Kwasinski, A., Andrade, F., Castro-Sitiriche, M. J., & O'Neill-Carrillo, E. (2019). Hurricane Maria's effects on Puerto Rico's electric power infrastructure. IEEE Power and Energy Technology Systems Journal, 6(1), 85–94.

Pullen, L. C. (2018). Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. American Journal of Transplantation, 18(2), 283-284.

Zorrilla, C. D. (2017). The view from Puerto Rico—Hurricane Maria and its aftermath. New England Journal of Medicine, 377(19), 1801-1803.