Politics Puerto Rico

TH: Many critics feel that Florida and Houston had much better preparation before their storms hit this month. What could have been done better in advance in Puerto Rico, and what can be done in the rebuilding process to help minimize damage next time around?

JH: Puerto Rico is an island that suffers from its position in the middle of the Caribbean and its physical separation from the U.S. Its roads were in disrepair and its electrical grid was antiquated prior to the hurricane. The island has also suffered for years from ineffective local government and rising local territorial debt.

The Navy used to operate a large Navy base there, Naval Station Roosevelt Roads. I spent six months on the island in 1993, but when the island’s population protested the presence of the training range at nearby Vieques Island, the Navy shuttered the base, taking $300 million a year out of the Puerto Rican economy. I have no doubt that the federal government will be taking a hard look at large infrastructure investments and I hope that local governments look at building and general construction codes to make future buildings more hurricane survivable.

 

Do we even really know there was a hurricane. All we have is "scientists" and the liberal media saying there was a hurricane. How do we know if Black Lives Matter didn't go down there for a riot and that's the damage we're seeing?

 

Nice T-Shirt. I wonder where she got it.

 

Your quibble is with the guy who participated in a number of relief efforts, not with me.

 

Hendrix served for decades both on the high seas and in high-level staff jobs, including with the Chief of Naval Operations' Executive Panel and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy's Irregular Warfare Quadrennial Defense Review. Few people know more about military history than Hendrix, who has degrees from Purdue, Harvard, the Naval Postgraduate School and a PhD from Kings College in London. Little wonder that in 2012 was named the service's director of naval history.

...

Tobin Harshaw: Jerry, before we get to the immediate issue of Puerto Rico, why don't you give us a brief rundown of your own experience in the Navy with disaster relief.

Jerry Hendrix: Like virtually every sailor of the past century, going back to Theodore Roosevelt’s dispatch of the Great White Fleet to respond to a massive earthquake on the island of Sicily, I had several exposures to humanitarian assistance/disaster relief operations during my career. Perhaps the most instructive was when I served with Tactical Air Control Squadron 11 from 2005 to 2008. During that tour, the squadron provided detachments in response to earthquakes and volcano eruptions, including directing air operations in Kashmir following a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The devastation made the roads largely impassable to wheeled vehicles and at that altitude the air is so thin that helicopter cannot lift as many supplies with each flight.

Most of the time, our people operated from light amphibious carriers. But we also supplied detachments to the West Coast-based hospital ship USNS Mercy when she got underway in support of the planned Pacific Partnershipsummer exercise.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...1d99ad6aa22_story.html?utm_term=.47e65b8a323d

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.”

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.”

...

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.

 

The people are starving, but the T-Shirt shops are open for business.

Or, CNN gave it to her. I think that's more likely.

I wonder why the CNN reporters aren't starving. They're there, too.

 

As of yesterday, the mayor hadn't even visited the FEMA operations center in her own city.

 

Her puppet masters in Hollywood had it made months ago when they arranged the hurricane in order to politically attack Trump, obviously.

barfo

 

A patented BFW "tl;dr" post coming up.

As someone who is very blessed in my own (very minor) hurricane recovery, someone who's been to PR in the past and someone who had a roommate and multiple good friends from PR in college, I'm crushed seeing the suffering of the people there and the (per "normal" media sources and Facebook) botched incompetence of the President, the military and the first responders. As I'm reading more into this (from both Military and Media sources) to find out the Lessons Learned and How To Do It Better, I'm concerned that, once again, political division is making intelligent people lose the ball on what's going on. Similar to how a few President's tweets changed the NFL protests from Police Brutality to Eff Drumpf, a few tweets have changed it from "help Puerto Rico recover" to "Gov't isn't doing anything and that racist F*** won't help!!11!" When, in reality, the fault lies not with the military-humanitarian response, any Jones Act issues, the President's "racist tendencies" or Puerto Rico's "lazy populace" (all great talking points, no doubt, for those trying to divide us); but in poor leadership (amazingly enough, the woman grandstanding on CNN is a prime offender) and in a local union which didn't like a new law and would rather put negotiation above human suffering.

Lack of quick response? I don't think so.
Maria hit Sept 21. Marines were ashore in PR on the 23rd.
https://www.facebook.com/pg/26MEU/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1755856284457079
4 days afterward, 16 coast guard ships were supporting, with 10 more on the way. So, um, we have the military there. They always have some supplies (medicine, Meals-Ready-To-Eat, water, fuel), and helicopters and landing craft, so there should be SOME people getting aid.
So maybe there's some reason that no one is donating supplies to the PR. Nope, there are charities and companies loading up ships left and right. Crowley had 4 ships there (and thousands of containers) within 3 days. The governor doesn't have a problem with supplies getting there.

Then I read about the Jones Act and how the President won't let supplies get to the island without some exorbitant charges, which doesn't quite make sense but gets resolved quickly anyway. Then I read that there are literally thousands of tons of supplies, food, water, medicine, fuel, waiting dockside in yards in San Juan, Jones Act be damned. This picture was taken 2 days before the San Juan mayor started talking about genocide and no aid.


On Sept 27 CBS placed a video which stated that the Governor had plenty of supplies but was begging anyone who could drive a truck--bus drivers, former commercial truckers, etc. Why aren't the supplies getting to the people, at least in the big cities?
I find videos of CNBC talking about it...that nothing is stopping a steady flow of supplies coming in, but they aren't being delivered. She talks about "infrastructure" and "distribution" and that "truck drivers can't get to the pier".
I find this note from an Army COL on the ground:

I thought that was odd, b/c I've been in San Juan and Bayamon and Roosevelt Roads (Back in the day) and it shouldn't have been difficult to, if nothing else, walk to the piers. The ring road is an interstate. Maybe the roads are too bad, still, even in the city? I mean, FEMA's tossing out enough cash to make it worth their while (hourly rate, load bonuses and detention rate of 50/hr if you're waiting around), but there's (duh, bureaucracy) paperwork involved. But more than enough cash to make it worth your while to drive, even if you didn't have a burning desire to altruistically help your fellow citizen.

Why, indeed? Just get people, paid handsomely, to use those open roads to drive trucks full of supplies to the people who need them, right?
Something doesn't seem right.

Could it be that the trucker's union doesn't want to drive the trucks? )I understand that this may not be a "regular" news sources, but unless they're doctoring videos...) here's Union Leader Victor Martinez (allegedly, I don't know Spanish well enough to determine validity) in multiple videos stating that he isn't letting his truckers or any gringo scabs drive trucks around the island? Why the hell not? Is he just misinformed and thinks it's too dangerous to risk his guys? (Again, not my translation, so please let me know if it's off)

Why doesn't the government step in against the union?Well, there is the opinion of the police officer calling in to a NYC radio station to tell Puerto Ricans in NYC about what's going on. She states that the Federal government has been doing their part... it's the local government who has been sitting on their hands , which is why thousands of shipping containers full of supplies were left untouched for days at the port and why the San Juan Mayor has refused to meet with FEMA."

But it's not just the Mayor.

So, um, are many of you under the opinion that President Trump should unilaterally crush the non-responding labor union in order to get them to deliver the mountains of supplies that are lined up at the harbor, but no truckers will deliver them? To arrest the mayor and impose martial law? I mean, it's a method, I guess. It seems like it's en vogue to take the side of a mayor (and a Latina, at that!) to stand up to the Evil President, but when you realize that through either corruption, personal vendetta or incompetence she is holding up progress it's sickening to me. After watching days' worth of media coverage from the weather channel and seeing the governor and every mayor from Tampa to Jax to Naples to Miami to Orlando to Key West talk about what they'd done for preparedness, shelters, recall and use of the National Guard, etc., it's telling that she and the Governor seem not to have done their job in the same manner. Well, maybe the governor did something (just didn't work out).

I don't care if there's a level of grandstanding and "look-at-me" involved. Rudy Giuliani made a lot of bones being on TV after 9/11. Rick Scott was everywhere before and during Irma. I don't begrudge the mayor or governor getting on TV to show what they're doing. I do begrudge them (and the union leader) if they're artificially continuing human suffering to make themselves look good by standing up against the President, by letting political messages get in the way, or by protesting legally-instated laws as a negotiating tactic in order to "make it hurt" for the people who voted on it.

Please, if you're using this destruction in order to continue to bash America, the response by FEMA, the military or charities, poor leadership from the federal government, or to point to legal issues that are stopping people from getting aid...PLEASE look at the damage and suffering caused when unions place their negotiation above the populace and executive leadership is unethical or incompetent. It is a good news story that, amidst all of the suffering, political wrangling, union tactics and aftermath of a Cat 4 storm, 1/4 of the people have died that died in Harvey and only 10 more than Irma. Up against 3.4M people without power on a tropical island in late summer, that speaks to the strength and will of the people and the response --public and private-- of the greatest nation in the history of earth.

 

I certainly have no first hand knowledge of any of this, but here is a source that says you've bought into some 'Fake News'.

barfo

 

I said that trucks weren't moving. They aren't. If the translation of any of those Martinez videos is wrong, let me know how.

from your link:

Just like the politics I was imploring you guys not to buy into: a non-Spanish speaker rails against a "Miami Trump supporter" for a translation of an angry Teamsters guy saying that they'll not deliver things that they're contracted to...and you say that that's the basis of "Fake News".

Is there an acceptable (to you or this BadTux person) translation that says anything like: "Man, we'd love to deliver, but the roads are dangerous and the bureaucracy isn't letting us?" Or "we have people who would love to be here but have to protect their families?" Or "our union is committed to helping the people the best we can in this situation?" I noticed that badtux didn't refute any of the words Mr. Martinez said.

 

It is endearing, though, that badtux refers to those who don't agree with the blog in the comments as MAGAts. No politicization here.

And to refute badtux, I'd point to the mayor I referenced in the post above, who somehow made it from Cabo Rojo to the capital. The roads must be at least a little open. So what's the problem? If you have supplies, trucks, fuel, open roads, and citizens needing help, there's one link missing...which just so happens to be tied to a guy on multiple videos (allegedly?) talking about how he'll shut the trucking down.