Hurricanes Jose, Katia, and Maria

[Destiny]

HILLARY WOULD HAVE HANDLED THIS SITUATION PROPERLY!!!!    (boy, that felt good!)
Whenever some stupid Conservative sputters on about Benghazi or emails, I'm going to respond with "what about Puerto Rico?"  That'll shut them up.

Doubtful. They will believe the Orange Menace shit about how well it’s going.

[Ali]

14 hours ago, JMarie said:

HILLARY WOULD HAVE HANDLED THIS SITUATION PROPERLY!!!!    (boy, that felt good!)

Whenever some stupid Conservative sputters on about Benghazi or emails, I'm going to respond with "what about Puerto Rico?"  That'll shut them up.

But it is a big ocean.

[GrumpyGran]

Ok, seriously, there are truck drivers in the military. Lots of them. Get some fucking bulldozers on a ship, take them over there, deploy the military, use the bulldozers to clear the roads and then bring in the trucks and get some food, water, gasoline and generators to these people! It's not rocket science!

[Ozlsn]

5 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Ok, seriously, there are truck drivers in the military. Lots of them. Get some fucking bulldozers on a ship, take them over there, deploy the military, use the bulldozers to clear the roads and then bring in the trucks and get some food, water, gasoline and generators to these people! It's not rocket science!

Pretty sure Blackhawks will carry that weight too, for some of the harder to access regions. Biggest military in the world, now might be a good time to use some of the resources perhaps?

[MarblesMom]

This seems like New Orleans all over again... 

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

Pretty sure Blackhawks will carry that weight too, for some of the harder to access regions. Biggest military in the world, now might be a good time to use some of the resources perhaps?

But who would transport the cabinet members to their vacations and conferences on ways to ruin our country if the military was deployed to help citizens in need?

[candygirl200413]

So my sister has co-workers who have family in PR. They just got in contact with their family and it's horrific. They've so far been given a can or two of tuna and a bottle of water (my sister forgot to ask where the family is), the elderly are really really suffering, a lot have died. Again made me very emotional, and now that fuckface is playing golf they'll never get the support they deserve.

[Destiny]

BFF drove somewhere so he could call me again today. I damn near cried when I found out he had enough food and water. He talked to all our friends but one, and neither of us know how that one is. </3

[GrumpyGran]

Can we not drop supplies down to these areas that are cut off? You know, from helicopters? Yep, @candygirl200413, off playing golf already. Can't go to PR yet because, you know, it's an island. In the middle of a big ocean. Got to wait until the island gets closer or the ocean gets smaller or something. Melania's got to get her PR disaster outfit together. Oh, and I need a few rounds of golf!

I think at this point he's very reluctant because he has shot off his mouth so much about how things are going so well and when he has to be there, with cameras, looking at the reality-well, another embarrassing moment for him.

[47of74]

Here's another GOP fuck face

Quote

Appearing on CNN Saturday morning, former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (R) lectured Puerto Rico hurricane victims on self-sufficiency saying they “need to take care of themselves.”

Asked about San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz requesting help for the American territory after it was devastated by Hurricane Marie, Bauer said “I’m a state’s rights guy.”

“Look, I believe the federal government has a role and responsibility to come in and help, but local leadership is supposed to lead, not the federal government, and so it really falls on the backs of the people that have been elected, and make no mistake, resources have been given,” Bauer said about the catastrophe. “Eleven major highways cleared, 10,000 people down there, you’ve got on the ground a four-star general, 11 points of distribution, 500 gas stations with gas, air-dropped supplies in places where they can’t get to major hubs, $40 million available right now, so things have been done.”

“The federal government has come in, but my feeling is the federal government’s role is not to come in and take over,” he continued. “As a local guy that’s served in local elected office, I wouldn’t want the federal government to ever come in and take over.”

Go fuck yourself Andre.  Preferably in heavy traffic.  

[Destiny]

Fuck you you fucking fuck. FUCK.

How can these guys be such god damned scrooges? These are fucking people, even if they are fucking brown you fucking asshole! Racist bag of dicks. 

[livinginthelight]

I normally stay off political threads as Trump gets my blood boiling as no other. And I normally don't swear. But his Puerto Rico response made me come on here to say

You are a worthless, fucking-assed racist, narcissistic piece of shit.

And you minions of his are worthless human beings suck-ups with hearts of cold stone.

There are no words for how terrible you are. Fuck you all.

[Destiny]

This

Is there anything more to say really?

[candygirl200413]

That same Lt gov also said how you shouldn't feed stray animals because they will come back to food, and said how it applies to poor people. He is a major POS and I can go on a tirade of curse words but I don't know if I'll have enough for the swear jar. 

 

[Destiny]

10 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

That same Lt gov also said how you shouldn't feed stray animals because they will come back to food, and said how it applies to poor people. He is a major POS and I can go on a tirade of curse words but I don't know if I'll have enough for the swear jar. 

What the serious fucking fuck? I want to vomit. I feed stray animals, don't get me wrong. There's a neighbourhood cat that knocks on my door when he's hungry because he knows he will get something to eat. Same with god damed people. HOW CAN PEOPLE BE SO FUCKING CRUEL?????????????????

[Cartmann99]

49 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

That same Lt gov also said how you shouldn't feed stray animals because they will come back to food, and said how it applies to poor people. He is a major POS and I can go on a tirade of curse words but I don't know if I'll have enough for the swear jar. 

 Whenever @Destiny does a software update at FJ, everybody gets a $1000 swear jar credit. 

I see that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is busily doing her part to turn all criticism of Trump into an attack on those who have gone to Puerto Rico to help with relief efforts. Why not just call the mayor of San Juan a bitch, while you're at it? She's obviously not a good little conservative woman who knows her place, so it's totally fine to attack her while Trump golfs, tweets, and shoves chocolate cake in his face. Sarah's father must be quite pleased at how hard she's working to defend the indefensible.

Sadly, I'm sure the mayor of San Juan will be receiving death threats before the weekend is over from Trump's deplorables.

[GrumpyGran]

Please, who or whatever is in control of this insane world, I need to see a big ole bag of Karma dropped on some people. Now.

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 Whenever @Destiny does a software update at FJ, everybody gets a $1000 swear jar credit. 

I see that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is busily doing her part to turn all criticism of Trump into an attack on those who have gone to Puerto Rico to help with relief efforts. 

Sadly, I'm sure the mayor of San Juan will be receiving death threats before the weekend is over from Trump's deplorables.

Oh good, I may need that credit.

Pretty sure that Huckabee Sanders and theTrump deplorables (new band name?) identify as Christian.  Not sure who they're actually following but it sure as hell isn't Christ.

7 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Can we not drop supplies down to these areas that are cut off? You know, from helicopters? Yep, @candygirl200413, off playing golf already. Can't go to PR yet because, you know, it's an island. In the middle of a big ocean. Got to wait until the island gets closer or the ocean gets smaller or something. Melania's got to get her PR disaster outfit together. Oh, and I need a few rounds of golf!

I think at this point he's very reluctant because he has shot off his mouth so much about how things are going so well and when he has to be there, with cameras, looking at the reality-well, another embarrassing moment for him.

I don't think he has enough self-awareness to be embarrassed, frankly. I think he just doesn't care or see it as his problem or see the people of PR as Americans.  

I am.. enjoying is not quite the right word, nor is being entertained,  more sort of nodding in agreement while being open-mouthed in disbelief with Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station's responses to Trump's tweets/lack of response to hurricane Maria though. The island is surrounded by ocean huh? Who'da thunk.

[GreyhoundFan]

Mayor Cruz was on Rachel Maddow last night. What a hardworking leader. She brought me to tears. Here's a WaPo article about her: "Trump called San Juan’s mayor a weak leader. Here’s what her leadership looks like."

Spoiler

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — When Hurricane Maria destroyed the infrastructure of Puerto Rico, it turned the mayor of its capital city into a spokeswoman for a stranded people.

Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto told the world of the "horror" she was seeing as she waded through San Juan's flooded streets. And the desperation on the island, parts of which may remain without power for months.

Until then, Cruz had not been a well-known politician outside the island. But after she criticized Washington's response to the hurricane this week — "save us from dying," she pleaded on cable network — President Trump took direct aim at her on Twitter.

"Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan," he wrote Saturday. Democrats must have told her to say nasty things about him, he claimed.

Since the president brought it up, we present below the historical record of the leadership of Cruz, before and after the storm.

Cruz has, in some ways, been a lifelong politician: class president in eighth grade; student council president in high school.

Like many Puerto Ricans, she left the island to pursue opportunities on the  mainland, earning a bachelor's in political science at Boston University and a master's in public management and policy at Carnegie Mellon.

She stayed on the mainland for many years, according to her official biography, and worked her way up to the position of human resources director at several companies, including Scotiabank and the U.S. Treasury Department.

In a 2014 interview with a small New York newspaper, Cruz described the tug of war she and other Puerto Ricans often feel between the mainland and their home island.

"I often say to my friends that I felt too Puerto Rican to live in the States; then I felt too American to live in Puerto Rico," she said. "So when I settled back in Puerto Rico in 1992, I had to come to terms with all of that."

After 12 years on the mainland, Cruz returned to her island to plunge back into politics.

She became an adviser to Sila María Calderón, a San Juan mayor who later became Puerto Rico's only female governor.

With the experience she gained under Calderón, Cruz ran in 2000 for a seat in Puerto Rico's House of Representatives. She lost that race, but in 2008 she ran again and won.

"Politics is a rough game, and sometimes as females we are taught that you have to play nice," she said in a 2014 interview. "Sometimes you can't play nice."

As the race for mayorship of her home town approached in 2012, she waffled publicly on whether to become a candidate.

At first she denied any plans to run. Once she entered the race, she strung together a series of small coalitions — including the LGBT community, students, Dominican immigrants and taxi drivers — to form a base of support.

Such allies helped her defeat a formidable opponent — a three-time incumbent, Jorge Santini.

"People don't realize they have the power," she recalled in an interview several years later. "People don't realize that if they come together, there are more of them than those who occupy the seat that I'm in right now."

Puerto Rico's politics are largely defined by their relationship with the mainland and whether the island should remain a U.S. territory, gain statehood or vie for independence.

Cruz's party, the Popular Democratic Party, campaigns to maintain Puerto Rico's status as an unincorporated, self-governed U.S. territory.

But in her trips to the United States since winning office, Cruz has at times advocated for more independence.

She once went before Congress to ask that Puerto Rico — crippled by debt — be able to reorganize under bankruptcy laws, and thereafter enter into commercial agreements with other countries.

"Puerto Rico has been denied these tools far too long," Cruz said in 2015. "And as long as our options are defined by the powers of this Congress, we will always be at your mercy. The measure of our success will always be limited by the vastness of your control over our affairs."

Two years later, Hurricane Maria has made the island's many dependencies all too apparent.

Maria flooded roads, destroyed phone lines and cut the island's lifeline of goods from the mainland.

With limited communications and little help from the outside world in the first days after the hurricane, the mayors of Puerto Rico became the highest form of authority for many residents.

Cruz worked nearly nonstop on the ground — walking the capital's streets and doing what she could for those she met. In an interview with a Washington Post reporter just three days after the storm, she described what she was seeing.

"There is horror in the streets," she said at the time. "Sheer pain in people's eyes."

The city's hospitals had no power. Much of the country would not have electricity until 2018, she said. Looters were already taking over some streets after dark. The few residents who still had gasoline and drinking water were quickly running out.

Cruz had written to scores of other mayors. "There's no answer," she said.
She felt relatively helpless — able to do only so much for her exhausted neighbors and frightened constituents.

"I know we're not going to get to everybody in time," she said. All she could do was try.

She said that on her way to talk to the reporter, a man had asked her for a favor: "To tell the world we're here."

As tears filled her eyes, Cruz obliged. "If anyone can hear us," she told the reporter, "help."

By Thursday night, families were searching for water by the light of dwindling cellphone batteries and the moon. They passed through a tunnel beneath a city wall, and found at the exit a water tank left there by the city — a godsend.

And then they found their mayor.

Cruz hugged them as they came to her. She handed to each family a small solar-powered lantern — "a box of blessings," she called it.

"Now this is life," she told The Post.

Her people were resilient, she said. Residents had taken the streets back from criminal gangs.

But if the federal government did not step up its response, she feared, "people will die."

Nearly 5,000 National Guard personnel were stationed on the island before the storm, according to the White House, and the government has sent thousands more to help in the days since. But Guard personnel have struggled to get even basics such as drinking water to those in need.

A call with the White House earlier this week was encouraging, Cruz said. She told the federal government that 3,000 containers were sitting in a port, trapped behind electronic gates that would not open. Since then, more federal personnel had arrived, and the government had sent pallets of water and food.

But her city was still on the brink, Cruz said.

On Thursday, in the White House driveway, acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke defended the Trump administration's response to the storm.

"It is really a good news story, in terms of our ability to reach people," the director said.

When Cruz heard that, she made good on her warning years earlier — that sometimes in politics "you can't play nice."

"People are dying in this country," Cruz said at a news conference on Friday. "I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy."

And with that, the mayor of a ruined city drew the attention and ire of the President of the United States.

"The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump," he wrote on Twitter.

The latter remark perplexed many experts on Puerto Rican politics.

"I don't know if Trump's comments shows an utter lack of understanding of the political situation in Puerto Rico, or if it's just a cover to rally his base," said Yarimar Bonilla, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It makes no sense. Politics in Puerto Rico are completely different than the mainland, with completely different parties."

Last year, Bonilla surveyed 1,000 residents of island. Most had no affiliation with Republicans or Democrats, and many had no little understanding of either party.

Cruz, who is widely expected to run for governor of the island, has some understanding, of course.

She isn't affiliated with either party, but has occasionally supported former Democratic President Barack Obama's policies. During the 2012 election, she met with Obama's campaign manager to push for health care funding and education grants for Puerto Ricans.

But that is a far cry from being a tool of the Democrats, said Amilcar Barreto, a Puerto Rican political expert at Northeastern University. "Complaining about people on the island not having food, electricity, water is not partisan. That's just basic human necessity."

On Saturday, Cruz dismissed Trump's tweets with a smile. She was dressed in combat boots and cargo pants as she oversaw the distribution of supplies from San Juan.

"The most powerful man in the world is concerned with a 5-foot-tall, 120-pound little mayor of the city of San Juan," she said.

Suddenly, many others were concerned as well.

Cruz fielded calls all day long from U.S. senators and business leaders. Reporters mobbed her for interviews.

And all day long, her criticism of the relief effort did not soften. "It's like a clogged artery," she said of federal government's bureaucratic hurdles. "The heart has stopped beating."

When asked if there was anything political in her barbed remarks, Cruz denied it.

"I don't have time for politics," she said. "There is a mission, and that is to save lives."

Then in the middle of an interview, the mayor got a call about a generator catching fire at San Juan hospital. She quickly mobilized her staff, barking out orders like a general.

And, within minutes, she was rushing once more out into her city.

One of the things she said on Rachel's show is that FEMA reps told her that people have to apply online. Um, most people have no electricity.

[GreyhoundFan]

"José Andrés, a naturalized U.S. citizen, has become the face of American disaster relief"

Spoiler

Heroism has not come easy in Puerto Rico.

“Today’s a hard day,” he said in a video posted Thursday to Twitter. “We’ve been getting deliveries, but we’ve been missing a few things. When we have bread, we don’t have cheese . . . Andrés said. (snip)

The celebrity chef said he was due back in Washington already but decided to extend his stay in Puerto Rico. He isn’t expected back in the District until next week.

“I cannot leave,” he said.

Then he begged off. His team was signaling him to get off the phone. “I really have to go,” he said.

I've never been to any of his restaurants in my area, since I don't tend to like fancy food, but I would consider going after reading of his efforts. I love seeing someone who is using his clout and skills to actually help.

[WiseGirl]

So my colleague just sent me a video of the rainforest.  It breaks my heart. That beautiful jungle.

I admit I never heard of Daddy Yankee before this summer, but yay to him for his monetary donation and last I heard 10 truckloads of donations collected at his concerts.  http://people.com/music/daddy-yankee-donates-puerto-rico/

A singer/rapper is more of a leader than the orange twit befouling the White House..

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria"

Spoiler

At first, the Trump administration seemed to be doing all the right things to respond to the disaster in Puerto Rico.

As Hurricane Maria made landfall on Wednesday, Sept. 20, there was a frenzy of activity publicly and privately. The next day, President Trump called local officials on the island, issued an emergency declaration and pledged that all federal resources would be directed to help.

But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.

Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.

Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was to discuss his new travel ban, not the hurricane. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.

Administration officials would not say whether the president spoke with any other top officials involved in the storm response while in Bedminster, N.J. He spent much of his time over those four days fixated on his escalating public feuds with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with fellow Republicans in Congress and with the National Football League over protests during the national anthem.

In Puerto Rico, meanwhile, the scope of the devastation was becoming clearer. Virtually the entire island was without power and much of it could be for weeks, officials estimated, and about half of the more than 3 million residents did not have access to clean water. Gas was in short supply, airports and ports were in disrepair, and telecommunications infrastructure had been destroyed.

Federal and local officials said the lack of communications on the island made the task of assessing the widespread damage far more challenging, and even local officials were slow to recognize that for this storm, far more help would be necessary.

“I don’t think that anybody realized how bad this was going to be,” said a person familiar with discussions between Washington and officials in Puerto Rico. “Quite frankly, the level of communications and collaboration that I’ve seen with Irma and now Maria between the administration, local government and our office has been unprecedented.”

“Whether that’s been translated into effectiveness on the ground, that’s up for interpretation,” the person added.

Unlike what they faced after recent storms in Texas and Florida, the federal agencies found themselves partnered with a government completely flattened by the hurricane and operating with almost no information about the status of its citizens. The Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to find truck drivers to deliver aid from ports to people in need, for example.

“The level of devastation and the impact on the first responders we closely work with was so great that those people were having to take care of their families and homes to an extent we don’t normally see,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want his statement to be interpreted as criticism of authorities in Puerto Rico. “The Department of Defense, FEMA and the federal government are having to step in to fulfill state and municipal functions that we normally just support.”

Even though local officials had said publicly as early as Sept. 20, the day of the storm, that the island was “destroyed,” the sense of urgency didn’t begin to penetrate the White House until Monday, when images of the utter destruction and desperation — and criticism of the administration’s response — began to appear on television, one senior administration official said.

“The Trump administration was slow off the mark,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D), the first Florida lawmaker of Puerto Rican descent elected to Congress. “. . . We’ve invaded small countries faster than we’ve been helping American citizens in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”

Trump’s public schedule Monday was devoid of any meetings related to the storm, but he was becoming frustrated by the coverage he was seeing on TV, the senior official said.

At a dinner Monday evening with conservative leaders at the White House, Trump opened the gathering by briefly lamenting the tragedy unfolding in Puerto Rico before launching into a lengthy diatribe against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over his opposition to the Republicans’ failed health-care bill, according to one attendee.

After the dinner, Trump lashed out on social media. He blamed the island’s financial woes and ailing infrastructure for the difficult recovery process. He also declared that efforts to provide food, water and medical care were “doing well.”

On the ground in Puerto Rico, nothing could be further from the truth. It had taken until Monday — five days after Maria made landfall — for the first senior administration officials from Washington to touch down to survey the damage firsthand. And only after White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert and FEMA Director Brock Long returned to Washington did the administration leap into action. 

Trump presided over a Situation Room meeting on the federal and local efforts Tuesday, and late in the day, the White House added a Cabinet-level meeting on Hurricane Maria to the president’s schedule.

White House aides say the president was updated on progress in the recovery efforts through the weekend, and an administration official said Vice President Pence talked with Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress, Jenniffer González-Colón, over the weekend. Trump spoke to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló after Maria made landfall and again Tuesday; he spoke to González-Colón for the first time Wednesday.

The administration still fumbled at key moments after stepping up its response. A week after landfall, Trump still had not waived the Jones Act, a law that barred foreign-flagged vessels from delivering aid to Puerto Rico. Such a waiver had been granted for previous hurricanes this year.

Asked why his administration had delayed in issuing the waiver, Trump said Wednesday that “a lot of shippers and . . . a lot of people that work in the shipping industry” didn’t want it lifted.

“If this is supposed to be the ‘drain the swamp’ president, then don’t worry about the lobbyists and do what’s needed and waive the act,” said James Norton, a former deputy assistant homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush who oversaw disaster response for the agency. “We’re talking about people here.”

Trump waived the law Thursday.

After getting good marks from many for his administration’s response to Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, Trump has struggled to find the right tone to address the harsher reviews after Maria. He has repeatedly praised his administration’s actions, telling reporters Friday that it has “been incredible the results that we’ve had with respect to loss of life” in Puerto Rico. The official death toll is 16, a number that is expected to rise.

“We have done an incredible job considering there’s absolutely nothing to work with,” Trump said as he was leaving the White House for another weekend at Bedminster.

At the same time, he said that “the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort . . . will be funded and organized,” and he referred to the “tremendous amount of existing debt” on the island.

Trump’s top disaster-response aides have blanketed television in recent days in an attempt to reset the narrative. Duke, the acting DHS secretary, told reporters Thursday outside the White House that Puerto Rico was a “good news story.” The comment seemed to unleash pent-up fury from at least one local official, after days of offering praise to the Trump administration in an apparent effort to secure more federal help.

“I am asking the president of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said at a news conference Friday. “I am done being polite, I am done being politically correct. I am mad as hell. . . . We are dying here. If we don’t get the food and the water into the people’s hands, we are going to see something close to a genocide.”

Trump’s rosy assessment of the federal response has also contrasted sharply with the comments of federal officials on the ground.

Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, who was named this week to lead recovery efforts, told reporters Friday that there were not enough people and assets to help Puerto Rico combat what has become a humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the storm.

The military has significantly stepped up its mobilization to the island commonwealth, with dozens more aircraft and thousands of soldiers bringing “more logistical support” to a struggling recovery effort that has been delayed by geographical and tactical challenges. 

Buchanan said that Defense Department forces have been in place since before the storm lashed Puerto Rico but that the arrival of additional resources is part of the natural shift in operations. Sometimes troops act ahead of the local government to meet needs, but they were also waiting for an “actual request” from territorial officials to bring in more resources. Buchanan will bring together land forces, including the Puerto Rico National Guard, to begin pushing into the interior of the island, where aid has been slowed by washed-out roads and difficult terrain. The Navy previously led the military response in Puerto Rico.

“No, it’s not enough, and that’s why we are bringing a lot more,” the three-star general said of the resources in Puerto Rico thus far.

Nope, nothing will get in the way of his golf weekends.

[GrumpyGran]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria"

  Reveal hidden contents

At first, the Trump administration seemed to be doing all the right things to respond to the disaster in Puerto Rico.

As Hurricane Maria made landfall on Wednesday, Sept. 20, there was a frenzy of activity publicly and privately. The next day, President Trump called local officials on the island, issued an emergency declaration and pledged that all federal resources would be directed to help.

But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.

Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.

Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was to discuss his new travel ban, not the hurricane. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.

Administration officials would not say whether the president spoke with any other top officials involved in the storm response while in Bedminster, N.J. He spent much of his time over those four days fixated on his escalating public feuds with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with fellow Republicans in Congress and with the National Football League over protests during the national anthem.

In Puerto Rico, meanwhile, the scope of the devastation was becoming clearer. Virtually the entire island was without power and much of it could be for weeks, officials estimated, and about half of the more than 3 million residents did not have access to clean water. Gas was in short supply, airports and ports were in disrepair, and telecommunications infrastructure had been destroyed.

Federal and local officials said the lack of communications on the island made the task of assessing the widespread damage far more challenging, and even local officials were slow to recognize that for this storm, far more help would be necessary.

“I don’t think that anybody realized how bad this was going to be,” said a person familiar with discussions between Washington and officials in Puerto Rico. “Quite frankly, the level of communications and collaboration that I’ve seen with Irma and now Maria between the administration, local government and our office has been unprecedented.”

“Whether that’s been translated into effectiveness on the ground, that’s up for interpretation,” the person added.

Unlike what they faced after recent storms in Texas and Florida, the federal agencies found themselves partnered with a government completely flattened by the hurricane and operating with almost no information about the status of its citizens. The Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to find truck drivers to deliver aid from ports to people in need, for example.

“The level of devastation and the impact on the first responders we closely work with was so great that those people were having to take care of their families and homes to an extent we don’t normally see,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want his statement to be interpreted as criticism of authorities in Puerto Rico. “The Department of Defense, FEMA and the federal government are having to step in to fulfill state and municipal functions that we normally just support.”

Even though local officials had said publicly as early as Sept. 20, the day of the storm, that the island was “destroyed,” the sense of urgency didn’t begin to penetrate the White House until Monday, when images of the utter destruction and desperation — and criticism of the administration’s response — began to appear on television, one senior administration official said.

“The Trump administration was slow off the mark,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D), the first Florida lawmaker of Puerto Rican descent elected to Congress. “. . . We’ve invaded small countries faster than we’ve been helping American citizens in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”

Trump’s public schedule Monday was devoid of any meetings related to the storm, but he was becoming frustrated by the coverage he was seeing on TV, the senior official said.

At a dinner Monday evening with conservative leaders at the White House, Trump opened the gathering by briefly lamenting the tragedy unfolding in Puerto Rico before launching into a lengthy diatribe against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over his opposition to the Republicans’ failed health-care bill, according to one attendee.

After the dinner, Trump lashed out on social media. He blamed the island’s financial woes and ailing infrastructure for the difficult recovery process. He also declared that efforts to provide food, water and medical care were “doing well.”

On the ground in Puerto Rico, nothing could be further from the truth. It had taken until Monday — five days after Maria made landfall — for the first senior administration officials from Washington to touch down to survey the damage firsthand. And only after White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert and FEMA Director Brock Long returned to Washington did the administration leap into action. 

Trump presided over a Situation Room meeting on the federal and local efforts Tuesday, and late in the day, the White House added a Cabinet-level meeting on Hurricane Maria to the president’s schedule.

White House aides say the president was updated on progress in the recovery efforts through the weekend, and an administration official said Vice President Pence talked with Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress, Jenniffer González-Colón, over the weekend. Trump spoke to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló after Maria made landfall and again Tuesday; he spoke to González-Colón for the first time Wednesday.

The administration still fumbled at key moments after stepping up its response. A week after landfall, Trump still had not waived the Jones Act, a law that barred foreign-flagged vessels from delivering aid to Puerto Rico. Such a waiver had been granted for previous hurricanes this year.

Asked why his administration had delayed in issuing the waiver, Trump said Wednesday that “a lot of shippers and . . . a lot of people that work in the shipping industry” didn’t want it lifted.

“If this is supposed to be the ‘drain the swamp’ president, then don’t worry about the lobbyists and do what’s needed and waive the act,” said James Norton, a former deputy assistant homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush who oversaw disaster response for the agency. “We’re talking about people here.”

Trump waived the law Thursday.

After getting good marks from many for his administration’s response to Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, Trump has struggled to find the right tone to address the harsher reviews after Maria. He has repeatedly praised his administration’s actions, telling reporters Friday that it has “been incredible the results that we’ve had with respect to loss of life” in Puerto Rico. The official death toll is 16, a number that is expected to rise.

“We have done an incredible job considering there’s absolutely nothing to work with,” Trump said as he was leaving the White House for another weekend at Bedminster.

At the same time, he said that “the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort . . . will be funded and organized,” and he referred to the “tremendous amount of existing debt” on the island.

Trump’s top disaster-response aides have blanketed television in recent days in an attempt to reset the narrative. Duke, the acting DHS secretary, told reporters Thursday outside the White House that Puerto Rico was a “good news story.” The comment seemed to unleash pent-up fury from at least one local official, after days of offering praise to the Trump administration in an apparent effort to secure more federal help.

“I am asking the president of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said at a news conference Friday. “I am done being polite, I am done being politically correct. I am mad as hell. . . . We are dying here. If we don’t get the food and the water into the people’s hands, we are going to see something close to a genocide.”

Trump’s rosy assessment of the federal response has also contrasted sharply with the comments of federal officials on the ground.

Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, who was named this week to lead recovery efforts, told reporters Friday that there were not enough people and assets to help Puerto Rico combat what has become a humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the storm.

The military has significantly stepped up its mobilization to the island commonwealth, with dozens more aircraft and thousands of soldiers bringing “more logistical support” to a struggling recovery effort that has been delayed by geographical and tactical challenges. 

Buchanan said that Defense Department forces have been in place since before the storm lashed Puerto Rico but that the arrival of additional resources is part of the natural shift in operations. Sometimes troops act ahead of the local government to meet needs, but they were also waiting for an “actual request” from territorial officials to bring in more resources. Buchanan will bring together land forces, including the Puerto Rico National Guard, to begin pushing into the interior of the island, where aid has been slowed by washed-out roads and difficult terrain. The Navy previously led the military response in Puerto Rico.

“No, it’s not enough, and that’s why we are bringing a lot more,” the three-star general said of the resources in Puerto Rico thus far.

Nope, nothing will get in the way of his golf weekends.

Also this morning on John Dickerson, Marco Rubio. How horrifying is it that I sat there thinking "He would be so much better. Why couldn't the Republicans have picked him?" He actually knows exactly what's going on, he can express it coherently and identify the real problem. He knows why Harvey and Irma were easier to deal with, and he didn't insult the local authorities or the people of Puerto Rico. And he was there, on TV talking, not playing golf.

Of course I would never vote for him but the comparison was stunning. Add to that the fact that there are people in this country who would rather have the buffoon running things.

[onekidanddone]

On 9/29/2017 at 12:07 PM, Ali said:

But it is a big ocean.

An ocean surrounded by water.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another sobering article: "Trapped in the mountains, Puerto Ricans don’t see help, or a way out'

Spoiler

UTUADO, PUERTO RICO — The day Hurricane Maria swiped through these mountains, the loose, wet dirt started to tumble and roll. It broke through the gate and through the door. It moved with ferocity and determination. It covered and filled everything.

“It looked like chocolate,” said Ferdinand Ramos, a 63-year-old retired police officer whose home was directly in the path of massive landslides. The viscous mud crashed into his living room and kitchen, leaving a shin-high sludge.

Then, for almost nine days, Ramos and Norma Jimenez and members of their extended family were trapped on their property. No one came to help. Their home on the remote outskirts of this town 60 miles southwest of San Juan became a prison.

Even after they cleaned up inside, they had no way to leave — the mud, broken trees and chunks of debris had piled up outside. On Thursday — eight days after Maria had passed — a municipal utility worker cleared their street.

The family had almost run out of drinking water. Their isolated community of Caonillas had received no aid from the local or federal government, residents said. And they had no way to make the perilous trek to town; the winding roads had been obliterated and six of the family’s cars had been stored in a garage that collapsed, crushing five of the vehicles and sending a sixth sliding down the mountainside and into a river.

So their daughter decided to try hitchhiking to town, desperate for bottled water for her month-old premature baby, Diana. As Jimenez, 62, waited for her daughter to return, she rocked six-pound Diana in her arms, kissing the infant’s forehead.

“She left this morning and still hasn’t come back,” Jimenez said.

An unknown number of families are still trapped in this part of Utuado, much of which is inaccessible nearly two weeks after the storm. From the air it is clear why: Mountaintop houses are surrounded by landslides, shredded structures are scattered down mountain slopes, and residents in some areas could be seen waving frantically for help as a helicopter passed.

Some of the homes are so remote and in such rugged terrain that getting to them requires extraordinary effort by helicopter or all-terrain vehicle. Pilots can’t land in many nearby spots, making it unclear how authorities will reach people before the road infrastructure is repaired, which could take months. Residents are cut off from civilization, in some places at least a four-hour walk to the nearest store.

If aid and essential resources have been slow to reach Puerto Rico as a whole, getting help to isolated communities such as Utuado has been taking even longer. In these rural neighborhoods, tucked between mountain ranges and nestled along murky river beds, there is no telecommunication. Some residents recounted coming across Federal Emergency Management Agency officials, none carrying aid — only search-and-rescue teams seeking assessments.

These are the U.S. citizens for whom the mayor of San Juan has been crying, the people who say they have been forgotten and betrayed by their government in Washington. President Trump has been declaring the federal government’s role in Puerto Rico a success, but the people here see things very differently as they struggle to survive.

“In the towns I represent, there are people who have no water,” said an emotional Sen. Nelson Cruz Santiago, who represents the island’s southern region. “In Utuado, there is an area where the bridge was washed out and people are screaming from the other side for help. We can hear them, we can see them, but we can’t help them.”

At least three people died in mudslides in Utuado after Maria hit on Sept. 20. Many residents of the Caonillas neighborhood worry that if it rains again, the mountains and roads could buckle even more and come after them again.

Hector Ruiz, a utility worker hired by the Utuado municipality to clear its roads, is often the first outsider to encounter stranded families. With a large excavator on Friday, he cut through a mountain that had fallen over Highway 140.

He estimated that it will take at least one more month to make the entire highway in Utuado accessible. Ruiz said he came across a community of about 50 homes surrounded by a broken road on one side and a lake on the other.

“They can’t get out either way,” he said.

Ana Rosa Cruz escaped from one of those isolated communities on Friday and was walking through Caonillas with her nephew. She emerged from a road covered with tall mounds of broken trees and mud. She was out of breath and exasperated, her shins covered in scratches and gashes from the trek.

Cruz, 58, had walked for about two hours just to reach an accessible road. She was carrying empty gasoline containers and had about an hour to go to reach her destination. Since the storm, Cruz had been staying at her mother’s home, which had been cut off by landslides. About nine families live there, but dozens more live even farther into the area, she said, miles away from anything.

Her mother, who has circulation problems, only had enough fuel to use her generator for two more days. She and her neighbors are forced to drink “water from the mountain or from the sky,” she said.

“If she gets sick, we can’t get her out,” Cruz said of her mother, noting that she has seen helicopters but none of them have stopped. “We just wave goodbye, because there’s nothing else we can do.”

For Lisandra Torres, 43, who lives down the road from Jimenez and Ramos, her family’s sedan is too low to the ground to make it up the muddy, rugged route — only a four-wheel-drive SUV would even have a chance. Torres walked for three hours to get to the center of Utuado on Thursday, seeking food and water. Her extended family is almost out of cash, so Torres tried to pick up their benefit checks from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children — known as WIC — to purchase food and diapers for her grandchildren. But the WIC offices in their town were closed.

“If my babies get sick, I need to buy medication,” said her daughter, Lizbeth Coraliza, 24.

A relative tried driving her sister, Angelica Coraliza, 26, to a minimart Friday in a different sedan. That car got stuck four times because of mud and road damage, and other drivers had to help. When they finally made it to the store, they found that it was sold out of water.

The Coralizas, like many other families in the Utuado area, can reach mountain springs. The cloudy water works for bathing and cleaning, but many said they wouldn’t risk drinking it and definitely wouldn’t give it to infants.

Jimenez’s daughter might not have a choice.

The young mother has been struggling to breast-feed her newborn, probably because she is stressed and not getting enough to eat, Jimenez said. If they can’t find bottled water, the family will have to start boiling water from the mountain to add to the baby’s formula.

And the shortage of food is increasingly grim. Fuljencio Guzman and his 12-year-old son, Kelvin, lost their home, its wooden structure devastated. They are staying next door at Guzman’s mother’s house.

A pantry showed the family’s only remaining nourishment: one can of beans, a few cans of tomatoes, saltine crackers and a few potatoes.

Even if they could reach the nearest grocery store, they have no cash to buy food, and no banks or cash machines in town are functioning. The Guzmans are limiting themselves to one meal a day, the father said. About 1 p.m. Friday, Kelvin ate some Chef Boyardee and rice — probably his only meal until Saturday.

Another resident, Migdalia Guzman, said she thinks the U.S. government doesn’t realize there are communities up here, away from the cities and the television cameras.

“I think they think no one is here,” Migdalia Guzman said. “But there are a lot of people here.”

The storm loosened massive boulders in the mountain slope directly above Migdalia Guzman’s home, where she lives with her children. She worries that additional rain could cause another catastrophe.

“We would all die,” she said.

When she saw a local government official around town on Thursday, she was told that she should move to a different home because of the risk.

“We don’t know where to go,” she said.

On Friday afternoon, thunder clapped and dark clouds started rolling in over the mountains. It began to rain.

I can't imagine the desperation of those cut off.