Rapid Response Research: The political and moral economies of recovery from Hurricanes Irma and Mar?a in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

By destroying power grids, communication, and transportation infrastructure, hospitals, water and sewer systems, and other public and private resources, Hurricanes Irma and Maria have left the peoples of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico heavily dependent on external aid. Yet hundreds of thousands of U.S. Virgin Islanders and Puerto Ricans cannot afford to wait for outside assistance and are currently hustling to access food, shelter, healthcare, and other basic services in ways that demonstrate creative resilience to catastrophe. Reports of immediate recovery efforts include rigging temporary transportation systems to carry people suffering from kidney disease to dialysis treatments, assembling spontaneous road and debris clean-up crews, exchanging meals, relying on solar panels and portable water filtration systems, sharing generator power with extension cords, foraging in the mangroves forests for food, scavenging wood for fuel, leaving to live with friends and relatives on the U.S. mainland, U.S. mainland residents returning to assist, and the burning of the dead because of a lack of access to funeral services (personal communication, Miguel del Pozo). RAPID funds will be used for December 2017 and January 2018 fieldwork to collect data on recovery efforts, focusing on the ephemeral data discussed below, and prepare a larger proposal for longer-term work.

Scholars @ ECU