Abstract

Abstract

Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. Its strong winds and rainfall intensity were responsible for significant damages to the infrastructure and to all types of construction in Puerto Rico. The hurricane and its effects have been intensively studied over the past three years. These studies include estimates of the gust speeds that the hurricane produced. These estimates appear to be lower than those expected for a hurricane of Maria’s category. The present study sets out to contribute to these estimates by analyzing the failures of elements of the transportation infrastructure, obtaining as a result that the gust speeds required to produce the analyzed failures were significantly higher than those of previous studies. This findings suggests that a review of the estimated gust speeds for Hurricane María is pertinent, which would make it possible to better interpret its effects. In turn, this could have an impact on the definition of relevant design speeds for Puerto Rico to design resilient systems under a future update of the building codes of the island.