USA: Hurricane Maria prompts rare investigation into building damage

By Thomas Frank

When Erica Kuligowski went to Puerto Rico three months after Hurricane Maria battered the island, she noticed conditions that others seemed to overlook.

Vital buildings such as hospitals and schools were still standing but unusable because rain had penetrated and swamped the interiors.

The water damage might have seemed unremarkable in a moonscape of destruction and power outages. But Kuligowski works for a federal agency that studies buildings.

Now, the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology is undertaking a rare, comprehensive investigation into why Hurricane Maria ruined so many essential buildings in September 2017 and why systems such as emergency communications failed.

[...]

In a preliminary report, NIST’s Hurricane Maria Team found that buildings such as hospitals and schools had “good structural performance” but “suffered extensive nonstructural damage and loss of function." The buildings were deluged with rain because roofs, doors and windows were destroyed or damaged, while wind-driven rain penetrated undamaged doors and windows, the report found.

“If a critical building loses its ability to function due to rainwater penetration, you’re not able to provide services” such as health care and education, Kuligowski said.

The preliminary report also found extended breakdowns in emergency communication with the public as conditions deteriorated.

[...]