Seven years after Hurricane Maria, the scars left by the disaster remain visible across Puerto Rico: skeletal buildings without roofs, boarded-up schools, and hospitals with peeling FEMA signs out front.
Less visible, but more pernicious, are the scars that the Category 5 storm and subsequent climate disasters have left on the island's women.
"After the hurricane, domestic violence cases escalated and that was very directly related to the crisis," said Isabelle Hernandez-Repollet, an administrative assistant at Casa Protegida Julia de Burgos, the oldest domestic violence shelter in Puerto Rico.
An investigation by human rights groups, Proyecto Matria and Kilómetro 0, found that the number of women killed in domestic violence incidents doubled after Hurricane Maria hit the island in 2017: from 11 in the 12 months prior, to 22 in the 12 months after—a significant increase from previous years. Organizations offering help to gender-based violence survivors saw a 62% increase in requests for services, according to a UN Women report.
"When there is a big climate disrupter, the normal social and community ties which keep women safe get destroyed," said Cecilia Sorensen, MD, director of the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education at Columbia University.
According to Sorensen, economic stressors, such as the loss of employment, shelter, and food escalate underlying behavioral health issues among members of a household.
As climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, violence against women will also continue to mount
Hurricane Maria is not an isolated incident. A similar pattern linking extreme weather events with an increase in gender-based violence has emerged worldwide. Public health experts and community leaders are concerned that as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, violence against women will also continue to mount.
"It's only going to get worse before it gets better," said Jeff Temple, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UTHealth Houston, who studies the intersection of climate events and domestic violence.
The Link Between Climate Disasters and Violence
Researchers have observed increased gender-based violence in both natural and human-caused disasters globally.
Clea Sarnquist, DrPH, associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford University, observed that in addition to increasing household level stress, climate disasters tax the services in place to prevent domestic violence. Health care, security services, and domestic violence shelters become inaccessible.
"People lose their normal support mechanisms, which might be just getting out of the house to go see a friend or actually going to a support group," Sarnquist said.
Hurricanes in particular result in widespread destruction and displacement, Temple added. Relative to more localized disasters, such as fires and earthquakes, hurricanes are more likely to devastate entire communities and disrupt critical services for extensive periods.
A study looking at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 found that women in storm-damaged areas were at a five to eight times higher risk of experiencing domestic violence. Another study found that boys who remained in Galveston, Texas, after Hurricane Ike in 2008 were more likely to engage in physical and sexual violence against their dating partners than those who evacuated. In Bangladesh, a UN Women survey found that 65% of respondents reported an increase in gender-based violence in their communities following Cyclone Amphan in 2020.
Tania Rosario-Méndez, executive director of Taller Salud, a prominent Puerto Rican feminist organization, witnessed the disruption unfold in 2017 when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico.
"One hundred percent of our social protections collapsed. That meant that police stations were closed, 911 was not in service, the courtrooms were closed, there was no internet, no phone service," she said. Sorensen, who participated in rescue efforts following the hurricane, verified these assertions.
On average, families were without cell service for nearly 6 weeks, without water for nearly 10 weeks, and without power for almost 12 weeks. People were isolated at home, unable to escape abusive situations. Those who had protection orders could not ensure that they were enforced, according to Rosario-Méndez.
Most of the courts around the island closed so people could not renew their protection orders or seek any type of legal assistance, according to Janice Albarrán Suárez, domestic violence lawyer and director of the Carolina office of Servicios Legales de Puerto Rico. She recalled working more than 12 hours a day during the months following the storm to meet the demand for domestic violence litigation.
The storm damaged more than 300,000 homes—more than one-third of the total housing stock in Puerto Rico—leaving more than 10,000 people to seek shelter in emergency centers set up around the island. However, these shelters did not have protocols developed to screen for protection orders so many domestic violence and sexual abuse victims ended up in the same shelters as their abusers, Rosario-Méndez added.
"Puerto Rico is small . . . the possibility of victims and offenders being sheltered in the same shelter were extremely high," Rosario-Méndez said.
Sorensen witnessed the aftermath of Hurricane Maria as a first responder. "Women's safety was not prioritized, and we see that happen again and again around the world, even though we know that this is what can happen," she said.
Building a Better Future
In Puerto Rico, feminist organizations, such as Coordinadora Paz para las Mujeres (CPM), have come to play a central role in calling attention to the overlapping crises of climate change and gender-based violence as well as innovating solutions.
After Hurricane Maria, the coalition banded together to provide relief services to people in need, distributing thousands of hot meals and gallons of water, providing medical and psychological aid, and repairing houses, Rosario-Méndez said. The organizations went door to door to check on women in the community and established new community centers where women could access domestic violence services.
"The more community connectedness there is after disasters, the less people feel alone and estranged," Sorensen said. "And that, in and of itself, can be a buffering mechanism to mediate the impact on health and mental health within households."
The more community connectedness there is after disasters, the less people feel alone and estranged
Cecilia Sorensen, MD
Sorensen added that women's health and safety must be prioritized in disaster planning. For example, governments and relief organizations can develop gender segregated evacuation shelters and hire shelter advocates to do outreach to survivors of domestic violence. In Puerto Rico, CPM developed a new protocol to help shelter staff prevent, identify, and deal with gender-based violence appropriately in an emergency setting.
In addition to investing in gender-aware disaster planning, governments and institutions should also improve how they screen for and collect data on domestic violence in the wake of climate disasters, added Sorensen. Health professionals must be trained on the proper screening language and build it into their practice consistently.
"We're not collecting data, and that's a huge problem," she said.
Temple added that violence prevention and relief efforts should center on people of lower socioeconomic status, who are more susceptible to the financial and psychological toll of these disasters. By mitigating financial and emotional stress—triggers for domestic violence—we can "inoculate" our society against violence in the wake of storms.
"Living wages is violence prevention. Safe and affordable housing is violence prevention. Having employment is violence prevention," Temple said.
