Trump tells Puerto Rico to be ‘proud’ of low toll

PRESIDENT Donald Trump shook hands with survivors in Puerto Rico and told them to be “proud” the island did not lose more lives to Hurricane Maria, on a trip designed to quiet criticism of his administration’s response to the disaster.

The US president, alongside first lady Melania Trump, visited the middle-class suburb of Guaynabo, walking among trees and signs felled two weeks ago by Maria’s jet-blast winds.

Trump asked residents about their homes, posed for photos and stopped into a church along the way to shoot rolls of paper towel basketball-style into a crowd snapping pictures on their cellphones.

Nearly two weeks after Maria thrashed through the US territory, much of the island remains short of food and without access to power or drinking water.

The administration’s critics said the early response was not fast enough or on a scale that could help the island’s 3.4 million American citizens.

A fortnight later, 7 percent of the island has electricity, more than 9,000 people are living in shelters, and just 40 percent of telecommunications are back up. Thousands of homes – most of them made of wood – have been destroyed, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

After touching down at Muniz Air National Guard Base, beginning his five hour trip, Trump rallied disaster management workers telling them they “can be very proud” of their response. But many of the president’s comments appeared to be aimed at quieting his own critics. He invited officials to say “nice things” about the response and contrasted it with previous storms.

“We saved a lot of lives.” Trump said, comparing the outcome favourably to that of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans in 2005. “If you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds of people that died and what happened here with a storm that was just totally overbearing.

“No one has ever seen anything like that. What is your death count?” he asked. At the time, the number of dead stood at 16. “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you threw our budget a little out of whack, but that’s fine,” Trump said.

He later described the response as “nothing short of a miracle”.

Later, Governor Ricardo Rossello announced the death toll had more than doubled.

“This morning we were at 16; now 34 have been identified,” he told a briefing.