Money can technically solve many of the catastrophic problems we face today. After thinking on it, here's the best solution I have for PR: Puerto Rico could be generating $8 M PER SECOND every time a hurricane hits, and catapult from the poorest to the wealthiest-- equipping them to take care of themselves.



Massive destruction. Collect all the (uniquely encased) batteries. Bidding by every power company and country in the world to help, in return for cheap power. One hurricane generates more power than the US uses in an entire year, and its completely wasted. Immediately available power for rebuilding efforts, and immediate boost to the local economy. Puerto Rico, and other regions impacted by hurricanes, goes from being the poorest, to the wealthiest power generators in the world.

The south east corner of the US needs to invest in micro wind farms paired with batteries, and blanket the entire region with them. A hurricane generates 600 trillion joules per second(more than any nuclear weapons ever tested--per second). Converting that energy to money is an engineering problem. If solved, here's how future hurricanes would go down:

A quick napkin calculation: 600T joules = 166666667 kWH *.05( half the national average) = $8 million PER SECOND. Power companies and countries would be tripping over themselves to help and bid for that cheap power. Tesla could build the batteries. With conservative estimates, Puerto Rico could be generating $8 M PER SECOND to offset the destruction, and build better hurricane shelters.

Micro wind farms are cheap, efficient, and generate power 24/7. The batteries they charge would provide immediate power for rebuilding and emergencies.

Inefficiencies in converting that power would reduce the throughput, but it's still on the order of millions of dollars per second in energy to be harnessed. The biggest road block here is building batteries large enough and fast enough, but that's also an engineering problem to invest in. Clearly it's worth it.

Further reading:

https://www.quora.com/Could-wind-turbines-withstand-Category-5-hurricanes