it's really strange to see how much what happened in Puerto Rico really did not register as a major early indicator of the federal government's dysfunctional disaster response protocols that could cripple the rest of the US and also result in an incredible number of deaths

A 2018 Harvard study estimated that more than 4,600 American people died due to Hurricane Maria, and even that was an underestimation due to survivorship bias. There are residents who still are living in homes without proper roofs: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1803972