Bloomberg wades into center of islands’ hurricane recovery
Billionaire’s embedded aid team applies experience from Superstorm Sandy
WASHINGTON – Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire known for his activism on climate change and gun safety, said he had no grand scheme to become involved in hurricane recovery in the Caribbean.
But what started off as an effort to provide quick emergency assistance in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where his Bloomberg L.P. co-founder Tom Secunda has a home, has turned into new kind of project for Bloomberg and his key aides, putting them at ground zero of efforts to rebuild the tiny U.S. territory.
And there's a chance it could grow into a Bloomberg specialty as coastal communities and islands like these cope with extreme weather.
A team of five Bloomberg aides, many with Hurricane Sandy experience, have embedded themselves with Virgin Is-
“St. John, St. Thomas and St. Croix were not on my radar . ... But you go where the need is and where you think you can do something.”
Michael Bloomberg
lands Gov. Kenneth Mapp and other key local officials, providing guidance on everything from electricity restoration to negotiating additional money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for housing assistance.
“St. John, St. Thomas and St. Croix were not on my radar until Tom called,” Bloomberg said, referring to his business partner who has property on St. John, the smallest of the three main Virgin Islands. “But you go where the need is and where you think you can do something.”
The territory of about 105,000 residents is reeling from the worst hurricane season in modern history. Two Category 5 storms — Hurricanes Irma and Maria — walloped the islands in September. Irma struck first, pummeling St. Thomas and St. John.
A Bloomberg team that included Secunda and three former FEMA officials who now work as contractors in disaster assistance arrived by private plane two days after Irma. Then, later that month, the territory took another blow when Hurricane Maria strafed St. Croix, the largest of the Virgin Islands before taking aim at Puerto Rico and its 3.4 million residents.
As Bloomberg and his aides learned firsthand in Hurricane Sandy in 2012, FEMA can unleash vast federal resources to help governments and people recover from a storm, but local officials drive the restoration — structuring contracts, hiring workers and deciding how to rebuild the power grid, for example. That’s where Bloomberg team stepped in, helping link island authorities with hurricane-experienced consultants.
Although power has been restored to only about one-third of the islands’ residents, FEMA, local officials, and the Bloomberg team point to signs of progress. Among them: the hundreds of utility line workers from the U.S. mainland who have arrived in a scramble to restore 90% of power by year’s end.
Bloomberg said his team probably will start pulling back from the Virgin Islands once power is restored.
Does he foresee providing a similar helping hand to Puerto Rico? More than half the island still lacks power.
“Nobody has asked us to go in,” Bloomberg said. “If they did, I would think about it. I’d want to understand what they wanted us to do and whether I thought they would really listen to us.”