Tag: Puerto Rico

  • As thousands remain stranded in squalor

    James Downie at the Post on Puerto Rico and neglect:

    On Friday night, the Puerto Rico Department of Health for the first time in six months released official mortality numbers related to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island last September. The department counted at least 1,400 additional deaths on the island from September to December 2017 compared with the same period the previous year. That finding came three days after a Harvard University study was published that calculated some 4,600 additional deaths due to Maria. Both estimates are many times the official death count of 64 and suggest that Maria was one of the deadliest disasters in U.S. history.

    Yet on the major Sunday talk shows — the purest distillation of what the media and political establishments consider worth discussing — not once was Puerto Rico mentioned. That is a disgrace.

    That’s not how it was with Katrina. I still have a yellowing Times front page of a body floating face down under a screaming headline…well I can just show you which one.

    Image result for new york times front page katrina

    Why was and is Puerto Rico after Maria so ignored compared to New Orleans after Katrina? Not purely race, because race was front and center with Katrina. Because it’s offshore? But so is Hawaii, and that’s not being ignored. Race and poverty and offshore all together? I guess so.

    Even before these new official and unofficial estimates, the federal and local response to the hurricane hasn’t been given the media attention it deserves. It took seven months to restore power on the island, bridges and roads were impassable for weeks or months, and hospitals were overwhelmed. All these factors hindered emergency and other medical services, and, as the authors of the Harvard study wrote, “interruption of medical care was the primary cause of sustained high mortality rates in the months after the hurricane.” Relief from the federal government has been a classic case of too little, too late. After Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, Congress allocated more than $60 billion in aid within two weeks. (And the George W. Bush administration’s response to Katrina was still woeful even with all that funding.) After Hurricane Maria, Congress took almost five months to allocate a fraction of the $94 billion Puerto Rico’s government has estimated it needs.

    Hurricane season is approaching.

  • While he’s stroking his fragile ego

    The mayor of San Juan doesn’t share the Trump administration’s cheerful view of its work in Puerto Rico.

    [T]he idea that there was anything good about the news didn’t sit well with Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan. (Ms. Cruz is a member of the Popular Democratic Party, which advocates maintaining the island’s commonwealth status.)

    After CNN played Ms. Duke’s comments for the mayor, Ms. Cruz called them “an irresponsible statement.”

    Well, maybe from where she’s standing it’s a good news story. When you’re drinking from a creek, it’s not a good news story. When you don’t have food for a baby, it’s not a good news story. When you have to pull people down from their buildings, because — I’m sorry, but that really upsets me and frustrates me.

    I would ask her to come down here and visit the towns and then make a statement like that, which frankly, it is an irresponsible statement. And it contrasts with the statements of support that I have been getting since yesterday when I got that call from the White House.

    This is, dammit, this is not a good news story. This is a ‘people are dying’ story. This is a ‘life or death’ story. This is ‘there’s a truckload of stuff that cannot be taken to people’ story. This is a story of a devastation that continues to worsen.

    It’s more than a little bit narcissistic to shower praise on one’s own process while ignoring the actual outcome. “It’s good news! We got all our engines started!”

    Paul Krugman has a column today on this self-centered quality of the Trump admin.

    For the trouble with Trump isn’t just what he’s doing, but what he isn’t. In his mind, it’s all about him — and while he’s stroking his fragile ego, basic functions of government are being neglected or worse.

    Let’s talk about two stories that might seem separate: the deadly neglect of Puerto Rico, and the ongoing sabotage of American health care. What these stories have in common is that millions of Americans are going to suffer, and hundreds if not thousands die, because Trump and his officials are too self-centered to do their jobs.

    He starts with Puerto Rico.

    There’s a reason we expect visible focus by the president on major national disasters, including a visit to the affected area as soon as possible (Trump doesn’t plan to visit Puerto Rico until next week). It’s not just theater; it’s a signal about urgent priorities to the rest of the government, and to some extent to the nation at large.

    But Trump spent days after Maria’s strike tweeting about football players. When he finally got around to saying something about Puerto Rico, it was to blame the territory for its own problems.

    The impression one gets is of a massively self-centered individual who can’t bring himself to focus on other people’s needs, even when that’s the core of his job.

    I would call that not so much the impression one gets as the impression Trump creates. We’re not imagining all this. He really did publicly rant and rave about football players while saying nothing about Puerto Rico. He’s said repeatedly that Twitter is his direct line to The People, so that is the message he chose to send us.

  • Everything is broken

    Containers are piling up on the docks in San Juan because there’s no way to drive them to where they’re needed.

    Distributors for big-box companies and smaller retailers are unloading 4,000 20-foot containers full of necessities like food, water and soap this week at a dock in Puerto Rico’s capital operated by Crowley Maritime Corp. In the past few days, Tote Maritime’s terminal has taken the equivalent of almost 3,000. Even with moves to ease shipping to the island, like the Trump administration’s waiver of the Jones Act on Thursday, the facilities have become choke points in the effort to aid survivors of Hurricane Maria.

    “There are plenty of ships and plenty of cargo to come into the island,” said Mark Miller, a spokesman for Crowley, based in Jacksonville, Florida. “From there, that’s where the supply chain breaks down — getting the goods from the port to the people on the island who need them.”

    The roads are flooded and damaged. Truck drivers are busy recovering from the storm.

    The buildings that would receive supplies are destroyed and without electricity, Miller said. The transport companies that have staff available and diesel on hand encounter downed poles and power lines while navigating 80,000-pound tractor-trailers on delicate washed-out roads.

    “It’s one thing to move a little car through there,” Miller said. “It’s another to move a semi truck.”

    So in short it’s still an emergency situation.