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“Food and water are a must. If I heard a hurricane was beating down on my island I think I might stockpile and find a way to prepare knowing the governments are inept”.

One of the things we learned was, the usual recommendation of a three day stockpile was totally inadequate. We needed THREE WEEKS of emergency supplies. There was a shortage of everything, but mostly food and fuel, for at least that long.

Agreed. When we had the big ice storm here in 2009, few were prepared for the length in time of the problems. Some areas were without power for 3 weeks -- of course the power outages / situation in PR lasted much longer, but, we were in the middle of winter and a few of the days following the storm were COLD (for us -- single digits @ night and windy at times, IIRC.) I remember my 1st trip "to town" a few days after the storm, over still iced & heavily rutted roads, in our minivan. It's a miracle I didn't end up in the ditch or worse: That was a big factor in our now owning a Ford Explorer (pre "mall finder" model) and a Subaru Outback, both with high quality snow tires on them.

I shudder to think of what happens in this region when the New Madrid fault (system) decides to let go again, esp. if the quake sequence is similar to 1811-1812. Few people realize the damaging quakes went on for months, with a really big one starting the recognized "period of quakes" on Dec. 16, 1811, another almost as big on Jan. 23, 1812, and as USGS describes it:

Several destructive shocks occurred on February 7, the last of which equaled or surpassed the magnitude of any previous event. The town of New Madrid was destroyed. At St. Louis, many houses were damaged severely and their chimneys were thrown down...

) Even that wasn't the end of it; damaging aftershocks continued for months.