Trump Is Ignoring Puerto Rico's Suffering
SEPT. 25 2017 4:44 PM
The administration’s feeble response to Hurricane Maria rivals Bush’s after Katrina.
By Phillip Carter
When it struck the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico six days ago, Hurricane Maria was the strongest storm to hit the American territories in 80 years. “Its force and fury stripped every tree of not just the leaves, but also the bark, leaving a rich agricultural region looking like the result of a postapocalyptic drought,” according to one New York Times dispatch from Puerto Rico. In its wake, more than 3 million Americans now live without electricity or adequate food or water, and under the specter of looting and disorder. Some 80 percent of island’s agriculture has been destroyed, decimating a source of food as well as a chunk of Puerto Rico’s economy. Ninety-five percent of cellphone towers on Puerto Rico are out, depriving locals of a way to ask for help—and crippling any government response, too. The situation will likely worsen as emergency supplies run out and as the local government finds itself unable to deliver support or maintain order across such a wrecked landscape.
So far, the Trump administration has dispatched an anemic Federal Emergency Management Agency mission and sundry military units to assess the situation and provide support. But in some cases it took the federal government days to even contact local leaders in Puerto Rico’s major cities, let alone deploy aid. Only the most rudimentary military support is now on the ground. This is inadequate and calls to mind the lethargic response by the Bush administration to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The U.S. military has a unique expeditionary capability to deliver humanitarian support, logistics, and security anywhere in the world, far above what FEMA or any other civilian agency can muster. American citizens are suffering and dying and need all their government can do for them (including the military). Unfortunately, their president and the military at his command appear focused elsewhere. Unless this changes, more Americans will die.
Local officials told CNN that 4,000 Army reservists were at work on the island already—although that figure doesn’t match official reporting coming out of the Pentagon or FEMA. (It may, predominantly, include the members of the Puerto Rico National Guard, which includes roughly 8,400 Air and Army National Guard troops.) Within hours of the storm passing, FEMA opened an “air bridge” using military aircraft to bring support personnel and critical equipment to Puerto Rico. FEMA has since brought in more troops, including parts of an Army electrical power unit. Northern Command, the Pentagon headquarters responsible for this operation, said Thursday it was using a handful of aircraft to conduct recovery operations, adding an Army medical company of roughly 150 troops and the USS Kearsarge and USS Oak Hill amphibious ships (with Marines on board) to the operation over the weekend. All told, this force package appears to comprise roughly 10,000 troops, focused primarily on medical evacuation and delivery of supplies. In the five days since the storm, FEMA says it has distributed more than 1.5 million meals and 1.1 million liters of water to Americans affected by the storms, with more staged for future deliveries.
Make no mistake: These troops have already saved lives and will save more in the weeks to come. Delivering 1.1 million liters of water is no small task. But Puerto Rico has 3.4 million residents, and another 100,000 live in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Clean water is a basic daily necessity. These islands’ residents will need orders of magnitude more—plus food, fuel, electricity, housing, medicine, and more—in the months to come until local capacity is restored.
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/09/the_trump_administration_s_disaster_response_in_puerto_rico_after_hurricane.html
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I cannot imagine what they are going through. Damn these bastards to hell and back! 
