Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria Crisis Intervention Essay

Crisis Intervention Plan: Hurricane Relief in Puerto Rico

I. Goals

The goals of the crisis intervention plan are to improve overall resilience. Resilience factors include improvements to public infrastructure, especially water treatment, waste and wastewater services, the power/electricity grid, and the telecommunications grid. Another critical aspect of resilience is inter-agency communications before, during, and after a hurricane. Hospitals, social workers, law enforcement, coast guard, insurance agencies, community leaders, public servants, and the private sector all need to coordinate their information and communications, and their service delivery models. Ancillary goals include community outreach and coordination of special services, improving the dissemination of information and facilitating access to services. Prevention also needs to be incorporated into the intervention plan.

II. Timeline

Infrastructure improvements could take years. Each critical service (water, electricity, telecommunications) will have its own timeline, with short-term goals for improving service delivery to underserved and rural areas.

In the meantime, the crisis intervention will include water deliveries from the mainland United States, coordinating water delivery on trucks to rural communities. This can take place within the next few days.

Power, water, and telecommunications are already working in old San Juan and affluent areas of the capital. If restoring power to rural regions is not possible within the next week, it should be possible to deliver food items at the very least.

The communications and information interventions can take place immediately. Within a month, it will be possible to have fully operating teams dedicated to resource coordination, communications, outreach, public relations, and customer service.

III. Incident Command System

The Incident Command System (ICS) is recommended by Jackson-Cherry & Erford (2011), and by Frostburg State University (2010). The ICS helps law enforcement, healthcare, and other organizations coordinate their services and responses to the incident. It is important that the media also be included in the ICS, to ensure and facilitate communications and information delivery.

IV. Triage

Not only useful for the healthcare community and first responders, the triage system can also be applied geographically. Areas with critical needs can be identified as Code Red. These may include those areas with contaminated drinking water or isolated areas without access to any services at all. Code Orange can apply to areas that have had some service delivery but are still in need of further assistance. Finally, the Code Yellow can apply to suburban…