Must aid Puerto Rico

I lived in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands for over 20 years. When the island was devastated with a direct hit Marilyn in 1995, my eyes were opened. After the terror-filled hours were over and we came upstairs from our “safe” place, we saw our yard filled with trees, our doors blown out, many of our belongings soaked, our security fence gone, our rental cottage without a roof and two of its walls, but we realized even then we were the lucky ones.

Eighty percent of the buildings were without roofs, roads were impassable, and there was no power, no communication save one local radio station. We did not get a generator for about a month. We didn’t get electricity back for three months. We didn’t get TV for over a year. In the first couple of weeks most roads were cleared to at least one lane, the post office reopened, power was restored to the downtown area and the local newspaper was back up.

President Trump has tweeted that Puerto Rican officials are “not able to get their workers to help” and “want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort,” implying an absence of work ethic. St. Thomas is tiny compared to Puerto Rico. We didn’t have isolated mountainous communities, bridges and roads washed out, or large urban centers more dependent on public services. The sheer difference in population magnifies the need in Puerto Rico. When you have lost your home, you have no food or water, elderly parents and infants are suffering in the heat and lack of medication, your car might have been damaged, you can’t find gasoline, roads are impassable … tell me, Mr. Trump, how are you supposed to go to work on the dock or the power plant when nothing there is functioning either?

St. Thomas lost its hospital in Irma, along with all the other problems, but I believe Puerto Rico is in worse shape and the last thing it needs is to be blamed. It needs help that only the military can provide at this point. SUSAN WESTON

Clinton