Trump defends hurricane aid as island struggles
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Trump administration declared Thursday that its relief efforts in Puerto Rico are succeeding, but people on the island said help was scarce and disorganized while food supplies dwindled in some remote towns eight days after Hurricane Maria devastated the U.S. territory of 3.4 million people.
President Trump cleared the way for more supplies to head to Puerto Rico by issuing a 10-day waiver of federal restrictions on foreign ships delivering cargo to the island. And House Speaker Paul Ryan said the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account would get a $6.7 billion boost by the end of the week.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke declared that “the relief effort is under control.”
“It is really a good news story, in terms of our ability to reach people,” she told reporters in the White House driveway.
Outside the capital, San Juan, people said that is far from the truth.
“I have not received any help, and we ran out of food yesterday,” said Mari Olivo, a 27-yearold homemaker whose husband was pushing a shopping cart with empty plastic gallon jugs while their two children, 9 and 7, each toted a large bucket. They stood in line in a parking lot in Bayamon, near the hardhit northern coast, where police used hoses to fill containers from a city water truck.
In the town of San Lorenzo, about 40 miles west of the capital, people walked through calf-high water to get supplies because the bridge over the Manati River outside town was washed away in the storm.
FEMA, which is leading the relief effort, has sent 150 containers filled with relief supplies to the port of San Juan since the hurricane struck on Sept. 20, said Omar Negron, director of Puerto Rico’s Ports Authority. He said all the containers were dispatched to people in need but private aid supplies have not reached Puerto Rico.
“The federal response has been a disaster,” said lawmaker Jose Enrique Melendez, a member of Gov. Ricardo Rossello’s New Progressive Party. “It’s been really slow.”
He said the Trump administration had focused more on making a good impression on members of the media gathered at San Juan’s convention center than bringing aid to rural areas.
Trump and his advisers defended the administration’s response to the hurricane, which destroyed much of the island’s infrastructure and left many residents desperate for fresh water, power, food and other supplies.
“The electric power grid in Puerto Rico is totally shot. Large numbers of generators are now on Island. Food and water on site,” Trump tweeted early in the day.
The U.S. military was sending a three-star general to Puerto Rico to help direct the hurricane response. Lt. Gen. Jeff Buchanan, commander of U.S. Army North, was set to arrive Thursday to assess the situation, Northern Command spokesman John Cornelio said.