Ready to Respond
On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm. For more than 24 hours, it pummeled the island with devastating amounts of rain and winds of more than 140 miles per hour. It was the strongest storm to hit Puerto Rico in 85 years, and is regarded as the island’s worst-ever natural disaster.
Along with this catastrophic damage came a major humanitarian crisis; most of the island was flooded and wind-damaged. Resources were lost or scarce. Puerto Rico’s communications, electrical and water systems were crippled. Total losses from the hurricane topped more than $91.61B, ranking Maria the third-costliest hurricane in U.S. history.
The healthcare system in Puerto Rico was also severely impacted. Hospitals, clinics and other healthcare offices suffered significant damage to their infrastructure, not only impacting their day-to-day operations, but also limiting access to supplies, clean water, and medicine. Without power, the hospitals relied heavily on generators, and scarce fuel supplies to continue operating.
Before Maria arrived, the staff at Aladdin’s office in Puerto Rico contacted the island’s hospitals, elderly homes and other customers to encourage them to stock up on basic supplies, and to rely on disposable meal-delivery products to serve patient meals during this extreme weather event.
José Garcia, Sales and Operations Manager, says that Aladdin’s disaster planning initiatives helped hospitals better cope with the hurricane’s aftermath. “We believe Aladdin’s hurricane preparedness strategy was, and continues to be, critically important to all our accounts. Our staff had distributed enough supplies to cover our clients’ needs for at least 30 days. So when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, they were as prepared as they could be.”
However, nobody could have predicted the devastation would be so widely spread throughout the island. Recovery efforts have taken up from 6 to 9 months’ time to bring the island back to a sense of normal stage. Even then, there are some areas that are still recovering.
Many small towns located in the center of the Island with small hospital units, such as Utuado, Castaner and Aibonito lost all forms of communications, and we could not reach them by phone. Even personal visits were not possible because all roads were either damaged or blocked with debris. Cellphone networks were not working either.
The office of Aladdin Temp-Rite PR was not in much better shape than the rest of the island. Luckily, our warehouse had survived Maria. There was no damage to the infrastructure, and most importantly, no damage to our inventory. There was no electrical supply, no phone connection, no internet, so the question was, how could we reach our customers?
After our corporate office reached us via text message, we had answer to our question. We started to send text messages throughout the island to dietitians, buyers and administration department employees. As a result, we established a way to reach out to the hospitals that needed supplies. San Cristobal Hospital in Ponce was the first account to request supplies. The Dietitian at this hospital, Mrs. West, was so happy to be able to communicate with us, especially because the hospital was running out of supplies, including disposables for patient food delivery.
Many of the roads where either damaged or full of debris, which limited vehicle access. Our truck drivers could not reach the hospitals in the mountains due to road conditions. In order to deliver shipments, many shipments were delivered using personal employee vehicles, while others were picked up by dietitians. This method allowed Aladdin Temp-Rite Puerto Rico to contribute in helping re-establish Puerto Rico’s Health care system and return back to servicing our patients in need for a hot meal.
- Jose R. Garcia
Sales and Operations Manager, Puerto Rico
Aladdin Temp-Rite
