More on Puerto Rican disaster relief — can blockchain help make the unpredictable more routine?

Another week, and more stories emerge about Puerto Rico’s inadequate response to natural disasters. Now it’s not about the recent earthquake. It’s about Hurricane Maria more than two years ago, and the warehouse full of supplies never distributed to needy islanders, gathering dust in a newly discovered warehouse.

The predictable outrage was understandable. So was the rush to accuse and blame. The head of the Emergency Management Agency, the Housing Secretary, and the Department of Family Secretary were all fired. There have been calls for the governor to resign. Charges of failure, neglect, incompetence, and inadequate oversight, and reminders of the island’s poor fiscal history and irregularities, fill the air.

Commentators all say the same thing: “We have to do better.” But no one thinks to say, “We have to do it differently.”

Response hasn’t changed much since 9–11

Look — disasters are hard. Unpredictable. I lived in Tribeca before, during, and after 9–11, just a few blocks from the twin towers. You couldn’t help but marvel at the dedication, the hard work, the sacrifice, and the talent of first responders. There was an almost-routine, mechanical nature to their occupation, even though the situation was miserable. No one smelling that air believed Mayor Giuliani or EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman that the air was safe at Ground Zero (an assessment Whitman apologized for only in 2016), because nothing safe smells like that air smelled. Undeterred, our emergency responders were breathing it for months and months as the fires still burned, the search for remains continued, and the debris was eventually cleared.

Despite the professionalism, events I witnessed still boggle the mind and speak to the disorganization and lack of common sense that are surely inherent in disaster.

Most businesses around City Hall were still closed months later due to lack of services, and streets were impassable as crews worked to replace damaged power and supply lines. But one day, all the streets got repaved. Beautiful, new streets. It was a welcome sign, until a week later when they were all dug up again. It seems money had been appropriated. A deadline was looming. So the streets got repaved. Before they were dug up again to continue the repairs.

One Saturday afternoon, months and months after the event, the doorbell buzzed and someone on the intercom said he was from some relief group. I went down to street level to see what this two-person team was about. I was asked, “Did you live here during 9–11?” Yes, I replied. “Okay, here’s a hundred dollars.” I was handed a pile of bills. The team was in street clothes. I didn’t sign anything. No one recorded my name. I could have been lying. I happened to be home, so I got money, but not my neighbor who was away. I can’t imagine how there could have been any meaningful oversight of the money just distributed to me by whatever group decided to hand out money. I was in shock, and was disturbed to be holding the cash. Had we experienced financial challenges? Of course. Hotel bills. We couldn’t take our car out of the garage. We bought an air cleaner. Boo hoo! By any measure, I was fortunate. WE HAD OUR LIVES! We ended up donating the money.

We need to take a hard look at the hard job of responding

All this to say — it’s almost 20 years since 9–11, and when disaster strikes we still approach situations in much the same way. We rush to respond. We send the Red Cross and the trucks and helicopters and tanker ships full of supplies. They arrive in places where no systems exist to receive, catalogue, maintain, or distribute those supplies. And how can you be critical of the intent? There is need. It’s immediate need. There are outstretched arms. Fill those empty arms.

But with a different approach… a modern approach… a blockchain approach… to disaster relief we could go a long way toward relieving the burden on responders to both feed the need and account later to authorities. Supplies could go directly to authenticated areas where demand was felt, into the safekeeping of local authorities. Items wouldn’t go missing or undistributed because chain of custody would never be broken. Recipients would be known to the blockchain and their receipt of goods recorded. Every transaction would be documented in real time and the response could be studied, reviewed, and revised later.

This is the real sad part about that warehouse in Puerto Rico. It was discovered. People got blamed. Jobs were lost. BUT NOTHING WAS LEARNED. Can we all please commit to a path where we start to learn?

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