Puerto Rican Advocates and Social-Justice Groups Call on FCC to Launch Independent Inquiry into Hurricane Maria Communications Failures

A coalition of Puerto Rican advocates, racial- and social-justice organizations, and media and telecommunications experts urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to appoint an independent commission to examine the causes for the communications failures in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017. In a letter delivered to Chairman Pai on the one-year anniversary of the storm making landfall in Puerto Rico, groups including the Center for Media Justice, Color Of Change, Collective Action for Puerto Rico, Defend Puerto Rico, Free Press, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and Resilient Just Technologies criticized the brief hurricane-season report the agency released in Aug. That report “failed to provide the kind of comprehensive examination that is needed following such a historic tragedy in Puerto Rico,” the coalition wrote. “[We] need to know more about the policies and investment decisions made through the years that resulted in a communications network that lacked the resiliency to withstand a major hurricane.” The FCC needs to provide an in-depth review of the telecommunications challenges facing Puerto Rico while also developing recommendations on how to avoid such failures in the future.