Hurricanes Jose, Katia, and Maria

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

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

  Reveal hidden contents

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.

Uh-oh the quotes, I don't want to quote. Hey, @Destiny, can we replace the fuck you with a fuck them sort of thing with out the halo? It was great for a moment but we don't want to be FUing any body else. And I thought that was verboten on FJ? And we all love each other here on Politics.

[Destiny]

8 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Uh-oh the quotes, I don't want to quote. Hey, @Destiny, can we replace the fuck you with a fuck them sort of thing with out the halo? It was great for a moment but we don't want to be FUing any body else. And I thought that was verboten on FJ? And we all love each other here on Politics.

Not planned. The fuck you is intentional. There are some posts that are ripe for a fuck you, albeit not usually here in politics. We do have a WTF option for posts where that makes sense that I plan to heavily use here in politics. 

It is absolutely not verboten to say fuck you to another poster. I don’t often do it, but I have done so on occasion. I think the last one might have actually been here in politics, probably on one of PPS racist rants. 

[GrumpyGran]

24 minutes ago, Destiny said:

Not planned. The fuck you is intentional. There are some posts that are ripe for a fuck you, albeit not usually here in politics. We do have a WTF option for posts where that makes sense that I plan to heavily use here in politics. 

It is absolutely not verboten to say fuck you to another poster. I don’t often do it, but I have done so on occasion. I think the last one might have actually been here in politics, probably on one of PPS racist rants. 

Thanks! For all you do, seriously. Your work here is appreciated by all. If not for FJ, most of us would be just saying FU to random strangers. Glad to have you on this great site.

[Audrey2]

53 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Uh-oh the quotes, I don't want to quote. Hey, @Destiny, can we replace the fuck you with a fuck them sort of thing with out the halo? It was great for a moment but we don't want to be FUing any body else. And I thought that was verboten on FJ? And we all love each other here on Politics.

That's when I've been using the disgusted button or the WTF. I'm expressing my thoughts more on the information the poster shares (as in Duggar or Trump behavior) instead of the commentary the poster says about it. I do love that disgusted button, and will probably be using it a lot. Again, not usually because of what the poster says, but because of what the Duggars or Trump does. 

[AlwaysExcited]

I'm neither in USA, nor Puerto Rico, I don't know anyone in PR, and this does not affect me in any way. 
But damn, this still makes me so angry. Fuck you, Trump, you useless trash. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, no, he didn't say that..."Trump says Puerto Rico officials should be ‘proud’ more haven’t died like in Katrina"

Spoiler

President Trump on Tuesday told Puerto Rico officials they should feel “very proud” they haven’t lost thousands of lives like in “a real catastrophe like Katrina,” while adding that the devastated island territory has thrown the nation’s budget “a little out of whack.”  

Trump’s remarks came as he touched down in San Juan amid harsh criticism that the administration was slow to respond to the natural disaster and after he praised himself earlier in the day for the “great job” and “A-plus” performance he said the administration deserved for its response to Hurricane Maria.

This is Trump’s first visit to Puerto Rico since the storm ravaged the island nearly two weeks ago,

“Every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous — hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here, with really a storm that was just totally overpowering, nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump said, before turning to a local official to ask how many people had died in storm. “What is your death count as of this moment? 17? 16 people certified, 16 people versus in the thousands.”

Trump then praised officials in the room over the death toll.

“You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together,” he said.

The president also seemed to fault the small island for imperiling the United States’s budget by requiring hurricane relief funds, saying, “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack.

Before Trump’s impromptu remarks, the president’s visit was intended to be highly scripted, including a briefing on relief efforts, a meeting with senior military personnel — as well as with Govs. Ricardo Rosselló of Puerto Rico and Kenneth Mapp of the U.S. Virgin Islands — and an opportunity to visit with people impacted by the storm and the Navy and Marine Corps.

The president, who was accompanied by the first lady, is not expected to stray far from San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital and largest city, where recovery is much farther along than much of the rest of the territory.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has been deeply critical of the government’s relief efforts and whom Trump has criticized on Twitter, also joined Trump for his first briefing on the island. On Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Cruz had been invited to participate in Trump’s visit, but the mayor’s name did not appear on the president’s public schedule and it was not clear until Tuesday morning that Trump would encounter Cruz. 

Trump’s mixed reviews for his response so far, however, did not stop him from lavishing praise on himself and his administration. As the president, clad in a black windbreaker and khakis, departed the White House, he said Cruz has “come back a long way,” before returning to one his favorite topics — himself and his own performance.

“I think it’s now acknowledged what a great job we’ve done, and people are looking at that,” he said. “And in Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus. And I’ll tell you what, I think we’ve done just as good in Puerto Rico, and it’s actually a much tougher situation. But now the roads are cleared, communications is starting to come back. We need their truck drivers to start driving trucks.”

He also thanked Rosselló for positive comments he had made about the administration’s work in Puerto Rico, saying, “He has said we have done an incredible job, and that’s the truth.”

Trump’s response to Maria offers a sharp contrast with his actions in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which ravaged Southeast Texas. Trump visited Texas twice in the week after Harvey’s landfall, first in his role as commander in chief, checking in on relief efforts, and then as a “consoler in chief,” offering hugs and prayers.

Though Trump and his administration initially offered a flurry of action as Maria tore through Puerto Rico, the president then effectively went dark, decamping for a long weekend at his private club in Bedminster, N.J.

The president at points also seemed to the blame Puerto Ricans themselves for their plight, lashing out at the mayor of San Juan — after she pleaded on cable television for the federal government to “save us from dying” — for her “poor leadership ability” and writing on Twitter that the island’s citizens “want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”

Trump’s visit comes as he is facing yet another tragedy not of his own making: a shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas that left at least 59 people dead and hundreds more injured. The mass shooting is the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001, and Trump is scheduled to visit Las Vegas on Wednesday.

I have no words for how angry his statements have made me.

[bashfulpixie]

Wow. People are dying, there's no food, water, electricity, or shelter, so it's TOTALLY an appropriate time to bring up money woes and the budget. 

He is one of the worst creatures on the planet

[Destiny]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Oh, no, he didn't say that..."Trump says Puerto Rico officials should be ‘proud’ more haven’t died like in Katrina"

I am currently helping one of my friends who lost his job due to Maria file claims via text. I didn't tell him that one, but I did share the you've never heard of Cat5 tidbit. He ranted for 5 texts lol. 

 

[Cartmann99]

You can always count on Jackass Orange to make a fool of himself. 

[applejack]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The president also seemed to fault the small island for imperiling the United States’s budget by requiring hurricane relief funds, saying, “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack.

Be more of a cartoon villain, Donald. I dare you.

[fraurosena]

Katrina, unlike Maria, was a real catastrophe, according to the presidunce.

Words fail me. 

Heckuva job, me: Trump just favorably compared Puerto Rico’s death toll to Katrina

Spoiler

In President Trump's first public remarks in Puerto Rico, he shed almost no light on the federal response to the crisis there. What he did do was praise himself, tell the hurricane-ravaged island that it was putting the U.S. federal budget “out of whack,” and — perhaps most questionably — compare death counts between Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Katrina.

It was a characteristically Trump performance: offbeat, impromptu, meandering and often highly suspect in its taste. Toward the end, Trump brought up the Katrina comparison, suggesting it — unlike Maria in Puerto Rico — was a “real catastrophe.”

Here are the comments:

TRUMP: We've saved a lot of lives. If you look at the — every death is a horror. But if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous — hundred and hundred and hundreds of people that died. And you look at what happened here with really a storm that was totally overpowering. Nobody's ever seen anything like this. And what is your death count at this point, 17?

PUERTO RICO GOV. RICARDO ROSELLÓ: Sixteen, certified.

TRUMP: Sixteen people, certified — 16 people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people.

First off, Trump both didn't know Puerto Rico's official death toll and also overstated Katrina's death toll. An estimated 1,833 people died in Katrina, which is not technically "thousands." It's not even two thousand.

Trump's tweets and public comments on Puerto Rico have almost all been in this vein — playing up the success of the response and guarding against the idea that it could be judged as a failure. He attacked the mayor of San Juan over the weekend after she criticized the federal response.

But comparing death tolls is a dicey decision for a few reasons.

The first is that it's just ... yucky. Of course the number of dead will play into however the disaster response is judged, but Trump was clearly taking this moment of great tragedy to try to cover himself against Katrina comparisons. They've been lingering for days, and his inclusion of the death toll comparison was clearly an effort to combat them. Even for a guy constantly minding his reputation in very public ways, that's pretty bold.

The second is that death toll is both very likely inaccurate and very likely to rise. The loss of electricity on the island has led to a lack of communication, and the official death toll has stayed the same for days. But the Center for Investigative Journalism has been calling hospitals and estimates that there have actually been dozens of deaths — which Puerto Rico's public safety secretary confirmed Monday — and that the number could rise into the hundreds.

There have also been suggestions that the death toll could rise much higher than that, possibly even into the thousands — especially if the Guajataca Dam fails. The dam has been a concern ever since the hurricane and its rains left a crack in it, and 70,000 living near the dam were ordered to evacuate this weekend for fear of another massive tragedy. Even if that doesn't happen, though, situations like this are full of unexpected events, and the scope of the devastation in certain parts of the island is still something of a mystery.

And then there's the simple fact that these are two very different tragedies. Katrina included a devastating blow to a populous area that happened to be below sea level, and the levees and flood walls failed. Many of the 1,833 people in Katrina's death toll died instantly or as they were awaiting rescue in the days afterward. It became a big deal because of the death toll, yes, but also because public officials were seen as failing to grasp the severity of the tragedy in time to stop preventable deaths.

Puerto Rico, meanwhile, is much more a humanitarian relief effort. And if more die, it will probably happen slowly and lead to obvious questions about whether the aid arrived quickly enough. If we again see preventable deaths happening — even by the dozens or hundreds — that will be a real problem for Trump.

Bolding, italics and underlining mine.

 

[candygirl200413]

My peer posted such a sad status about this and my heart broke all over again. We've been leaderless since January 22nd, 2017.

I'm also sick and tired of the media just reporting him at this rate. We know he's trash. He is the worst person ever and yet on a daily basis you can't get rid of him.

[AlwaysExcited]

I'll just repeat myself: Fuck you, Trump, you useless trash. 

[fraurosena]

There is no WTF that can describe this adequately enough. 

Donald Trump Helps Suffering Puerto Ricans By Throwing Paper Towels At Them

Spoiler

In his first visit to Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria, President Donald Trump tossed paper towels at suffering survivors Tuesday.

A small number of the more than 3 million residents in Puerto Rico still without power were gifted paper towels, which Trump apparently thought was the most pressing need for those in the crowd.

Video of the event shows him tossing the paper towels like a child trying to play basketball. It’s all very underwhelming.

>tweet<

After the Puerto Rican government announced last Wednesday that the death toll was sitting at 16, Trump said the storm wasn’t a “real catastrophe” like Hurricane Katrina. “Everybody watching can really be very proud of what’s taken place in Puerto Rico,” he added. 

However, that number is likely to go up, as the official death count has not been updated since last Wednesday. 

During Tuesday’s visit, Trump also lambasted Puerto Rico for creating a budget strain.

“I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” he said.

The comments follow a public lashing Trump gave to San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz after she begged the U.S. government for help. Instead, Trump attacked her on Twitter while at his New Jersey golf resort.

Retired Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré tore down the president’s tweets.

“The mayor’s living on a cot, and I hope the president has a good day at golf,” Honoré told CNN.

At least now the people of Puerto Rico have some towels to help clean up the mess Trump has exacerbated.

Here's a tweet with a video of the presidunce in action:

 

[Howl]

There's a meme going around with a picture of Trump throwing a package of paper towels into the crowd with this caption:  "How to give aid to Puerto Rico without actually touching a Puerto Rican."

 

[catlady]

10 hours ago, AlwaysExcited said:

I'll just repeat myself: Fuck you, Trump, you useless trash. 

Trump is indeed garbage.  what a fucking douchebag.

those paper towels will make a big difference in the cleanup efforts.  (end sarcasm font)

[GrumpyGran]

On 10/3/2017 at 2:56 PM, applejack said:

Be more of a cartoon villain, Donald. I dare you.

He'll take that dare, I guarantee you. He is what he is.

[bashfulpixie]

Oh lovely.  Another tropical system is brewing down in the Caribbean. 

[Destiny]

Oh lovely.  Another tropical system is brewing down in the Caribbean. 

No no NO FUCK NO!
I’m done with hurricane season. No fucking more!

[candygirl200413]

Tropical Storm Nate

Tropical Storm Nate, expected later today, to hit Gulf Coast as a hurricane &nbsp;

[Cartmann99]

51 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

Tropical Storm Nate

Tropical Storm Nate, expected later today, to hit Gulf Coast as a hurricane &nbsp;

Dammit, not again! I guess this is my cue to go weigh the kittens.

[Destiny]

Wait wait wait. There are kittens? Tell me more!

[Cartmann99]

32 minutes ago, Destiny said:

Wait wait wait. There are kittens? Tell me more!

Check my status update for pictures.

Quick and dirty:

Mr. Cartmann99 found a mama cat and newborn kittens in our backyard when he went to water his plants on 9/20. His home office has been temporarily turned into a kitty nursery to keep her and the kittens safe. We will keep mom and one of the kittens, but will have to find homes for three of the kittens as our town limits how many pets you can have.

[GrumpyGran]

15 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Tropical Storm Nate

Tropical Storm Nate, expected later today, to hit Gulf Coast as a hurricane &nbsp;

Heard this on the news this morning and my brain said "Nope, no, not happening not happening, nope." I didn't even listen to the time frame. I think I've reached the point where I just don't want to know until I can't ignore it anymore.

[Howl]