Puerto Rico’s Katrina: The Beginning Of The End For The Public Sphere
On August 29th 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast of the United States and devastated the area of New Orleans. By the time Hurricane Katrina hit the coast, it was down graded from a category 5 storm to about a category 3. The reason why this was such a devastating scenario was because the city of New Orleans failed to update and maintain the infrastructure.
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was even more disappointing. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was disorganized and didn’t really have an idea of how to handle the situation. The Red Cross was even involved in a scandal where people were stealing donated money for their own personal interests.
In order to fix certain situations and rebuild, property was sold off to private business owners, including public schools. This way any given situation would be in the hands of the private business owner and not the governments.
Hurricane Katrina happened because the government failed to update infrastructure and lacked protocol and responsibility for the situation.
In this article. we will go over how another society didn’t learn from Hurricane Katrina and was doomed to the saying “History repeats itself”.
On Wednesday September 20th 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria just weeks after being hit by Hurricane Irma. Being a category 5 storm with 160 mph winds, Hurricane Maria left millions of citizens without power for about six months.
Currently, it is eight months later, and the death toll on the citizens of Puerto Rico are still unknown. According to ABC news
“The current death toll, according to the Puerto Rican government, is 64. Skepticism has lingered, however, with some Puerto Ricans and its officials believing the number is much higher.”
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But how is the United States helping?
On September 30th 2018, the Army Corps of Engineers went to work to help rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid. The corp was given some 2 billion dollars from FEMA and a few thousand people to help establish the power grid.
According to PBS
“The Corps helped energize some 80 percent of transmission lines and nearly 90 percent of distribution lines across Puerto Rico, erecting more than 52,000 power poles and stringing more than 5,700 miles of wire.”
Even with all of this progress, blackouts will still occur for hours on end.
Sounds pretty good right? Well for the most part…
The corps will cease working in Puerto Rico as FEMA has not extended the corps ability to continue their work as the Puerto Rican Governor, Ricardo Rossello did not request to extend the rebuilding period. Lets take a look back at New Orleans for a second. The lack of the cities efforts, led to the downfall of the city and the death of many citizens. Why would you not anything but the best for your people? By not extending the corps work, about 16,000 people will still lack electricity and the power grids wont fully be up to date.
So whats going to happen to Puerto Rico?
Well according to PBS.org, These power grids in Puerto Rico that were once covered under PREPA (Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority), will be sold to private owners and corporations in order to make sure that these power grids receive proper maintenance and updates. Sounds familiar? Given that these grids aren’t expected to change the completion date and are expected to improve and be updated by these corporations, not all private corporations are set out to care for the people, more than profits.
The reason for this privatization goes back to an economist named Milton Friedman. Discussed in Naomi Kleins, Shock Doctrine, Klein discusses how Friedman changed the world through the process of privatizing the public sphere and enable for that to happen, the government needed to have these businesses back by providing laws that support privatization. The problem with this is that when tragedies like Hurricane Katrina and Maria, happen, Disaster Capitalism could take control. This Disaster Capitalism is a way to profit off of disasters. Its when the government and business care more about profit than its own people and act for everything but the people.
New Orleans schools ended up being privatized, and the same thing could be happening to Puerto Rico behind the scene, just instead of schools, its power grids.
Consider this,
Could this be the beginning of the end for the public sphere in Puerto Rico? Their power grids were destroyed and is now ending up being privatized. In the event of another natural disaster, what would be the next thing that the public will lose?
Works Cited
Giusti, Carlos, and Michael Weissenstein. “Army Corps of Engineers to Leave Puerto Rico with Hurricane Recovery Unfinished.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 18 May 2018, www.pbs.org
Hoyos, Joshua. “8 Months after Hurricane Maria, the Death Toll in Puerto Rico Remains a Mystery.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 20 May 2018, abcnews.go.com
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Vintage Canada, 2008.
