Stunning silence in San Juan
Chris Gillette analysis
I was stunned as I walked through the darkened and humid arrivals terminal at San Juan’s Airport two days after Hurricane Maria blasted its way across Puerto Rico.
It was quiet. No military air traffic control units on the tarmac directing planeloads of aid supplies, no bustling command centre sending convoys of trucks to hard-hit areas. No mountains of relief goods stacked and ready to be deployed. There were a couple of airport employees mopping the floors.
“Where,” I asked a guy from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “is the cavalry?”
“This is it,” he replied, pointing to several dozen National Guard pilots and support people, with several dozen officials milling around a Forward Operations Base.
I covered Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Haiti earthquake of 2010, among many natural disasters. Disasters on this scale are usually marked by thousands of emergency personnel flooding into the affected area. Navy ships offshore, dozens of helicopters and cargo planes flying overhead, military convoys heading into affected areas with supplies and repair crews.
The only traffic on the still flooded highways consisted of civilians looking for fuel, food, water or loved ones.
Twenty-thousand troops were sent into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Thousands of foreign aid workers rushed into Haiti. Within three days of that quake, the US had dispatched some half-dozen ships and 5500 soldiers and Marines.
In Puerto Rico, residents in outlying areas were left to fend for themselves, clearing roads, helping neighbours, sifting through the debris of their homes.
By this weekend, the bottlenecks appeared to be easing. Thousands of Puerto Ricans were finally getting water and food rations, even if help was yet to reach many on the island of 3.4 million. Military trucks carrying water bottles and other supplies began to reach even some remote parts and federal officials insisted more gains were coming soon. The US Navy hospital ship Comfort has been dispatched to the island and an Army general is to oversee military relief efforts.
As I departed last Thursday, the long-awaited aid flights appeared to be landing — a sign of hope.