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    http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/27/us/pue...lem/index.html

    Puerto Rico's aid is trapped in 9,500 shipping containers

    A mountain of food, water and other vital supplies has arrived in Puerto Rico's main Port of San Juan.

    But a shortage of truckers and the island's devastated infrastructure are making it tough to move aid to where it's needed most. Only 20% of truck drivers have reported back to work since Hurricane Maria swept through, according to a representative for Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló.
    On top of that, a diesel fuel shortage and a tangle of blocked roads mean the distribution of supplies is extremely challenging. Even contacting drivers is a problem because cell towers are still down.

    On Thursday the White House authorized a 10-day waiver of the Jones Act, a federal law that limits shipping to US ports by foreign vessels. Puerto Rico's governor and other US officials had argued that a waiver would expedite supplies to the island.
    But shipping companies already have aid and supplies either waiting at the port to be delivered -- or held up at ports on the US mainland.
    About 9,500 containers of supplies were sitting at the Port of San Juan Thursday morning, said Yennifer Alvarez, spokeswoman for Puerto Rico's governor.
    Shipping company Crowley said it had 3,000 containers there, filled with clothes, food, medicine, water, construction materials and even cars.
    As of Wednesday, Crowley had only been able to dispatch 4% of those 3,000 containers, said Jose Ayala, the company's vice president in Puerto Rico.

    "The problem has been with the logistics, the parts of the supply chain that move the cargo from our terminal to the shelves or to the tables of the people in Puerto Rico," Ayala said Wednesday.

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  3. #43
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    WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - The Pentagon has tapped a three-star U.S. Army general to oversee recovery efforts in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico and help improve the distribution of relief supplies, CNN reported on Thursday.

    Lieutenant General Jeffrey Buchanan will lead the effort and is expected to arrive on the U.S. territorial island later on Thursday, CNN said.

    (Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
    .................................................. .................................................. .................

    This was called for Saturday. 2-3 days after storm hit.
    This is Thursday- a week after the storm hit.


    1/2 the island has no drinking water.
    This is what "fend for yourself" looks like
    Last edited by 57Brave; 09-28-2017 at 03:08 PM.
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  4. #44
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    On Tuesday, Politico reported that Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida made a trip to Puerto Rico to assess the damage from Hurricane Maria:

    Saying he needs to “raise the alarm” about Puerto Rico’s dire straits, Sen. Marco Rubio told the White House on Tuesday that the federal government needs to take over recovery efforts on the island quickly to prevent a Hurricane “Katrina-style” disaster in the U.S. territory.

    “This has the potential of being a serious humanitarian crisis in a U.S. territory impacting United States citizens,” Rubio told POLITICO on Tuesday before delivering a similar message in a face-to-face meeting with Vice President Mike Pence. “There’s going to have to be a lot more hands-on federal engagement for us to be able to successfully carry out the mission.”

    The White House announced that President Trump would be going to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands next Tuesday. In the meantime, no other American officials are allowed to go.

    Rubio was not the only one to evoke the government's disastrous response to Katrina back in 2005. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said this:

    The response has been anemic. Back when we had Katrina I said at a news conference that God would not be pleased with our response. And God would certainly not be pleased with this response.

    Last Sunday Hillary Clinton tweeted this:

    The administration belatedly announced two days later that they were sending the Comfort, a hospital ship. It leaves four days from now and will take another five days to get there.

    Over the weekend, Puerto Rico's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, gave numerous interviews saying he hoped the government would send more than the bare minimum of help, even as he thanked FEMA and the military. On Monday the mayor of San Juan, the island territory's capital, tearfully begged for more assistance, saying that a humanitarian crisis was unfolding before our eyes.

    Meanwhile, in between obsessing about NFL players protesting police brutality and insulting John McCain for refusing to vote for the latest Obamacare repeal bill, the president grudgingly tweeted about Puerto Rico, apparently suggesting that the island's debt problems had to be "dealt with" as a condition of disaster aid. On Monday he held a press conference with the Spanish president in which he claimed that Puerto Rican officials were telling "anyone who will listen" what a great job Donald Trump was doing:

    [A] massive effort is underway, and we have been really treated very, very nicely by the governor and by everybody else. They know how hard we're working and what a good job we're doing. As Gov. Rosselló just told me this morning, the entire federal workforce is doing great work in Puerto Rico, and I appreciated his saying it. And he's saying it to anybody that will listen.

    When asked for follow-up, Trump helpfully explained that Puerto Rico is "an island sitting in the middle of an ocean," which for some reason made it "tough" to get supplies there. But the main thrust of his comments was what a great job he was doing:


    The governor of Puerto Rico is so thankful for the great job that we're doing. . . . The governor said we are doing a great job. . . . We have had tremendous reviews from government officials . . . and this morning, the governor made incredible statements about how well we're doing. . . . So everybody has said it's amazing the job that we've done in Puerto Rico, we're very proud of it. . . . I think we've done a really good job . . . and we are going to do far more than anybody else would ever be able to do and it's being recognized as such.

    George W. Bush was vilified in the wake of Katrina for saying eight words that captured his obliviousness to the depth of devastation and horror: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." He was of course speaking to his hapless FEMA director Michael Brown, who resigned shortly thereafter. Bush's approval ratings never recovered. Those words will forever be part of his legacy of failure.

    Bush had been on a fundraising trip and was photographed with John McCain and a birthday cake while New Orleans was underwater and people were stranded on rooftops. It was seen as a political truism that no president could ever be caught short that way again. Trump had seemed to understand that lesson when Harvey and Irma hit, and although he is terrible at any aspect of the job that requires empathy or personal interaction with strangers, he and Melania dressed up in some casual gear and flew down to the disaster area to be photographed pretending to give a damn. It even boosted his lousy poll numbers a bit.

    With Puerto Rico, other than to insist that everyone is incredibly impressed with what a terrific, fabulous, amazing job he is doing, he isn't even trying. For some reason, he doesn't seem to think the American people will hold it against him the way they held it against Bush when an American city drowned before their eyes.

    That's the rub, isn't it? Donald Trump has never acknowledged that the 3.5 million people of Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens. He talks about how far away the island is and how big the ocean is that separates us. He never mentions that it's part of our country. As Amy Davidson Sorkin in the New Yorker put it, "instead of emphasizing that closeness, or a sense of mutual obligation, Trump has, so far, focused on how different Puerto Rico is, and what its people owe him, which is, above all, their gratitude."

    Trump must not have heard Gov. Rosselló when he said:

    We are U.S. citizens that just a few weeks ago went to the aid of other U.S. citizens even as we’re going through our fiscal downturn and as we were hit by another storm. Now, we’ve been essentially devastated. Complete destruction of the power infrastructure, severe destruction of the housing infrastructure; food and water are needed. My petition is that we were there once for our brothers and sisters, our other U.S. citizens, now it’s time that U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico are taken care of adequately, properly.

    I suspect that if the president were to focus on the job at hand instead of worrying about NFL ratings and his imaginary tax cut plan, if he were to address the American people with exactly that message, most Americans would rally to their fellow citizens.

    Unfortunately, all we're getting so far is "Trumpie, you're doing a heck of a job." It remains to be seen if he will be held to account for this callous and shocking behavior or if this is yet another norm Donald Trump has blown to smithereens. Only 3.5 million lives hang in the balance.
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  5. #45
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    Matthew Yglesias‏Verified account @mattyglesias 27m27 minutes ago

    We had 300 helicopters delivering aide to Haiti, Trump has maybe 50 working in Puerto Rico.
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    Quote Originally Posted by 57Brave View Post
    This is what "fend for yourself" looks like

    The response was not perfect. There are a lot of reasons for that, including the ongoing efforts in Florida and Texas, the need for ships and planes to wait for the hurricane to pass, the logistical difficulties of supplying an island, chronically poor readiness of the military, some laws about how much help the President can requisition on his own, and yes, some complacency at the Administration level.

    Despite all of that, this is still the largest peacetime effort ever made outside of our mainland. Billions of dollars of aid already released. Millions of tons of supplies delivered by tens of thousands of federal personnel, hundreds of military aircraft, dozens of military ships. And you say they are fending for themselves.

    This recovery effort will be a learning experience. A highly modernized land mass just went back to the 1800s in a single day with the added bonus of massive flooding, landslides, and no horses or wagons. The effects of the hurricane were similar to that of a nuclear strike. No power, no running water, no working gas pumps, no traffic lights, no power tools, no refrigeration. If we ever get hit by an EMP attack, these will be the primary results. (The well researched novel One Second After was widely acclaimed for it's depiction of this scenario happening to mainland America, if you ever want a more in depth look at the complications.)

    As if that weren't enough, ports and harbors are blocked by debris. The coast guard is still working to clear debris from the water so more ships can dock. The ARGs were dispatched because they can lay miles off shore and send in landing craft loaded with supplies.

    Most of the local truck drivers can't be found, so instead of only getting supplies to the island, we are now also tasking our military with delivery within the island. An island they don't know, with few standing road signs, no cell service, some roads gone or covered due to landslides, flooded, or choked by debris.

    Something everyone needs to understand is that this will not and can not go well.

    This is unprecedented. This was an island enjoying and relying on all of the modern comforts of America, with none of the building codes, none of the hardened infrastructure. But despite the lack of local planning or responsibility, we'll fix it. That's who we are. But this idea that everything would be better if we had somehow had twice the ships there already, or twice the planes in the sky, is either ignorant or foolish. There is nowhere for the supplies to go. The docks are running at max capacity. The airport is running at max capacity. We have more Marine amphibious assault ships there than we would use for an actual amphibious assault. This isn't a disaster because of apathy, this is a disaster because Mother Nature kicked Puerto Rico's ass backwards a couple of hundred years.

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    ... and "ocean water"

    It is not "unprecedented, seems like every two years there is a disaster, hurricane-earthquake in Haiti -----

    What if two weeks ago when Maria was Cat5 in the Atlantic someone in the White House asked, "what is our plan" ??
    Scarier yet ? What if someone did ask


    Go back and read posts from Katrina
    A wise man once sung, :second verse same as the first"

    But ya know, governing is hard. Some of us knew that going into this debacle of an administration

    Figure it the **** out
    Fer lords sake quit excusing the inexcusable
    Last edited by 57Brave; 09-29-2017 at 11:50 AM.
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    If the difference in severity between this disaster and "like every two years there is a disaster, hurricane-earthquake in Haiti" isn't self apparent to you, then I probably shouldn't attempt to explain it to you.

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    No, you probably shouldn't

    I read the same disingenuous/self serving dispatches from the Trump Administration you do
    Which has been helpful because I did learn Puerto Rico is surrounded by "ocean water"


    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...saging/541542/

    What is at issue is governance.
    Governing is an art, a skill and an instinct all at once.
    Some pull it off with grace and aplomb.
    Others --- not so much
    Last edited by 57Brave; 09-29-2017 at 12:46 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jaw View Post
    If the difference in severity between this disaster and "like every two years there is a disaster, hurricane-earthquake in Haiti" isn't self apparent to you, then I probably shouldn't attempt to explain it to you.
    You should give up

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    Quote Originally Posted by Krgrecw View Post
    You should give up
    " a lotta water , trucks can't drive"
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    Quote Originally Posted by 57Brave View Post
    " a lotta water , trucks can't drive"

    The governor of Puerto Rico has been on record say trump has delivered in everything the governor has asked for. That should be good enough for you.

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    The Hill‏Verified account @thehill 50m50 minutes ago

    General overseeing Puerto Rico response breaks with Trump: We don’t have enough troops or equipment


    http://hill.cm/kUhzkZu
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    Kurt Eichenwald‏Verified account @kurteichenwald 10h10 hours ago

    Cases of cholera now being reported in Puerto Rico.

    I cant believe this is America. We're too incompetent or uncaring to get them water?
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    Quote Originally Posted by 57Brave View Post
    The Hill‏Verified account @thehill 50m50 minutes ago

    General overseeing Puerto Rico response breaks with Trump: We don’t have enough troops or equipment


    http://hill.cm/kUhzkZu
    I haven't seen the context yet, but on the surface that is a damning statement. General Buchanan has the reputation of being a solid, no BS soldier.

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    Quote Originally Posted by 57Brave View Post
    Kurt Eichenwald‏Verified account @kurteichenwald 10h10 hours ago

    Cases of cholera now being reported in Puerto Rico.

    I cant believe this is America. We're too incompetent or uncaring to get them water?
    There were plenty of cases of cholera in the town in which I grew up (Pensacola, FL) after Hurricane Ivan. It's never a good sign, and I do think the President underestimated the response needs in Puerto Rico; but I think Eichenwald can spare us the tortured overawed shock ("Cholera? In America?!") and go back to watching tentacle-porn.
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  20. #57
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    Well, Trump has said for the last week that the Governor and Mayor of San Juan have been giving him great reviews and ratings on how well he's handled it, better than anyone else could have handled it. He says people are giving him a lot of credit for how he's handled this. Also educating people on how big the ocean is surrounding PR.
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  22. #58
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    NBC News‏Verified account @NBCNews 14h14 hours ago

    San Juan mayor: "I cannot fathom the thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out the logistics for a small island..."
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    https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.039ca3401288



    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.
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    Goldie's post from the other thread seemed relevant here.

    Quote Originally Posted by goldfly View Post

    What a jackass thing to say.

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