Hurricane Maria (2017): Devastation of Puerto Rico and Dominica

Hurricane Maria was a catastrophic Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that devastated the Caribbean island nation of Dominica and the US territory of Puerto Rico in September 2017. Its landfall in Puerto Rico on 20 September knocked out the entire electricity grid, beginning the longest blackout in US history, and the slow recovery contributed to an estimated 2,975 deaths. Maria became one of the costliest disasters in US history and a turning point in debates about Puerto Rico’s relationship with the federal government.

A season of extreme storms

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most destructive on record. In late August Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, and in early September Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, swept through the northern Caribbean. Irma passed just north of Puerto Rico on 6 September, leaving around a million people without power and damaging an already fragile grid.

Puerto Rico was in a deep financial crisis. The government had accumulated about 70 billion US dollars of debt, and in 2016 Congress had created an oversight board under the PROMESA law. The public power utility, PREPA, was bankrupt, with ageing plants and poorly maintained lines, and many residents had already left the island for the mainland United States.

Formation and Dominica

Maria formed east of the Lesser Antilles on 16 September 2017. Over very warm waters it intensified with exceptional speed, becoming a Category 5 hurricane with winds of about 160 miles per hour (260 km/h) on 18 September, roughly a day after reaching hurricane strength.

That night it made landfall on Dominica, the first Category 5 hurricane ever recorded to strike the island. Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit reported on social media that his own residence had lost its roof. The storm damaged or destroyed most of the island’s homes, flattened its rainforests and cut communications. At least 31 people were killed and more than 30 others were listed as missing. Damage was estimated at about 1.3 billion US dollars, around 226 per cent of Dominica’s annual GDP.

Maria went on to cause deaths and damage in Guadeloupe and passed close to St Croix in the US Virgin Islands, which had already been struck by Irma.

Landfall in Puerto Rico

Maria weakened slightly and made landfall near Yabucoa, in south-eastern Puerto Rico, at about 6:15 a.m. on 20 September 2017, as a high-end Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of about 155 miles per hour (250 km/h). It was the strongest hurricane to hit the island since the San Felipe Segundo hurricane, known on the mainland as the Okeechobee hurricane, in 1928.

The storm crossed the whole island diagonally from south-east to north-west over about eight hours. Its winds destroyed houses, tore down communications towers and snapped tens of thousands of electricity poles, while torrential rain, in places more than 30 inches (760 mm), caused flash floods and thousands of landslides in the mountainous interior. The spillway of the Guajataca Dam in the north-west was damaged, and tens of thousands of people downstream were ordered to evacuate.

The blackout and the humanitarian crisis

Maria left all of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents without power. Most of the island also lost running water, and about 95 per cent of mobile phone sites were out of service. Roads were blocked, and many communities in the mountains were cut off for weeks.

Without electricity, hospitals depended on generators, dialysis and oxygen patients struggled to get treatment, and food and medicine spoiled. Fuel and drinking water were scarce, and long queues formed at petrol stations and banks. The federal response, led by FEMA and the military, was criticised as slow and poorly coordinated, partly because of the island’s distance from the mainland and the destruction of its ports and roads. A public dispute broke out between President Donald Trump and San Juan’s mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, who accused the administration of neglect.

Restoring the grid took about 11 months. A controversial contract awarded to a small Montana company, Whitefish Energy, was cancelled after public criticism. PREPA announced that the last customers had been reconnected in August 2018, making it the longest and largest blackout in US history.

The disputed death toll

For months the official death toll stood at 64, counting only deaths directly attributed to the storm. Journalists and researchers found that deaths across the island had risen far above normal levels, with many caused by interrupted medical care, heat, and accidents during the recovery.

A Harvard-led study published in May 2018 estimated about 4,600 excess deaths, with a wide uncertainty range. A study commissioned by Puerto Rico’s government from George Washington University, released in August 2018, estimated 2,975 excess deaths between September 2017 and February 2018. Governor Ricardo Rosselló accepted that figure as the official toll, and it is now the most commonly cited estimate.

Recovery and legacy

The US National Hurricane Center estimated Maria’s damage in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands at about 90 billion US dollars, making it the third-costliest hurricane in US history after Katrina and Harvey. Congress approved large recovery funds, but disbursement to Puerto Rico was slow, and many homes were still covered by blue tarpaulins a year or more later.

Tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, perhaps 130,000 or more, moved to the mainland in the year after the storm, especially to Florida, accelerating the island’s population decline. The disaster also intensified debates about the island’s political status, the Jones Act shipping law and the reliability of its electricity system, which remained prone to outages. The name Maria was retired from the list of Atlantic storm names in 2018.

The fragility of the grid led to major changes. In 2021 the operation of Puerto Rico’s transmission and distribution network was handed to a private consortium, LUMA Energy, under a long-term contract, a move that remained politically contentious as outages continued. Many households and businesses installed rooftop solar panels and batteries so that they would not again depend entirely on the central grid, and federal agencies funded projects intended to make the system more resilient.

Dominica’s recovery

In Dominica, Maria destroyed homes, schools, roads and much of the island’s agriculture, including banana and other crops that many rural families relied on. Thousands of residents left, at least temporarily, for other Caribbean islands, Europe or North America. Speaking at the United Nations a few days after the storm, Prime Minister Skerrit described the destruction as a consequence of climate change and appealed for international help.

The government then announced the goal of making Dominica the world’s first “climate-resilient nation”, rebuilding houses to stronger standards, burying or reinforcing power lines and creating a dedicated agency for resilient reconstruction. The island’s experience became a frequently cited example in international discussions of loss and damage suffered by small island states.

Timeline

• 2017, 6 September: Hurricane Irma passes north of Puerto Rico, causing widespread outages.
• 2017, 16 September: Maria forms east of the Lesser Antilles.
• 2017, 18 September: Maria strikes Dominica as a Category 5 hurricane.
• 2017, 20 September, about 6:15 a.m.: Maria makes landfall near Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, and the entire island loses power.
• 2017, 3 October: President Trump visits Puerto Rico.
• 2018, 28 August: Governor Rosselló accepts 2,975 as the official death toll.
• 2018, August: PREPA declares power restored to all customers it could reach, about 11 months after landfall.

Why it matters

Maria was among the deadliest US disasters of the past century and showed how the collapse of power, water and health services after a storm can kill far more people than the winds themselves. In Dominica it demonstrated the vulnerability of small island states to stronger hurricanes, and in Puerto Rico it exposed long-standing problems of debt, infrastructure and political status.