Report knocks Washington’s response to Hurricane Maria

San Juan, Puerto Rico — A federal report published Tuesday found that staff shortages and a lack of trained personnel slowed the U.S. government response to Hurricane Maria, a storm estimated to have killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said 54 percent of federal emergency personnel were not qualified to do the rescue work in October 2017, a month after the Category 4 hurricane hit the U.S. territory. The report also states there were logistical challenges due to the location of Puerto Rico and the neighboring U.S. Virgin Islands, and added that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had to assume many of the local government’s responsibilities given the loss of power and communications as well as “limited local preparedness for a major hurricane.”

Christopher Currie, the GAO’s director of emergency management issues, said in a phone interview that FEMA was already stretched thin by responding to hurricanes Harvey and Irma, as well as California wildfires.

“The response in Florida, Texas and California was about what we planned for,” he said. “In Puerto Rico, obviously, it was a much, much different story.”

FEMA did not anticipate not having the support of local government officials in Puerto Rico, who he said were still reeling from the hurricane — the strongest to hit the territory in nearly a century. In addition, the power grid was destroyed and 95 percent of cellphone towers were not working, leaving the island with no communication for almost a week. This meant officials did not immediately understand the scale of the damage. Hurricane Maria hit on Sept. 20 and is estimated to have caused $100 billion in damage.

“Once the scale was understood, that’s when FEMA called in the Department of Defense. They said, ‘We’re overwhelmed . ... We need help,’” Currie said. “From a FEMA standpoint, a couple of things happened that they were not anticipating that they probably could have.”

The report also said that FEMA lacked enough Spanish-speaking employees, and that some staffers were not physically fit enough to handle the “extreme or austere” environment.