Disaster Research in Puerto Rico
Listening to the Stories of Hurricane Maria
Our capstone team spent an emotional five days in Puerto Rico talking to people about their experiences with Hurricane Maria. Hurricane Irma hit the island in September, causing tens of thousands of residents to lose power. Two weeks later, when power was still not restored, and Hurricane Maria hit the island in an already-vulnerable state. Five months later, our team flew down to speak with locals, NGO representatives, doctors, electricians, and factory workers about their experiences. We had conducted extensive secondary research before we arrived, but face-to-face conversations with people offered much deeper insight, and challenged all of our assumptions.
Guerrilla Research
We landed in San Juan on Friday afternoon, and promptly took our notebooks and started canvassing the city to talk to locals. Guerrilla research is a method similar to interviews, but framed as a more casual and informal conversation. In our case, everyone in Puerto Rico has a story of Hurricane Irma and Maria. We took to the streets of San Juan, and approached people to learn about their experiences.
The effects have been devastating to the island, causing thousands of Puerto Ricans to lose their homes, their workplaces, and to leave the island. Puerto Ricans lost friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members to aftereffects of the hurricanes. The physical toll of infrastructure damage and other assets on the island may be unprecedented, but the invisible pain and trauma from the loss of lives is the deepest tragedy we witnessed.
The day we arrived, we spoke with a couple from the south of the island, one a doctor and the other passionate animal rescue volunteer, about the biggest issues from the hurricanes. They cited income inequality, systemic poverty, and an unhealthy population as vulnerabilities that were exacerbated by hurricane devastation. No one is prepared to spend months without power — especially those who live paycheck to paycheck. “Hurricane Maria has shown the world how poor Puerto Rico is,” they said. They are proud of their people, but recognize the deep inequalities that cause their neighbors to struggle even more the face of a catastrophic natural disaster. They are hopeful for the future, but remain skeptical of the current system in place to help people.
Collective Story Harvest and Participatory Design Session
We were fortunate to get in touch with a local NGO, ACUDE, before we arrived in Puerto Rico. We met Dalia, the director of the organization, at a local mall. Months after the hurricane, Dalia still does not have power in her home or her office. She treks to a nearby Starbucks for power and to find cell service. Though she works for a nonprofit working to teach survival skills to help people prepare for disaster, she agrees that the island was not prepared enough.
After an insightful interview with Dalia, she got us in touch with her colleagues for a collective story harvest and participatory design session the next day.
We gathered six women and one young man during a weekend afternoon to listen to their stories and understand their ideas for solutions. After splitting into two groups to listen to their stories of what happened before, during, and after Hurricane Maria, we all worked together to co-create an affinity diagram of the largest problem areas that come from a massive natural disaster. They told us their stories of sharing food with neighbors, logistical difficulties of waiting countless hours in line for gasoline, and the loss of family members due to stress and illness. The strength of these women astonished us — they have been through so much, but laughed and joked with us as we moved into different activities. They were hopeful, but also spoke of disillusionment with aid organizations, private corporations, and government. As we moved through their story details, we categorized issues on the wall using post-it notes into these broad areas, along with some of the most surprising insights:
- Health — One participant’s brother needs daily kidney dialysis, but did not always have access to the necessary power after the hurricane
- Transportation — The roads were covered in debris after the hurricane, so neighbors banded together to clear them of trees and branches
- Food/water — Everyone agreed that food donations from aid organizations were often unhealthy and provided an unbalanced diet
- Other supplies (gas, generators) — Lines for gasoline could sometimes be 12 hours long; generators were marked up several times more than the usual cost
- Money — Since ATMs were down for weeks, everyone had to pay for things in cash — if you didn’t have change, sometimes an item would cost $20 when it should have been $1
- Communication — The first thing on everyone’s mind after the hurricane: “Is my family ok?”
- Effect on local business — Dozens of local businesses closed, including big chain stores like Walgreens and Walmart
- Social impact — Neighbors, friends, and family are reluctantly choosing to leave Puerto Rico, since rebuild is slow
After reflecting on the broad areas of opportunity to design better solutions, we again broke out into small groups to draw and discuss possible things to improve disaster relief and resilience in the future. Their solutions involved increasing transparency in aid organization activities, as well as communication solutions to allow victims to reach family members more quickly.
Eaton Employee Interviews
Our client, Eaton, arranged for us to visit their manufacturing plant in Arecibo, about an hour east of the capital of San Juan. They kindly scheduled for us to interview ten Eaton employees. They all hailed from a range of departments, but their stories aligned in one big way: Eaton provided immense support to employees after the hurricanes.
Our interviews were centered on two main storylines: Eaton and the hurricane, and their own personal experiences. We learned that the Eaton manufacturing plant was fairly well-prepared, and got back up and running within two weeks — much sooner than other places. The town of Arecibo was less affected than other towns, but that did not mean people were unscathed after Maria.
Everyone we spoke with still had a house, but some of their family members lost everything. The emotional pain of loss and hardship is still very actively present. They told us that they are fortunate enough to work for a multinational company with the resources to help employees, and were back to work within weeks to make up for lost production time by working overtime for several months. We found this to be in large contrast to others on the island, whose workplaces were destroyed and have been unable to find a new job. The management team at the Arecibo plant helped employees get generators, provided food and water, and started paying employees in cash, all providing support to the people who work there.
A Day in the Mountains
We spent another afternoon with our friend Eliana, who showed us her town of Canóvanas, about 18 miles from San Juan, that still remains without power today. Eliana was incredibly helpful — she has a web comic series (check it out!), but still does not have consistent internet due to the slow rebuild in her area.
Before we went into town, we met Eliana at an eerily quiet outlet mall. She explained that before the hurricane, it was busy, with over sixty stores. Today, the majority have closed due to water damage and lack of profitability.
Eliana was kind enough to introduce us to neighbors and business owners who all shared their unique perspective of the hurricane. The owner of a small local store told us how they became an asset to the community after the hurricane, as they allowed local residents to use their generator-powered refrigerators to store vital food and medications.
We also met an 83-year old woman who has lived in her home in Canóvanas for over 60 years. She was not aware of the impending hurricane, but learned of its strength when she woke up the next day and walked outside to witness its devastation. She spoke to us about life today without power, and allowed us to peek into her backyard at the lush jungle behind her house.
The landscape is breathtaking in the mountains, but the same vines that provide its beauty are a nightmare for maintaining power lines. We spoke with a group of repairmen partnering with PREPA, the Puerto Rican power management company, who told us about the slow process of repairing pole by pole, line by line. The roads in these mountains are tight — sometimes only one lane — and their trucks must be careful on the drive. They work fast, said one PREPA representative, but there is still much to be done, as supplies have been slowly distributed to where they are needed.
Insights
One of our most surprising insights coming out of this trip is the importance of the ability to communicate. We had anticipated that power would be the biggest issue, but people more frequently cited lack of communication as their biggest obstacle. We decided to narrow the scope of our project to solve problems within the realm of disaster communication, which encompasses these categories:
- Physical infrastructure for communication (telecommunication, internet, etc.)
- Communication between disaster victims and family members
- Communication to educate the public on actions to take pre- and post-disaster
- Communication for multi-stakeholder efforts towards disaster preparedness
- Communication for post-disaster relief efforts
- Communication to increase transparency of both private and public actions toward disaster resilience
As we begin to move into the conceptual design phase of this project, we will continue to reflect on the experiences of Puerto Ricans and the recent hurricanes. Our team wishes to design with Eaton’s capabilities in mind to increase the resilience of society in the face of devastating natural disasters. We feel deeply for Puerto Rico, and can only hope that we can do our small part to leverage the strengths of technology for positive social impact.
