The are two main issues we should consider first:
1. Hurricane Irma had impacted the island about a week before. Debilitating or destroying some lf the infrastructure.
2. The goverment wad already working 24/7 to recover from Hurricane Irma.
This had been a perfect storm of sorts. The area was recovering from a hurricane, the economic environment was weak, and people's outlook was less than stellar.
Combine all of this with a catastrophic event and you get what we have: an overworked government with scarce resources, an infrastructure that was in need of updating and repair, and a general sense of hopelessness from the population.
The federal government is helping a lot but this is an unprecedented event that piles up on the work they were doing on Houston and Florida. Couñd they do more? I dont know if they have the resources. You just cant expect one entity to handle multiple incidents plus being at war on the middle east (and possibly NK).
There is little to do in efficiency. You can surely bring in logistics experts (like the military did), but you cant bring in enough human resources in a timely manner.
Airlifting sounds practical but Im not sure if it would have helped when the ports authority was just overworked and understaffed.
This was just the perfect storm. It destroyed my beautiful country. That's life. Its why we gotta live in the moment and stop to smell the flowers from time to time.