Trump pressured to speed up aid to Puerto Rico
WH says response has been robust
The Trump administration is under pressure to speed up recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where conditions in the wake of Hurricane Maria have become raw and primitive amid an intensifying fear that the worst of the crisis is yet to come.
Prominent Democrats, while not directly criticizing the Trump administration, offered pointed advice. Hillary Clinton on Twitter urged the White House to send in the relief ship USNS Comfort — which instead is docked in Norfolk, sidelined because the Navy does not believe the compromised ports in the islands can handle the big ship right now.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Calif., said the administration “must act immediately to make available additional Department of Defense resources for search-and-rescue operations, law enforcement and transportation needs.”
The administration Monday said its response has been robust. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which coordinates the recovery effort, said 10,000 federal employees have been deployed to the Caribbean. The Coast Guard has sent in 13 ships known as cutters. Commercial barges are arriving with relief supplies. The National Guard is being housed on barges and on a cruise ship that arrived this weekend.
However, officials leading the response and recovery admit they’re facing serious logistical challenges, starting with damage to the ports and airports. Many of those facilities have been reopened just within the past day or two, but only for daytime operations, because of safety concerns. Radar and control tower capabilities are low, limiting the pace of incoming flights.
For people on the islands, help is arriving glacially. In interviews, some have questioned why there’s so little sign, or no sign at all, of government agencies.
Cellphone service is coming back in some places, but it is spotty. The lack of information and the inability to travel on interior roads blocked by debris and fallen trees has meant ongoing fear for the well-being of loved ones in inaccessible places.
“How are we supposed to receive help if no one knows we are here?” said Lisandra Alicea, tearing up as she carried a grocery bag filled with juice, crackers, toilet paper and batteries, hoping to make it through the debris-clogged roads to visit her mother in the small mountain barrio of Hayales. She hadn’t heard from her mother since communications failed as Maria blew in on Wednesday.
“Please, you have to tell people that we are here, that we exist,” she told a reporter. “We are like the forgotten community.”
In the small town of Morovis, Soraida Sierra Matias looked over the remnants of her wooden home, ripped to pieces by the storm. She had heard nothing, nor received any help, from local or federal officials. What she really needs, she said, is some canned food, and perhaps a little gas stove so she can cook and camp out in what was once her home.
“People are going crazy,” her husband, Wilfredo Cruz, said.
Federal officials say there’s no way aid can reach the islands as quickly as it reached Texas or Florida after they were slammed with hurricanes in recent weeks.