Original subtitles

[narrator] In September of 2017,

Hurricane Maria churned across the Caribbean

and slammed into Puerto Rico.

[thunder rumbling]

[woman 1] That hurricane actually sounded like a beast.

Like a preying, growling beast

destroying everything.

[woman 2] It's horrible to be in that situation when you can't do anything.

[woman 3] I saw my entire 20 years of work

destroyed.

[reporter] Tell me what the last 24 hours have been like.

Hell. This has just been horrible. Horrible.

I had never lived something like that before ever in my life,

and I hope I won't live through it again.

[man] I got into San Juan two days after the hurricane passed.

There was no water, no electricity, for the entire time I was there.

I can tell you firsthand

that going through a hurricane,

where you're afraid for your home, or you're afraid for your loved ones,

that leaves a mark on your spirit for the rest of your life.

[narrator] More and more people are living in the path of hurricanes,

and a warming planet will likely make these storms more destructive.

Even though we may not necessarily see more hurricanes,

the ones we do see will probably be

much more dangerous and much more damaging.

[narrator] So, what can we do to make our communities safer

in the face of this cataclysmic power?

Can we learn to withstand the oncoming storms?

[man 1] Big storm right in the center of the field of view.

[man 2] Hurricanes are accompanied by violent, destructive winds,

heavy rains, and high tides.

[man 3] Ships are helpless before the typhoon's fury.

[man 4] Those west of New Orleans are so far lucky,

but for many people, the memories of the big storms

of the '60s are all too real.

[man 5] I'm 61 years old,

you know what I mean, so all of them are really scary, you know.

They ought to be taken seriously.

[playful music]

[Elizondo] In 1959, with the Cold War simmering,

hundreds of scientists gathered in San Francisco

to try and answer a simple question.

"Isn't there anything nice we can do with all these nuclear weapons?"

They had a bunch of ideas.

Turning a series of blast craters into a shipping canal.

Harnessing a bomb's heat to distill seawater.

And detonating a nuke in the eye of a hurricane

to try and derail the storm.

[explosion]

That idea has remained incredibly tempting,

so much so the US agency that studies hurricanes

addresses the issue on their FAQ page.

A major problem is, we just don't have a bomb that is big enough.

This is rare footage of the most powerful nuke ever detonated,

the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba.

[man speaking Russian]

[Elizondo] It was a 50-megaton blast,

a jaw-dropping release of energy.

But a fully-developed hurricane

can unleash that amount of energy every couple hours.

If you nuked a hurricane, the most likely result would be

a radioactive hurricane.

These storms are so powerful

because they're working on a completely different scale.

They're fueled by enormous swaths of ocean and the spinning of the planet.

The sun's rays heat water, which evaporates and rises,

forming towering thunderclouds, and, down near the surface,

a pocket of low pressure.

Surrounding air rushes in to fill this void,

but it's deflected off course by The Coriolis Effect.

Air moving large distances over Earth's surface appears to curve.

That makes the whole system spin,

counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere,

clockwise in the southern.

The Coriolis Effect is too weak near the equator,

and the water's too cold near the poles.

But in this zone, conditions are just right.

More than 100 million people are affected by cyclones each year,

and more than one in five people on Earth are in their potential path.

Technically, these are all tropical cyclones,

but here they're known as typhoons,

and here hurricanes.

One of their more common routes cuts through the Caribbean,

and Puerto Rico gets hit every several years.

But that doesn't mean it was ready for the big one.

This is September, 2017.

A couple of hurricanes are menacing the Caribbean,

but Maria was just a gentle eddy

in the river of air spilling off the African Coast.

Storm clouds formed and started spinning,

and its eye emerged, a center of eerie calm

surrounded by winds as fast as a high-speed train.

They reached 173 miles an hour, making Maria a Category 5 storm.

It was Category 5, and it had a route that seemed like

it was going to hit Puerto Rico.

[Elizondo] Tania runs Taller Salud.

It's a women's empowerment nonprofit,

headquartered less than 20 miles from Puerto Rico's capital

in the coastal town of Loíza.

[Rosario] It was founded as a village of runaway slaves.

Sixty percent of people living in Loíza

identify themselves as Black Afro-Puerto Ricans.

[Elizondo] The town is nestled between two rivers,

the ocean, and a vast swamp,

which helped its residents protect their Afro-Puerto Rican culture.

Loízeños invented bomba,

a fusion of Spanish and African music.

But Loíza's geography also isolated it from the economic progress of San Juan.

[Rosario] It was kind of left out of urban planning,

back in the '50s and '60s.

Racism played a big part.

Nothing was done to provide physical, concrete access

to hospitals, universities, infrastructure in general.

[Elizondo] Poverty and all that water

made Loíza particularly vulnerable when Maria made landfall.

Hurricanes pile the ocean up in front of them,

creating mountainous waves.

And this storm surge gnawed away at Loíza's coast.

At the same time, the clouds unleashed their stockpiles of ocean water,

overfilling rivers and flooding whole neighborhoods.

[Rosario] In some places, the flood was five, six feet high,

so it was covering homes.

Some of the flood was sewage water.

[Elizondo] Loíza was one of the hardest-hit towns in Puerto Rico.

Three thousand houses were destroyed.

And Loíza is part of a global pattern.

Poorer communities are often in more flood-prone areas.

That's true in Vietnam cities

and in southwest Bangladesh.

Or they're closer to industrial plants,

like in Houston, Texas.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey dumped several feet of rain on the region,

breaching its toxic waste sites.

[Newkirk] Hurricane floods can carry contamination to surrounding communities.

[Elizondo] Poor areas are more vulnerable

and they're less likely to get help right away.

Puerto Rico was a key example.

[Elizondo] Satellite images show the island's lights

before the storm and after.

As months passed and San Juan regained power,

more remote areas, including much of Loíza, remained in the dark.

The former governor of Puerto Rico

tweeted a photo of surgery performed by flashlight.

Kidney patients had to take a plane three times a week

to reach a working dialysis center.

Diabetics couldn't refrigerate their insulin.

[in Spanish] It's incredible.

It's a crisis affecting the whole of the country.

[Elizondo] In the weeks and months after Maria,

the death toll continued to climb.

[Rosario] There were lives that were lost

that should have been protected.

Events are natural,

and disasters are political.

[Elizondo] Puerto Rico is a territory of the US,

so they looked to their federal government for help.

Without help, the ongoing humanitarian crisis

will only get worse.

The residents of Puerto Rico are American citizens.

This is a job for the federal government.

[Elizondo] But the feds were slow to send aid,

and then the island government mismanaged its distribution.

[Rosario] A few people that don't face those risks

decide over communities

with a lot of accumulated expertise on disaster preparedness and management.

It's so condescending and also so cruel.

[Elizondo] The aftermath of Maria was a tragedy,

but before the storm hit, there was a small triumph.

Thanks to decades of human ingenuity,

the people of Puerto Rico knew it was coming.

The indigenous people of the Caribbean, like the Taino,

had learned to recognize the early signs of these storms.

High, feathery clouds,

and frigate birds coming home to roost at unusual times.

Newcomers to the islands were ignorant of these warnings.

In 1780, a hurricane cut through the Caribbean

and, in a few short days, killed 22,000.

But in 1928, when a similarly powerful storm

cut a familiar path across Puerto Rico, barometers in San Juan

picked up the drop in atmospheric pressure that precedes a massive storm.

Telegraph cables sent alerts to every district on the island,

and radios broadcast a warning.

As a result, the storm had a fraction of the death toll.

And our forecasting has only gotten better.

[man 1] From every corner of the Caribbean,

weather information is received 24 hours a day

from island weather stations,

and from planes of the Air Force and Navy reconnaissance squadrons.

[Elizondo] And then, in 1961,

came a pioneering news report on Hurricane Carla.

For the first time ever, TV audiences were shown radar images of a hurricane.

[man 2] There is the eye of the hurricane right there.

[Elizondo] Just seeing the sheer size of the storm on a map

inspired thousands to flee to safety.

And on that same exact day

came another huge first.

The TIROS-3 satellite spotted a hurricane from space

before humans on the ground knew it existed.

[man 3] It is just the pathfinder for more advanced weather forecasts to come.

[Elizondo] A decade later,

two-day forecasts were off by about 300 miles,

and that number has steadily dropped, down to about 50 miles today.

So fewer people are dying.

In the 1960s, you might have tens of thousands of people

drowning each year in storm waters.

Now, the typical number is in the hundreds.

As well as the forecast has been, all the steps of preparation,

it does not mean there will not be damages.

[Elizondo] Craig Fugate was the administrator of FEMA,

the US agency that responds to natural disasters.

We've seen track forecast improve tremendously.

Intensity forecast has been lagging.

[Elizondo] There are sometimes sudden leaps in a hurricane's strength,

and it can catch meteorologists by surprise.

Yesterday, it was just a tropical storm.

The intensity forecast showing some big changes.

Nobody really anticipated it being as strong as it was.

These rapid intensifiers, they are extremely dangerous

from the standpoint of the public's perception of,

"Well, it was only a Cat 1."

And then 24 hours later, it's a Cat 5.

"If I knew it was gonna be a Cat 5, I'd have evacuated."

[Elizondo] Scientists think this rapid intensification is becoming more common,

thanks to climate change.

I like to say climate change with a "D." It's already changed,

and we're already measuring significant increases in sea level rise.

[Elizondo] Almost ten inches.

Many major cities are already close to sea level,

and the ocean is likely to rise another foot,

maybe several feet, by the end of the century.

Every extra inch adds to a future storm surge.

And that makes the flooding from coastal storms,

but particularly hurricanes, much more devastating.

[Elizondo] And warmer waters are likely fueling faster winds,

and rainier storms.

And as water heats up closer to the poles,

there's some evidence the world's cyclone zones will expand.

But we don't know for sure.

Global warming can have strange effects.

For example, it seems to be making hurricanes travel more slowly.

[Fugate] You go back to Hurricane Dorian

that literally sat on Grand Bahama for days

as a major hurricane.

[Elizondo] Tropical cyclones have been causing more and more dollars of damage,

and climate change will likely make that worse.

But the trend we've seen so far is mainly driven

by more people building more stuff in the path of destruction.

From 1970 to 2010,

while the world's population almost doubled,

the population in cyclone-prone coastlines nearly tripled.

But not everyone will be able to stay.

You see more and more people have to make decisions about

whether they're gonna leave altogether.

These frontline communities, they're pragmatic.

They understand it's not gonna be physically livable,

but they also are demanding recognition

for what the land means to them.

[Rosario] Loíza is actually called the capital of traditions in Puerto Rico,

and it's a stronghold of Afro-Puerto Rican identity.

[Newkirk] It connects them to their ancestors.

It is more than just a plot of real estate.

Should we let climate change

drive us away from our communities?

In some parts of the country, rebuilding is just not gonna make sense.

In other parts of the country, it may be an engineering solution.

[Elizondo] We're getting better at building wind-resistant homes,

thanks to controlled experiments

and real-world experience.

This is Mexico Beach, Florida, before Hurricane Michael hit.

And here it is after.

Scores of houses were flattened,

but this one survived pretty much unscathed.

Its walls are poured concrete woven through with rebar,

which pushed construction costs up 15 to 20%,

But down the road, some Habitat for Humanity houses

also survived the storm,

thanks to a few much cheaper fortifications,

like metal ties, strategically placed nails,

and sealed shutters,

which added just a few percentage points to building costs.

It's a bit trickier and a little more expensive to retrofit old houses,

and it's incredibly difficult to retrofit old cities.

Some wealthier metro areas are pouring billions into building up their defenses.

Osaka is raising its flood-prone airport by adding layer after layer of pavement.

Shanghai has resolved to become a sponge city,

filled with parks and waterways that can absorb or redirect the flood.

And New York City is planning something bold.

We will initiate an effort that is

estimated to cost ten billion dollars

to extend the shoreline of Lower Manhattan

into the East River.

It is audacious,

but most of all it is necessary.

[Elizondo] A lot of these big city plans include the construction of massive walls

to stop storm surges, something we've been doing for more than a century.

But it turns out the turbulence these seawalls create

causes the beaches around them to wash away faster.

They also cost a lot to build, and they often need expensive repairs.

There's a lot of human ingenuity at work, but hurricanes still humble us.

One thing that is gonna be way more effective than building giant walls

is wetland restoration.

[Elizondo] In 1999, a cyclone made landfall in East India.

Houses in this village had an average of 7,000 rupees of damage,

nearly a third of what an average family made in a year.

But this village saw only a fifth of that damage,

because it was protected by a mangrove forest.

All over the world, mangroves act like both a physical shield and a sponge,

soaking up floodwaters

and preventing 65 billion dollars in property damage every year.

Of course, cyclones damage mangroves too,

but healthy forests are self-repairing, unlike man-made seawalls,

and they actually reverse erosion, trapping sediments in their roots.

The land around mangroves can gain up to 10 millimeters of elevation every year,

outpacing sea level rise.

And our shorelines are endowed with other kinds of natural barriers.

Wetlands, which, like mangroves, can hold millions of gallons of water,

and reefs, that absorb the physical blow of the storm surge.

Dunes can take a beating for us too.

Puerto Rico's coast once had towering dunes,

but back in the 1950s, when San Juan was booming,

a lot of that sand was taken to build new airport runways.

What was left was degraded by human traffic

and easily overwhelmed by Maria's storm surge.

Now scientists from the University of Puerto Rico

have teamed up with local communities to assess the damage

and restore the dunes.

And similar projects are happening all over.

[Newkirk] More and more folks are thinking about wetlands as places

that are just as valuable to us as high-rise skyscrapers.

That will determine

how much of the eastern and southeast United States we can save.

What I don't want to see

is that the marginalized communities, the poor communities,

bear the brunt of having to be relocated,

while more affluent communities will get the seawalls

and protection systems built for them,

[Elizondo] But that's logical if you're a government with limited resources,

worried about your bottom line.

Say you have two families in two houses, in two different neighborhoods.

The cheaper house is likely more vulnerable,

but if the government protects that house, and the expensive house gets hit,

repairs will cost more,

the government may have to pay out a lot more in aid,

and if that family moves away, they've lost wealthy taxpayers.

So the crass calculation is simple.

[Fugate] I'll save a lot more money making that investment

where those million-dollar homes are.

The most unequal phase

of any disaster is actually the recovery.

[Elizondo] One study of major natural disasters

found that Black and Hispanic households tend to lose money in the aftermath.

Makes sense. But surprisingly...

[Newkirk] White folks in disaster zones

tend to see their net worth increase.

[Elizondo] They actually gained an average of 126,000 dollars.

Wealthier families likely have good home insurance to cover repairs,

good health insurance to help their bodies and minds heal,

and the resources to successfully apply for government aid.

[Newkirk] Then they gain the benefits of being able to be back in a place

that is rebounding.

[Elizondo] Low income families, on the other hand,

sometimes lose entire homes.

[Newkirk] They have, say,

property that was passed down among family,

so they don't always have documentation.

[Rosario] There's a lot of informal agreements.

You need the deed in order to file for certain assistance.

So lots of people have lost

houses and land that had been in their families for generations

on a couple hundred dollars of damage from hurricanes. It's common.

[Elizondo] Families who can't afford to move

find it too expensive to stay.

[Newkirk] If we're not giving people aid and support in the present,

how do we have faith that the government's gonna give that recovery and relief aid

when a disaster hits? It's not.

We're glad that all of you are here

to discuss preparations for this year's hurricane season.

[Elizondo] Back in 2007,

Craig Fugate testified before Congress.

Here's the challenge I wanna talk about.

We look at a Category 5 hurricane hitting South Florida

similar to the Great Miami Hurricane that actually hit in 1926.

[Elizondo] That hurricane killed hundreds and left about 40,000 people homeless,

nearly a third of the county's population.

And Fugate had run a simulation.

We said, "If it hit today, what does that response look like?"

And we started running the need,

and we couldn't meet it. We just did not have enough resources.

There was over six million people in this impact area.

As we're going through this exercise, I started realizing

we were treating every one of them as a victim

who was waiting for somebody to come rescue them.

But every disaster I've ever been into, people aren't waiting.

Neighbors were the fastest response helping neighbors.

[Rosario] There were several women that had set up community kitchens

to cook for 30 to 60 people.

So we asked, "If we bring more food and more gas,

can you cook for 300 instead of 30?"

And they all said yes.

[Elizondo] In Loíza and all over Puerto Rico,

neighbors delivered food and water, kept tabs on the vulnerable,

installed solar panels,

and created a smartphone app to share supplies.

They were coming up with these dramatically innovative ways

of dealing with the lack of government support on the ground.

Government-centric problem-solving is going to fail miserably

in these large events.

The more we can have neighbors helping neighbors,

the better we can focus the limited government resources

on the people that have the greatest need.

[Rosario] We learned that recovery has several dimensions.

That joy and playfulness,

it's a very central aspect of general well-being.

Loíza music is produced in community.

This gives an opportunity for community to come together and play music,

and sing and dance,

and just be together.

Places that have done the best in a disaster

are the places where we have fostered and nurtured

those existing bonds of community.

You see people drawing from that source

to keep going.

[Elizondo] But every resource has its limits.

Four years after Maria, many roofs in Loíza

are still shrouded in blue.

And in the waters off Africa,

a new catastrophe could be spinning into existence.

[Rosario] Everything is fragile, and anything can collapse easily.

We don't need another hurricane is what I mean.

[closing theme music playing]