It's going to take YEARS not months to fix what's destroyed there....it was an easy take down for the Hurricane's since most of it was falling down to begin with.
People should remember PR had declared bankruptcy before the storms in order to generate funding to even ‘repair’ the broken/failed infrastructure there...again before the storms. Therefore it's not fair to use them as a comparison to other natural disasters..they were a disaster to begin with.
I agree with your statement that they were a disaster to begin with, even before the storm.
And I agree, as well, that it will take years, not months to recover from the infrastructure breakdown.
We take electricity for granted, each time we flip on the switch we expect it to be there; if its not there, we tend to panic if we have no alternative power source.
Puerto Rico demonstrates the various ways in which failure of one part of the infrastructure impacts other on other systems; they are interdependent.
Add to that no telecommunication, debris covering roadways, a dock workers strike, fuel shortages, governmental corruption, a truckers strike, and you have a social catastrophe .
Now throw in bankruptcy ... (gulp !)