What the columnists said

Irma has laid bare the awkwardness of colonial rule, said Kate Maltby in CNN.com. Ravaged areas such as St. Martin and the B.V.I. are “an ocean away from their old imperial masters.” When disaster strikes “and citizens begin to die, many begin to question why rescue decisions are being made from Paris, London, or The Hague.”

“The wild isolation” that made these islands ideal for honeymoons “has turned them into cutoff, chaotic nightmares,” said Anika Kentish and Michael Weissenstein in the Associated Press. Irma snapped their “fragile links to the outside world,” pounding airports, decapitating cellphone towers, and strewing boats like litter on land. The immediate concern is “access to safe drinking water and shelter,” said Matt Reynolds in NewScientist.com. Meanwhile, stagnant and contaminated water bring disease-carrying mosquitoes and cholera— which overwhelmed Haiti after Hurricane Matthew last year.

Puerto Rico was spared the worst of Irma’s fury, but the storm still knocked out the power grid, brutally “exposing the island’s decrepit infrastructure,” said Luis Ferré-Sadurní in The New York Times. With the U.S. territory mired in recession, efforts to modernize its oil-burning electrical plants “and diversify energy sources have mostly come to a halt.” Privatizing the public utilities could be a solution—but it’s a divisive issue with stiff union opposition. Whatever the strategy, for Puerto Ricans, “Irma was a close call”—and a call to action before the next disaster strikes.