Original subtitles

A hurricane can unleash as much energy in a day

as 10,000 nuclear bombs.

With a combination of torrential rain, powerful winds

and devastating storm surges,

hurricanes can wreak havoc when they reach land,

but are particularly catastrophic

when they strike low-lying areas.

With accounts from survivors

and fascinating expert insights,

we investigate two of the most devastating hurricanes

of modern times: Hurricane Katrina,

which struck the gulf coast of America in 2005,

and Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in 2017.

If America, one of the richest countries in the world,

is unable to protect its cities and territories,

we have to ask:

What can we possibly do to save ourselves

from one of Mother Nature’s deadliest forces?

You know, hurricane seasons come each and every year.

We’ve had hurricanes. We’ve always had hurricanes.

What we haven’t had is development along our coastlines

like we have today.

Large cities growing in population,

we’re putting more buildings and people in harm’s way.

Hurricanes are a natural process.

What creates the disaster are the people in buildings

that are in the way of the hurricane.

There are three names given to rotating tropical storms

with winds that reach speeds

of at least 119 kilometers per hour.

These names vary

depending on which part of the world they occur in.

They are known as hurricanes

when they develop

over the western North Atlantic,

central and eastern North Pacific,

Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico.

They are called cyclones

when they form over the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea,

and as typhoons when they develop in the Western Pacific.

Their names may vary,

but all three are essentially the same thing:

a devastating storm with ferocious winds

that can cause death and destruction

on a terrifying scale.

In order to form, hurricanes require warm sea temperatures.

They typically build in the tropical waters

that lie between the Tropic of Cancer,

north of the Equator,

and the Tropic of Capricorn, south of the Equator.

They begin as tropical disturbances

in warm ocean waters,

when surface temperatures reach 26.5 degrees Celsius.

The lowest strength hurricane is called a Category 1,

when wind speeds maintain the basic threshold

of at least 119 kilometers per hour.

Hurricanes are rated from a minimum Category 1

to a maximum Category 5

using what is known as the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Created in 1970 by a civil engineer and a meteorologist,

really to try to create some sort of category

and some sort of parameters where we could define

the type of damage created by the storm winds.

It was a way to say how do we portray

the strength of these hurricanes to the public

so they really understand

the power of the hurricane

and really understand that they may be at risk

and need to evacuate.

Category 1 hurricanes are considered dangerous

and will produce some roof damage.

Large tree branches will snap,

and destruction to power lines

will result in temporary power outages.

When winds reach 154 kilometers per hour,

the storm becomes a Category 2, resulting in major roof damage.

Entire trees will be uprooted

and outages will last for several days.

The effects that you get from infrastructural damage

aren’t just the direct effects of

a roof falling on someone’s head

or anything to that effect.

Those are less frequent.

It’s more the long-term damage of not having

the electricity, the Internet,

all the wherewithal, the roads that are necessary.

If the hurricane graduates to a Category 3,

you’re now experiencing winds

of at least 178 kilometers per hour,

resulting in devastating damage.

Many roads will be blocked by uprooted trees.

Once winds have reached 209 kilometers per hour,

the storm has now entered Category 4,

and preparations must be made for catastrophic damage.

It is likely you will be without electricity

for at least several weeks, possibly even months.

But if you’re unfortunate enough

to experience a maximum Category 5,

expect that most homes will be completely destroyed.

Winds will reach speeds of at least 252 kilometers per hour,

and entire areas will be considered

virtually uninhabitable for a lengthy period of time.

These days, people are even talking about

some of these hurricanes have gotten so strong

that in the future I can easily see

someone creating a Category 6.

Hurricanes spin around a center known as the eye.

The eye of the hurricane is probably

one of the most famous characteristics

that you see in the hurricane that people recognize

and, you know,

a lot of times you’ll see the eye of the hurricane

20 to 40 miles across.

The eye wall is where you get the highest wind speeds

right around the thunderstorms,

right around that eye wall, and right around the edges

is where you get your intense winds,

and that’s where the highest wind speeds

and the most damaging part of these hurricanes is,

right in that eye wall.

Hurricanes are dangerous for a number of reasons.

When these powerful storms make landfall,

they can cause the sea to rise into a devastating storm surge.

When it hits landfall,

that storm surge, anywhere from a couple of feet

to up to 20 feet, is what truly causes the devastation.

Ninety percent of the fatalities

in these tropical systems is water.

So the narrative has to be about when we close our eyes

we often think about the wind.

We talk about hurricanes, but we need to get to a point

that when we close our eyes we see the water,

because that’s what’s actually historically

causing the fatalities in tropical systems.

It is a little-known fact

that nearly 90 percent of all hurricane deaths

don’t result from the ferocious winds,

but from storm surges.

In 1900, a hurricane in Galveston, Texas,

brought with it a disastrous storm surge

that caused the death of somewhere

between 6 to 12,000 people.

We didn’t have all the technology beforehand

to warn people that it was coming

until it was too late or it was already making landfall.

And we saw the end result

of thousands of people that lost their lives,

especially in the floodwaters, the storm surge.

It remains the deadliest natural disaster

to ever strike the United States.

Not only are a hurricane’s high winds extremely destructive,

but they can even spawn tornadoes.

The one hazard that people probably

think of the least is the actual tornado threat,

and often we see these tornadoes and the rain bands

well away from the center, a lot of times

they could occur 100 miles or even more away from the center.

So it’s in places where people might think

they’re not in the hazard, but they really are.

These massive storms can unleash

more than 9 trillion liters of rain a day,

causing deadly floods and landslides,

which may occur many miles inland.

Although many complications arise from hurricanes,

some problems come even before the storm has made landfall.

These problems start to happen not necessarily

during the hurricane, if it’s a hurricane,

but any event for which we have warning,

people start preparing for it.

And as they start preparing,

they sometimes inadvertently cause damage to infrastructure.

They’re putting up shutters,

and as they do so, they fracture a line.

As catastrophic as these hurricanes may be,

they can serve some necessary functions in nature.

Hurricanes can relieve drought conditions,

carry heat away from warm parts of the world

and transport it towards cooler places.

This movement may play an important role

in moderating the Earth’s climate.

The hurricane season runs from the 1st of June

to the 30th of November.

And it occurs during those six months of the year,

because we have the buildup of heat in the tropics,

and the ocean temperatures also start to warm up.

However you can get hurricanes outside of that season as well,

as we saw looking at Alberto.

We like to think about this

as all year long we have to be ready.

It occurs during this six-month period

due to increasing temperatures in the northern hemisphere

as well as a buildup of heat in the Tropics,

resulting in an overall increase in ocean temperatures.

The 2005 hurricane season

had already produced a number of damaging storms,

but the worst was yet to come,

in the shape of the most destructive storm ever

to hit the United States:

Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans, a city with 480,000 inhabitants,

was bracing itself for bad weather.

On the 23rd of August,

a storm formed over an area of low pressure near the Bahamas.

The following day,

the new depression intensified into Tropical Storm Katrina.

It headed westward towards Florida,

where Governor Jeb Bush warned residents

to prepare for a coming storm.

By the time it made landfall in Hallandale Beach and Aventura,

Katrina was officially declared a Category 1 hurricane.

But away from the warming effect of the ocean,

it briefly weakened back into a tropical storm.

You have this weakening effect once they make landfall,

and a lot of that is you lose that fuel source.

So once you hit the land, you lose the fuel source

and you also start to introduce friction.

So you don’t have any friction because there’s no trees,

there’s no terrain over the open oceans.

But once you get on to land,

you start having some terrain,

you start having some trees,

some friction that interrupts that wind flow.

Once it left land and merged into the Gulf of Mexico,

it quickly regained its energy.

Hurricane Katrina had an interesting journey.

At first, it was born off the Florida east coast

and then it moved down shore,

just barely a Category 1 across south Florida.

Then, as it exited into the Gulf of Mexico,

it went into a large, large, warm pool of water.

That was extra fuel for Katrina

to then quickly intensify to that Category 5 strength.

The United States Coast Guard began placing vital resources

in a circle of safety outside the areas of the Gulf Coast

where they expected the hurricane to strike.

People started to stockpile food and essential supplies.

By mid-morning,

the petrol stations

that were not out of fuel

had long lines of anxious drivers.

A state of emergency was declared

by President George W. Bush,

in selected regions of Louisiana, Alabama,

and Mississippi.

The declaration did not include any

of Louisiana’s coastal civil parishes of Orleans, Jefferson,

and Plaquemines.

Coast Guards moved their personnel

outside of New Orleans.

Many citizens didn’t wait for the government

to come to their rescue.

Those who were able, left.

So when you really look at the threat of hurricanes

and how people interpret that information,

I think there’s a general understanding

that the public has about the hazards of wind,

the hazards of storm surge, and the rain.

But what we have to talk about

is their perceptions of the risk.

So there’s a decision that has to be made by each individual,

to ask themselves, "Am I at risk from this hurricane?"

Most infrastructure along the Gulf Coast

closed down in preparation for Katrina.

The vital Waterford Nuclear Power Plant

was also shut down,

and a number of emergency shelters were set up

on coastal communities.

Thirty-one additional shelters were also made available,

should they be needed.

On the morning of the 28th of August,

Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation.

It was the first time that residents of New Orleans

had ever received such a serious warning.

Despite the grave consequences they would face,

many people refused to leave their homes.

Others were simply unable to do so.

Some believed their homes would hold up in the storm,

while others just wanted to protect their property.

In the hope of keeping people safe,

local residents were told to seek safety

in the shelter of last resort: the Superdome.

You have a lot of people under crowded conditions,

and that enhances the possibility and probability

of all kinds of respiratory diseases,

diarrheal diseases, and we absolutely saw that

as a huge problem in the people

that were put in the stadium in Katrina.

Food and bottled water were made available at the stadium,

but New Orleans mayor, Ray Nagin,

urged those seeking shelter

to bring provisions for several days,

warning people that the shelter would be

a very uncomfortable place.

The toilets overran,

and there were problems with fecal material,

and a lot of people suffered diarrheal diseases.

Hurricane Katrina hit land for the second time

at 6:10 a.m. local time,

with sustained winds of 201 kilometers per hour.

We’ve been talking about the winds,

and everybody talks about the category,

but it’s really about storm surge and flooding.

On the 29th of August,

Katrina’s storm surge caused 53 breaches

to various flood protection structures.

This caused 80 percent of the city to go underwater.

Throughout the metropolitan area,

flood walls and levees were deluged.

Building codes have to be improved,

they need to be enhanced.

We need to have stronger structures,

we need to have prepared residents,

and we have to think about

whether we are putting development in harm’s way.

And in some cases that’s a very tough question to decide.

Everyone wants to live near the water.

It’s a beautiful place.

But if it’s a place where a hurricane comes,

then that place needs to be built the right way

and everyone needs to be prepared in the right way

because that hurricane season, it comes every year,

and you may have a hurricane come your way.

Every weather report stated that it would

and the projection in a city like New Orleans

being hit by a Category 4 or 5

that came up between Mississippi and Louisiana

would totally destroy the city.

This was a storm that we hoped would never come.

Infrastructure, including several bridges,

was completely destroyed.

Those who had survived, dotted the tops of houses.

Some had hacked their way onto their roofs

with hatchets and sledgehammers.

Many of these survivors were forced to stay in place

long after Hurricane Katrina had passed.

Unfortunately, many didn’t make it.

Some elderly and disabled residents

died in the floodwaters.

Coordination of rescue efforts during the first two days

were complicated by failures in the communications system.

The relief efforts in New Orleans were,

as always in all of these things,

hampered by communication problems.

One of the big problems that we had in New Orleans

was the fact that cell towers were not working,

and so there was a huge problem with communication

and getting things to the right place at the right time

to the right people.

Although communication systems failed,

the world was able to see what was happening in New Orleans

thanks to news crews and reporters.

When the reporters understand the issues

and then understand also the effects

of over-reporting, right?

And how that can give the wrong message to people,

they function much better,

they become part of our team.

When the first images

of the devastated city were shown on television,

the world was stunned and horrified.

How could something like this happen in contemporary America?

Katrina was just so awesome

that it caught everybody off-guard.

And I think that it caught the city off-guard,

everybody was hoping that it would turn,

and when the devastation actually hit,

I think it took a couple of days for it really to sink in.

In Louisiana, almost 900,000 people

found themselves without clean water and electricity

for several weeks.

Not since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906

had a city in the U.S. been so completely devastated.

The National Coast Guard sent in their air crews

to begin a round-the-clock rescue effort.

Some came to work and left when they found out

that their families were--

And that their homes were destroyed,

and they didn’t know where their family was,

which obviously, mentally, it’s a devastating situation

that goes along with this catastrophe.

Hospitals started to run low on fuel

for their emergency generators,

And a number of beachfront towns in Mississippi

were severely damaged.

Water from the surge

had reached several kilometers inland.

As the news spread,

the world began to realize

that the area was simply not prepared

for the disaster that had unfolded.

We played our part, we were here.

The federal government got here way too late.

The first 72 hours, almost 60 to 72 hours,

it was the New Orleans Police Department

and the fire department by itself,

and that simply was not enough.

Yeah, there were a lot of reasons why it was not enough.

One of the first things that I think is important to understand

is that prior to 9/11 and prior to Katrina,

the federal system had a federal response,

we didn’t have a national response system.

When a field hospital had been set up in Baton Rouge,

the medical supplies sent by

the Federal Emergency Management Agency

had all been designed for use against a chemical attack.

It seemed that instead of planning

for a natural disaster, like a hurricane,

the agency had been preparing itself against terrorism.

Why we have an emphasis,

or it seems that we have an emphasis on,

terrorist types of activities

is partly because we think that we can predict that better.

It’s harder to necessarily predict,

other than the seasonality,

of when there’s going to be a hurricane

of a particular magnitude

at a particular location, or a tornado, or an earthquake.

We have a lot of ideas, we have a lot of science behind it.

We do realize that we have to take care of

all these different things, but in part

it does has to do with human nature

in that we simply focus on those things

that we think we can solve.

Some survivors died

of bacterial infections

when untreated open wounds came into contact

with floodwaters contaminated with sewage.

I’ve never seen anything like this before.

It’s... It’s, uh...

Everyone is doing the best that they can.

Stranded residents were rescued

and sent to the already overcrowded Superdome.

By then, the Superdome was leaking through a damaged roof,

had failing power, and no sanitation.

Food and water was running out.

And for many people,

the hellish conditions they were living in

became a symbol of how unprepared

the city and state officials had been

for a disaster that most expected was bound to happen.

I mean, we’ve heard about it for many, many years,

and all of the experts stated this would happen.

Reports of burglary began to rise.

In many cases,

these were just people desperate to get hold

of essential supplies for survival.

The National Guard,

which could normally be relied upon

in a crisis of law and order, were severely depleted.

As much as 59 percent

of all of Louisiana’s active National Guardsmen

were either mobilized or deployed for overseas combat

in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Much of their military equipment

had also been transferred to the Middle East.

Hundreds of high-water trucks,

one of the few vehicles capable of plowing through

such high levels of flooding, were now being used in combat.

Of the 26 helicopters typically used for domestic operations,

only three were presently available.

It was estimated that roughly 15 percent

of all New Orleans police personnel

left their posts in the wake of the hurricane.

Many in the city felt as if they had simply been abandoned.

They’ve taken hours after hours to get here.

We’ve been waiting hours, and it’s--

The sun is beaming, it’s real, real hot,

it’s stinking out here,

it’s just disgusting and frustrating.

And we are human beings,

and they’re treating us like we are criminals.

By then, 85 percent of the city was underwater.

The news many had been dreading finally came--

The sandbagging of the 17th Street Canal levee breach

had failed,

and water was continuing to pour through.

Floodwaters had covered several chemical plants,

petrol stations and oil refineries,

as well as contaminated sites.

With so many people now affected by flooding,

fears continue to grow about the health risks

posed by the polluted water and raw sewage.

However, relief for these concerns

remained stubbornly out of reach.

We couldn’t bring in nurses, doctors

and other people licensed in other states

until we had them federalized and legalized

so that they could function there.

Meanwhile, the USS Bataan,

an amphibious assault ship,

was stationed off the coast of Gulfport Mississippi.

President Bush, who had been vacationing

in his ranch in Crawford, Texas,

returned to Washington to deal with the growing crisis.

On his way back, Air Force One flew over the Gulf Coast,

allowing the president a view

of the devastation in New Orleans.

Reports indicated that the death toll in Louisiana

had reached 1577 people.

That was more than 85 percent of all the fatalities

attributed to Hurricane Katrina.

Five days after the hurricane struck,

the Superdome was completely evacuated.

But many people had no idea of where they were going

or how they would find the rest of their families.

I’m not going back.

My wife and I, we’ve been separated since Sunday.

She works for a hospital in New Orleans,

where she was called in early to help with the patients.

I don’t know where she’s located right now,

but I have some people trying to find her.

After many grueling days,

those who had been evacuated before the storm

reunited with the survivors

in the largest mass migration in the United States

since the Civil War.

These survivors had become refugees in their own country.

It’s hard to be prepared for catastrophic events.

Most times, local, state and the federal government

will never have enough dollars to harden,

really, the infrastructure.

They’re really privately held

to be as prepared as we should be.

Why did Hurricane Katrina wreak so much destruction?

Much of the damage can be attributed

to New Orleans’ location.

Many parts of the city lie below sea level,

and its lack of wetlands and barrier islands

only add to the city’s absence of natural defenses.

While the site was already low to the ground,

human interference caused it to sink even further.

As New Orleans expanded in size,

untouched land became an increasingly rare commodity.

In order to make room for housing,

engineers drained swamplands,

resulting in the city sinking

an additional two meters below sea level.

New Orleans had a system of levees

to protect the city from a hurricane

and especially from the floodwaters and storm surge.

But those levees were built many years ago,

and they weren’t high enough

for what a major hurricane could bring.

Well, as Katrina came in,

those levees were certainly tested.

And as that storm surge and wind had pushed upon those levees,

it brought those water levels up,

and unfortunately it overtopped those levees.

The levees were old,

they weren’t high enough for what Katrina brought.

And then that water started to spill into those--

Into the bowl, if you will, into those communities

that were supposed to be protected by the levees,

but unfortunately, Katrina was too much.

Even before Hurricane Katrina,

there was concern that a severe storm surge

could send water over the top of some levees,

causing some short-term flooding,

but no one predicted levees might collapse

before they were even breached.

Many of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable people

lived in neighborhoods that sat below sea level,

and were perhaps at greater risk.

A report released by

the American Society of Civil Engineers concluded

that two-thirds of the deaths attributed to Hurricane Katrina

could have been prevented if the levees had held.

Much of the damage from Katrina

was mainly from that water and storm surge

than it was from the wind.

What experts couldn’t understand

was how the city was so unprepared

despite numerous predictions of precisely what might happen

if a major hurricane were to hit.

Cities like New Orleans,

they know there will be more storms.

So a city like New Orleans needs to continue now to decide,

how are they going to fight back against the hurricanes?

Residents need to be prepared,

they need to be ready,

but when it comes to infrastructure,

the levees, storm surge, those kinds of things,

that faces every major city up and down,

not only the coastline of the United States,

but wherever tropical cyclones hit around the world.

Now, many years since Katrina made landfall,

the city is determined to remember the past

in order to be better prepared for the future.

They have built new levees and floodwalls

which are far superior to those

which were in place prior to the hurricane.

They are designed to withstand

an extreme storm that may only happen once every 100 years.

Although precautions are being taken,

it does not change the fact

that there is still a high likelihood

that New Orleans will flood again.

The city is beginning to change its attitude

about the water that surrounds New Orleans.

There is a growing need to rethink

the outdated method of dealing with excess water

by simply pumping it away.

The biggest challenge with, really, hurricanes

is these areas that are so close to the coast.

The density of population is huge,

and they’ll be continued to be impacted by disasters.

Although much of New Orleans

has been repaired and rebuilt,

and appears to be the vibrant, dynamic city that it once was,

the scars are still there, out in the open for all to see,

a painful reminder that dealing with a major disaster

on the U.S. mainland had been fought with difficulty.

But dealing with a disaster of similar scale

in an overseas U.S. territory

was about to prove itself even more deadly.

The devastation caused by Hurricane Maria

when it struck the island of Puerto Rico

is truly without precedent.

On the 12th of September 2017,

Maria formed from a tropical wave that had departed from

Africa’s western coast.

Within the next few days,

the system moved westward,

bringing showers and thunderstorms with it.

At 2 p.m. local time on the 16th of September,

the system was reclassified as a tropical depression

about 1000 kilometers southeast

of the Caribbean islands of Lesser Antilles.

By 5 p.m., the depression was carrying winds

of 80 kilometers per hour,

causing it to be upgraded to a tropical storm.

The hurricane specialist on duty

at the National Weather Service warned that within a few days,

Tropical Storm Maria could transform itself

into a major hurricane

and hit the British and U.S. Virgin Islands,

as well as Puerto Rico.

Really, if you look at the forecast--

Outside of the very initial forecast,

all the indications were pointing towards

some sort of impact in Puerto Rico.

As predicted,

Maria gradually gathered strength

until its wind speed increased to 120 kilometers per hour,

making Maria the eighth hurricane of 2017.

Hurricane Maria became a major hurricane,

and again when we talk about that right recipe,

the ingredients needed for a major hurricane to develop...

During Hurricane Maria’s lifetime then,

coming across the Atlantic,

having again that long stretch of fuel,

warm ocean water temperatures, right?

To really help it intensify.

Then you needed light wind shear...

light upper level winds, area of high pressure above.

It all came about in the right way

to intensify that storm to a Category 4.

On the 17th of September,

three days before Maria hit Puerto Rico,

a U.S. Air Force hurricane hunter flew into the storm.

You know, even though we have advancements

in satellite technology, radar technology,

computer modeling,

we still need to fly aircraft,

with humans in them, directly into the eye,

because what we need

is information from inside that storm,

and when they get to the center,

they drop what’s called a Dropsonde.

It’s an instrument package that measures weather data

all the way down to the water surface.

We can take that into account

when we look at the current pressure.

We can look at the wind field.

It’s incredibly useful to us,

not only in the early stages,

and trying to find out where the system is,

because that can happen early on in the formation process,

but in the case of a developed storm,

it gives us the latest information,

and we can communicate that out to the public.

We can communicate that out to emergency managers

and adjust the forecast as necessary.

Using the data they collected,

the National Weather Service warned that Maria

was likely to further strengthen

and make landfall in Puerto Rico

on Wednesday, the 20th of September.

Over the following day,

Maria continued to feed off the favorable weather conditions.

She went through the sixth fastest

intensification process ever measured,

transforming from a Category 1

to a catastrophic Category 5 in roughly 15 hours.

In Puerto Rico, you know,

before Maria got impacted by Irma,

you had some of the winds,

but the other part was the heavy rain.

So you actually had some saturation of the soil,

you had, you know, a situation where

there was a lot of rainfall ahead of time,

so any additional rain compounds the issue.

Aníbal Meléndez Rivera has served as mayor

of the port city of Fajardo since 1989.

The hurricane hunter flew into the hurricane a second time

and discovered that its wind speed

was now over 250 kilometers per hour.

Maria made its first landfall in Dominica,

part of the Windward Islands of the Caribbean,

at 9:15 p.m. on the evening of the 18th of September.

She brought chaos to Dominica,

with most structures on the island

being either seriously damaged or destroyed.

As she continued her path

towards the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico,

she maintained her Category 5 strength.

Just 27 hours later,

at around 1 a.m. on the 20th of September,

hurricane-force winds were first reported

on the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix.

The hurricane was making its way

towards the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico...

leading its governor, Ricardo Rosselló,

to warn the island’s 3.4 million residents

that they could be facing life-threatening consequences.

The eye wall impacted almost the entire island of Puerto Rico.

So you had the winds, you had the rainfall,

you had all aspects of the dangers

of a hurricane right over, right over Puerto Rico.

As the Puerto Rican government prepared for the hurricane,

500 schools and other buildings

were set up as temporary shelters.

Residents in some areas were warned to evacuate

or face death from flooding and other hazards.

Many heeded the warnings.

By Tuesday afternoon,

the normally crowded streets and beaches of San Juan,

Puerto Rico’s capital, were strangely empty,

as families raced to move out of the area

in search of somewhere safe to wait out the storm.

Many residents in more remote locations

had been warned that after the hurricane struck,

they would lose contact with the island’s government

for three days.

Thousands of people were being told

they would have to face the impending disaster

on their own.

As the hurricane approached, there had been concern

that reservoirs above the town of Toa Baja would flood.

Dams had been built there in 1974

to supply the area of San Juan with water.

To prevent flooding,

the government began emptying the reservoirs.

An evacuation order was issued for the residents of Toa Baja

after Hurricane Maria had already made landfall.

By then, Maria had brought enough torrential rain

to overwhelm the dams.

Toa Baja was hit from the water that spilled from the reservoir

and at the same time flooded by the storm surge

on the coastal side.

Over 2000 people were later rescued.

But many others were either trapped inside their homes

or swept away in the current.

A press release was issued by the Pentagon,

the central nervous system for the United States military,

announcing that 500 National Guard members

would be dispatched to Puerto Rico immediately.

Getting people, and equipment,

and all the wherewithal that you need

from the mainland to an island

is always going to be a challenge

unless you have those ships and equipments ready to go.

At around 6:15 on the morning of the 20th of September,

the center of the hurricane

crossed over the municipality of Yabucoa,

delivering 250-kilometer-per-hour winds

and coastal flooding,

which had climbed to 1.6 meters by 8 a.m.

It was so devastating, because the eye wall,

that storm literally traveled over

the island nation of Puerto Rico.

It didn’t skirt to the north

or to the south,

it went right over the island nation.

And so an eye wall of that intensity, Category 4...

Well, we saw the end result, how destructive it can be.

Torrential rain also brought

widespread flooding and mudslides across the region.

Some areas were inundated with close to one meter of rain.

Rivers overflowed in the southern areas of the island,

causing floodwaters to rush through nearby towns

and sweep away everything in their path.

Winds were so strong that they destroyed

the National Weather Service’s sensors,

forcing meteorologists to monitor the storm

entirely by satellite.

Thousands of islanders

fled the winds and rain,

looking for safety in stronger buildings.

Nearly 600 residents took refuge

in one of the biggest shelters on the island,

the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan.

When Maria hit, one of the big problems

was that there were a lot of pharmaceutical companies

that made their products, their vaccines and their drugs,

in Puerto Rico, in zones that were hit

very severely by the storm,

by the electrical damage,

and they couldn’t produce those products.

So we had shortages of those products throughout the region.

Maria destroyed 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s utility poles,

as well as all transmission lines,

resulting in power loss

on virtually every part of the island.

Without electricity, without our cellular phones,

without the ability to have access to potable water

and our operating sewer systems,

we’re going back to the 1800s.

Its people had been essentially cut off from the outside world.

People were in desperate limbo.

Messages went unanswered

as hundreds of thousands of families and friends

were unable to find out if loved ones were alive or dead.

In San Juan, tree trunks and electricity poles

snapped like matchsticks, blocking most roads.

But it wasn’t simply just the wind and rain

that caused such destruction.

It was the combined power of storm surge and wave action

from the hurricane that resulted in extensive damage

to homes and infrastructure.

It was devastating for a variety of reasons

over the island of Puerto Rico,

and unfortunately the residents are still recovering,

still rebuilding from what Hurricane Maria was.

Marinas and harbors right around the coast

were also severely damaged.

It was three days before seaports could reopen,

allowing for the delivery of essential supplies.

It seemed that just like Hurricane Katrina

in New Orleans 12 years before,

the damage caused by the storm was only the beginning

of an emerging humanitarian crisis.

Relief was further hindered

when President Trump invoked a law

stating that only U.S.-registered ships

could transport goods between American ports.

Since Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory,

this meant that aid coming from foreign countries

was barred from reaching the island.

It took days for relief to get through to Puerto Rico.

San Juan mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz,

blamed the federal government and Puerto Rican officials

for failing to provide adequate assistance.

The White House strenuously defended its record,

insisting that it was proud of the work

the federal government had done

to assist their fellow citizens in Puerto Rico.

FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency

responsible for coordinating disaster relief,

was already being stretched to its limits.

Historic storms Harvey and Irma had already struck

both Texas and Florida earlier that summer.

This resulted in Puerto Rico suffering

the longest power outage in American history.

Citizens were left without running water

for several months.

Many were forced to rely on a limited supply

of bottled water.

Without refrigeration, food spoiled,

and vital medicines were rendered useless.

It was estimated

that between 30 and 50 percent of the people in Puerto Rico

were experiencing anxiety, depression,

or post-traumatic stress disorder.

A year after the storm struck,

their governor, Ricardo Rosselló,

dramatically increased the official death toll

from 64 to a shocking 2975.

Maria had claimed even more lives than Hurricane Katrina.

It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States

in more than 100 years,

with a death toll

that is nearly equal to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The trauma of Hurricane Maria is visible

on all parts of the island.

Many have left for good, and it is estimated

that roughly 10 percent of the population will follow suit

within the next several years.

With climate change issues,

extreme events increasing across the planet,

the hazards are always going to come.

The physical science, the meteorology,

is getting so much better.

So we are really starting to look at

how we communicate that information,

because if you think about it,

even a perfect forecast,

if it’s not understood, not actionable,

then there’s still something missing

from this whole equation.

Maria and Katrina taught us many valuable lessons.

Ultimately, nature is simply following its course.

Responsibility must rest on societies and governments

to prevent these unstoppable forces

from resulting in widespread damage and catastrophe.

We must learn how to better prepare ourselves

and more efficiently mobilize relief aid

in the wake of a disaster.

So we have to focus not just on

the possibility of something happening,

the intensity from that particular event,

but also what we can do about it.

You try and look at all of these hazards--

We call it the all-hazards response, right?

So that we train our people

to be ready to handle any kind of emergency.

Is that really, truly realistic?

Actually, not totally.

There is overlap in things that you have to do,

regardless of what the event is,

but there are also things

that are unique to particular events.

Climate change, depending on it, believer or not,

I can tell you right now, water is getting warmer,

just north and just south of the equator,

and it’s creating greater storms.

But just like at any other time in the future,

it may become cooler,

it may be an easier impact of hurricanes,

but right now, these are scary times to be around.

Any community, whether it be in the United States

for a hurricane or another hazard,

or any country in the world,

how are they addressing that hazard

in terms of protecting themselves?

So these things come into play,

and that determines how well

any community is gonna be resilient.

The unimaginable hardships

endured by the people of New Orleans and Puerto Rico

must never be repeated.

These deadly disasters prove

that unless we rise to meet

the challenges posed by hurricanes,

Mother Nature will continue to have the upper hand.