Emergency Response and Beyond Lessons Learned: Puerto Rico in the Aftermath of Hurricane Maria

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina (2005), Sandy (2012), Harvey (2017) and Irma (2017), the roles of public policy, emergency response, and elected officials with disaster response responsibilities have often been the source of sometimes praise and sometimes condemnation; but always, the emergency response to a natural disaster remains the subject of social scientific research. This manuscript employs a comparative case study approach to highlight the emergency response to the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria (2017). At the center of this analysis are the lessons learned from previous disasters and their application (or non-application) by local and federal emergency managers and first responders and the role of the ongoing economic hardships in Puerto Rico.