In Puerto Rico, lawmakers make several changes to the old State Civil Defense Law from 1973, changing to a state FEMA or Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency (PREMA). That agency reports to the Security Commissioner which has been the State Police Superintendant. Puerto Rico does not have counties but at municipality level, all the 78 municipalities have their own Civil Defense which report directly to the Mayor.

The State level PREMA developed a plan which locate 11 zones around the Island to gather the 78 municipalities. Each zone has it's own EOC which is the same as State level PREMA, with the only difference that zone level has a representative for every of each municipalities that are under them.

Meanwhile State level PREMA are working with major resource coordination, zones provide the same resource coordination with the zone and local communities resources. At the end of those resources, help comes from state level. All municipalities and zones have their own EOC, which is organized as PREMA with 15 ESF (we increase in 3 those committees rather than FEMA). Municipalities are first responders while State level uses their year long time to coordinate with the federal level in the flow of resources in case of an emergency.

PREMA reports to the Security Commissioner and then to the Governor. In some cases the Governor wants PREMA to reports directly to him. Zones reports to PREMA and municipalities operational reports to the Mayor.