Hurricane Maria in late September 2017 left parts of the United States and Latin America in utter ruin.
The hardest-hit U.S. territory was the island of Puerto Rico, where property damage is estimated at somewhere between $45 billion and $130 billion, and estimates of the death toll range around 3,000 dead or missing. This followed on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, which washed through the Gulf of Mexico in August and engulfed several city blocks in Houston, Texas, also causing massive damage.
In both cases, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and private charities rushed to assess damage and begin repairs. The federal relief effort in Puerto Rico is widely regarded as being botched, and has prompted some to ask whether it would be better for FEMA to step aside and let private organizations handle hurricane relief.
One of the issues with this approach is that FEMA has a vast budget: $13.9 billion annually, and the resources of the federal government to assist it. On the other hand, the level of bureaucracy that is taken for granted in any large government agency can severely hinder relief efforts.
For example, world-renowned chef Jose Andres flew from the mainland United States to San Juan almost immediately to begin assisting in the recovery, cooking meals for hospital staff and the dispossessed masses of Puerto Ricans who had escaped the flooding. In a recent NPR interview, he complained that FEMA often warehoused resources, such as water, but would not allow his organization to distribute the water or buy it from the government for distribution. He, and many others, have also complained that the government artificially deflated the death toll, initially set around 16, which stymied recovery efforts.
Puerto Rico is only one example. FEMA also has a long track record of under-performance, namely the agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Private charities and relief organizations have always played a role in supplementing recovery efforts, but their ability to handle such a situation by themselves is unproven. While they generally have a more streamlined bureaucracy and have knowledge of the local area that out-of-state federal agents would not, they also don’t have as much funding. Many of them rely on contracts with FEMA, which would presumably make them private contractors rather than charitable organizations.
Local churches and hospitals usually play a large role in the immediate aftermath of the disaster as places to house, treat and feed those displaced by the disaster, but they, too, often rely on outside funding.
Another question to parse out is the role of insurance companies. Private insurance, for example, paid $670,000 in claims related to Hurricane Harvey in Houston, well below the estimated property damage, and many residents of Puerto Rico were too poor to afford insurance.
Perhaps the best solution is a marrying of the private and the public. FEMA could, for example, save money on hiring their own personnel and buying their own equipment and instead serve as a “disaster relief fund” of sorts, doling out contracts to private organizations that can more adequately serve members of their own communities.
Whatever the solution for disaster relief must be, it must be arrived at quickly as hurricane seasons are predicted to spawn increasingly destructive storms.
