(CN) – Close to the entirety of Puerto Rico remains in the dark and without sufficient food and water in the wake of a ruthless Hurricane Maria that barreled across the island and uprooted the lives of its 3.5 million residents.
Reports of people clamoring to escape from small San Juan Airport seem like déjà vu. A week earlier, Hurricane Irma pummeled the Florida coast, forcing residents to flee by land and air. And only a week before Irma, Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Texas Gulf Coast, charged toward Houston and lingered for days before leaving behind 19 trillion gallons of rainfall and a swath of near unfathomable destruction.
Images of Houstonians, Floridians and now Puerto Ricans, traipsing through waist high water carrying children or tugging belongings in boats while seeking dry ground were reminiscent of the soggy hell Hurricane Katrina unleashed on New Orleans 12 years earlier.
The failure of New Orleans' levies immediately on the heels of Katrina, and the deadly flooding for the city's Ninth Ward, shocked the nation.
It also inspired the Senate Committee on Homeland Security to commission a 737-page tome “Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared,” which analyzed the federal response to the disaster and its failure over 28 chapters.
In an interview with Courthouse News on Tuesday, physician and former New Orleans health commissioner Karen DeSalvo said since 2005, she sees some of the hard lessons learned by the President George W. Bush in how his successors, first Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump have responded to subsequent natural disasters.
Since Katrina, emergency management officials have used every platform available to remind residents of hurricane-prone locales that the time to prepare for a potentially catastrophic storm is long before it comes ashore.
This philosophy played out in the weeklong evacuations in Florida ahead of Irma and the scheduling of fuel shipments there. A connected public on social media with access to early warnings and federal emergency updates made independent rescue operations, like those undertaken by the Cajun Navy, truly effective on the ground.
As the aftermath of Katrina showed, however, unanticipated consequences can turn all the preparedness in the world on its head.
During her time as commissioner, DeSalvo restored the city’s outmoded health department established new hospitals and implemented digital recordkeeping which restored a ravaged community’s health records, an especially helpful tool in future disasters.
Recovery efforts, as she learned after Katrina, vary by storm and circumstance. Yet when waters rise and damage piles up at unimaginable rates - much like what is unfolding in powerless Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria hit on Sept. 20 – the problem lies with the United States' inability to fully cope with the sheer magnitude of a disaster.
Crisis often begins as a slow burn with storms. People are fearful and must make a decision on whether to stay or go, protect their homes and valuables or flee from the elements.