That’s somewhat insulting to those who are directly involved in this operation and are emotionally invested in helping the people there.
Do you feel that the residents of PR were adequately prepared, on the whole?
If you were in one of these situations yourself, would you have relied solely on the government to come in and save you? Or would you have taken extra precautions to sustain yourself for a few weeks?
Would you have expected roads to be cleared, power restored, water systems operational, and hospitals fully up and running in less than two weeks?
I’m simply curious.
We are allowed to look at a botched disaster response resulting in tens of deaths at least, plus hundreds of thousands of people in dire straits, and say it’s a botched disaster response. Yeah, disaster response is hard. So what? Lots of things are hard. That doesn’t excuse poor planning and inadequate resource allocation.
If we can’t help 3 million people on an island that’s smaller than Connecticut, I fear for what happens when there is true, widespread devastation on the mainland.
It’s not insulting to those involved. Those involved might be working their butts off. Just is too little too late. I bet those on the ground and witnessing first hand what they are faced with would actually welcome additional resources to help them. Don’t turn this into a “not respecting first responders” thing like some in leadership are spinning. That’s not the complaint or the issue. Neither should you blame the victims and residents of Puerto Rico. Now, that could be construed as insulting.
At the very least, the administration should have learned from Katrina and Bush and better managed the optics and language surrounding this catastrophe.
Here’s a video showing hurricane categories and what happens in the different categories. Look at Cat 4 and Cat 5. Pretty bad, huh? OK, we knew that was going to happen to the entire island of Puerto Rico. We knew roofs would be torn off, and they were. We knew utility polls would topple, and they did. We knew trees would be down, and they are. We knew there would be huge flooding, and there was. What part of this was a surprise?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqfExHpvLRY
Yes, we in HI are terrified about what will happen when we have another huge catastrophic natural disaster. The other year, we had many hurricanes in a row and were just very fortunate that our state only received glancing blows.
Our local, state and fed govt did not at all much to prepare. Folks just bought lots of water, filled up with gas, bought generators and canned food and prayed. What more can islands do?
I hope that if Hawaii were in the crosshairs of a huge hurricane, the federal government would do all it could to pre-position aid. That did not happen in the case of Puerto Rico.
You could fill your house to the rafters. If the roof blows off and the house fills with water and most of your stuff is swept away by wind and water, you still have jack. Then again, many of these people are too poor to fill their houses to the rafters with anything.
The standard advice for people for hurricanes in Puerto Rico was to have five days of food and five days of water. The hurricane was almost two weeks ago.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-puerto-rico-power-20170925-story.html
The government owned power company was bankrupt before the hurricane. There were downed power lines, poor maintenance and power outages before the hurricane.
Did you honestly expect their infrastructure issues to be resolved in 5 days? I mean really…
Puerto Rico is a bigger island than I think most people realize. Roughly 110 miles long and 40 miles wide… That’s a lot of roads, power lines, cell phone towers, and public water systems to repair.
Let me open by saying that the people of Puerto Rico-- and St. Thomas and Barbuda and all the other people effected by this summer’s hurricanes, are in my thoughts and prayers. The kids in my Catholic high school are getting used to me including them in our Special Intentions as we say our prayer to begin class.
And that I’m not going to make this political…
I admit that I may come off as naive; I can live with that.
But it seems to me that if you live on an island that’s in the traditional path of a hurricane, then it should be standard practice to have supplies underground. It seems logical to me that both individual families and governments would do this as a matter of course-- make sure there are supplies well marked and buried, so that even if your house or a good part of your city is blown away, you have access to the bare necessities. It’s the same mindset that has me unable to really understand how so many homes and schools in Tornado Alley don’t seem to have tornado shelters.
If the odds are fair to decent that at some point you’ll be in harm’s way, I simply don’t understand why steps aren’t taken in advance of that season to ensure that you, your family, your city will be OK. As an adult, it’s my job to do what’s within my power to ensure the safety of my loved ones. Likewise, it’s the job of government-- local, city, federal, take your pick-- to make do what’s within their power to ensure that supplies won’t be blown away by a hurricane. I think we can work with the understanding that a major hurricane will knock out power and water, and will knock down trees and homes. Likewise, ports will close after a major storm, and gas stations won’t have the power to pump gas, even if they still have some gasoline in the first place.
Obviously there must be a huge flaw in my reasoning-- minds far smarter than mine haven’t already done something along these lines, so there’s got to be a flaw. Perhaps it’s the water table, I don 't know.
But Galveston built a sea wall after the 1900 hurricane, because they realized they needed to be proactive. New Orleans built levees-- and came to realize after Katrina that those levees need to be monitored and kept up. It seems to me that, if you’re likely to be in harm’s way, you prepare ahead of time for the inevitable, the unthinkable.
Most people in PR can’t afford to have extra stock laying around. They live in poverty. Half of the population lives in poverty.
And how are you going to get to the underground supplies if, y’know, literally everything is flooded? Keep it in the attic? Not useful once you no longer have a roof.
And what about people who rely on medicine that needs to be refrigerated? IF you can afford a generator, it has run out. The hospitals are no help either.
The median household income in Puerto Rico was less than $20K. Doesn’t seem like most Puerto Ricans had extra money left over to build bunkers, however useful the bunkers would have been.
If we decide citizens should be responsible for taking care of themselves and their families in event of national disasters, I guess we won’t have to feel guilty when they die.
My family lived on less than 20k when I was in high school. We had to beg and borrow from friends and family who were well-off (not a possibility for most people in poverty) just to eat and get school supplies.
I don’t think most people really understand what it’s like to live in poverty. I’ve been there and even I can’t imagine what it’s like living in poverty in a place where things cost double what they do on the mainland.
If the individuals are unable to provide, then it falls to government. But someone…lots of someone’s…should have prepared for this. This should never have been allowed to happen.
Sure, there should have been a way to react more quickly. But I also can’t help believing that more could have been done ahead of time to,prepare— by someone.
Hmmm. The only two of the many major disasters we’ve had in this country in recent years where the victims were blamed for their own predicament were Katrina and now, PR. Wonder what they have in common. Think…think…¯_(ツ)_/¯
Amazingly, the fact that Houston apparently allowed people to buy houses in a reservoir didn’t compel anyone tos say that it was OK to ignore the people who lived in them when their houses were flooded. I never saw anyone saying, “Why didn’t those folks have boats, and trapdoors in their roofs? Why didn’t they prepare?”