Strengthening Vulnerable Coastlines

The article examines the 2025 hurricane season’s impacts across Latin America and the Caribbean, focusing on Jamaica and Puerto Rico. It underscores rapid storm intensification, widespread building failures, and infrastructure weaknesses. Luis Buitrago offers technical advice and an off-season checklist to help owners strengthen resilience and reduce risks.

Working throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, I witness daily how vulnerable our coastal communities remain—dense development, limited high ground, aging buildings, and uneven building-code provisions create a complex resilience landscape. The 2025 season reinforced that reality. Hurricane Melissa showed how quickly a storm can reshape national infrastructure and overwhelm systems that were already strained.

Melissa intensified rapidly to Category 5 before striking Jamaica with catastrophic force. In just hours, it caused an estimated $7–10 billion in economic losses, damaged or destroyed nearly 200,000 buildings, and impacted roughly one-third of the country’s population. Entire towns, including Black River, were described as “totally destroyed.” Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay was severed damage by this event. Even now, recovery efforts are ongoing, and our teams are supporting assessments and resilience planning across portions of the region.

Puerto Rico also faced significant impacts this season. While Hurricane Erin’s eye passed north of the island in August, its outer bands caused widespread power outages, downed trees, and localized flooding. The damage was not comparable to Hurricane Maria, but it was a clear reminder of how exposure—even from a storm not making direct landfall—can disrupt communities and critical services.

Combined with lingering impacts from earlier storms like Beryl (2024), and guided by past disasters such as Maria, Harvey, Wilma, and Katrina, this season once again highlighted where our systems struggle and where owners can make meaningful improvements.

Rapid intensification is now a defining regional risk.
Melissa’s explosive development left little time for preparation, underscoring the need for year-round resilience planning, not last-minute action.

Envelope vulnerabilities continue to drive most of the building damage.
Roofing failures, cladding blow-off, and glazing damage remain the most common issues I see during post-storm evaluations.

Infrastructure redundancy is limited.
Hospitals, ports, and utilities across the region often lack backup capacity, causing long outages when a single element fails.

Code gaps and enforcement challenges persist.
Some jurisdictions have strong modern codes but limited enforcement; others are still operating under outdated wind or flood provisions.

• Prioritize older buildings. Many lack anchorage, waterproofing, and detailing that meet today’s wind and flood demands.
• Request rapid post-storm assessments. Early evaluations help owners make safe decisions, reduce claims disputes, and accelerate re-occupancy.
• Update flood and surge mapping assumptions. Legacy data frequently underestimates exposure.
• Strengthen waterproofing and roof systems. These remain the leading causes of interior and operational damage.

• Commission vulnerability assessments for coastal, older, or critical facilities.
• Prioritize wind retrofits, roof upgrades, and waterproofing improvements.
• Update emergency-response plans, documentation, and communication protocols.
• Coordinate with local partners on updated mapping and hazard identification.

Our engineers are well-versed in international codes and local construction practices worldwide. Walter P Moore experts focus on post-hurricane assessments, including rehabilitation and mitigation solutions. Most importantly, our team is committed to providing technical direction for structural safety and recovery of any damaged structures after these natural disasters. 

Resilience across the Caribbean and Latin America isn’t about perfection, it’s about steady, targeted improvements that reduce risk and help communities recover faster year after year.