Puerto Rico could fall into an economic abyss after Hurricane Maria

Hurricane Maria was somewhat less of a weather monster than the two big storms that preceded it. Harvey dumped record amounts of rain over parts of Texas, and Irma’s tropical-storm force winds covered an area wider than the Florida peninsula.

Hurricane Maria could cost Puerto Rico $45 billion to $95 billion in damage, a devastating blow to the island's already ailing economy. The high end of the range, released Thursday by Moody's Analytics, represents almost an entire year's economic output for Puerto Rico.
The estimate underscores "why officials are now suggesting that its economy may be set back decades," Adam Kamins, a senior economist at the firm, wrote in an analysis.

Kamins said fallout from Hurricane Maria could make it all worse. Puerto Ricans are American citizens and can freely move to the mainland.
"The end result could be a permanent increase in the rate of population decline, with many of those who remain too poor to move elsewhere," he said. "Puerto Rico's already murky future is now even more in doubt."

The Moody's estimate says as much as $40 billion could be lost in economic output because of impassable roads and lost power. Property damage could total $55 billion, but this estimate is the highest yet. 

According to estimates by Enki Research, a nonprofit group that tracks natural disasters, in dollars, the damage from Maria will likely be much smaller than that of Harvey or Irma. It put the total at $30 billion. 

However, the scale of Maria’s destruction grows when you look at it the context of Puerto Rico’s geographic size. Despite their brutality, Harvey and Irma left swaths of Texas and Florida largely unscathed. In contrast, the bulk of Puerto Rico’s smaller territory was heavily hit by Maria. A big portion of the population remained without power, or drinking water days after the storm made landfall.

The task of rebuilding Puerto Rico is even more daunting considering the fragile state of its economy, which has been hollowed by a debt crisis and the exodus of Puerto Ricans to the mainland. Divided among fewer residents, the costs of the damage are considerably higher than in Texas and Florida. Again, using Enki’s total continental US damage figures for Harvey and Irma, the per capita cost comes to about $3,000 for Texans and Floridians, respectively. For Puerto Rico, Maria’s per capita cost is roughly $10,000.

The catastrophe modeling firm RMS released a damage estimate Thursday for the entire Caribbean that was also more conservative than Moody's. It said damage to the region could be $30 billion to $60 billion. Maria devastated several islands in the region, including Dominica and the U.S. Virgin Islands.