Wishful thinking: hoping for the Trump Katrina
The MSM can hope for a Trump Katrina equivalent, can’t it? It can also try its level best to create one. There have been no shortages of natural disasters this year, after all. Maybe Puerto Rico will be the charm:
Monday evening, Trump began tweeting about Puerto Rico, talking about its poor infrastructure and financial problems from before the hurricane hit. Naturally, Leftists weren’t happy, and the media was again able to attack Trump for his tweets being “not well received.”
Because, apparently, the only thing Trump does is tweet.
Article after article condemned Trump for focusing on the NFL (in tweets) instead of Puerto Rico (in tweets). Leftist after leftist also began claiming the damage in Puerto Rico would be Trump’s “Katrina,” in reference to the hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast during President George W. Bush’s administration…
As it turns out, it was the media ignoring Puerto Rico””not Trump.
PBS’s John Yang spoke to Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello about the help he has received from the states. Rosselo immediately said he was “very grateful for the administration” and that “they have responded quickly.”…
More at the link. And if you want to see a sampling of “Puerto Rico is Trump’s Katrina” articles and/or discussions, go here.
Puerto has been very hard hit indeed by Hurricane Maria. It will take a long time to recover, and they are in need of help. It would be wonderful if these things weren’t politicized by the MSM and those with an interest in doing so, but this has been going on for a long time.
There are a lot of issues not being discussed about rescue missions. But, since Trump and FEMA have gotten good reviews about dealing with hurricanes in Texas and Florida, do people really think that FEMA would drop the ball on another hurricane?
With emergency planning, people, equipment and supplies are staged in an area that is safe for them. In the US, the staging area might be several states away where the actual supply route can be adjusted based on where the storm lands. You don’t send the supplies early since they might be destroyed, stranded or in the wrong area.
Puerto Rico is an island 1,000+ miles away from the US mainland. The storm still has a wide wind and rain path, so sending ships out to sea while the storm is still active does not make sense. Remember the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior during a fall storm. El Faro sank in 2015 during a hurricane as it made its weekly supply trip from Jacksonville FL to San Juan PR.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cargo-ship-likely-sank-during-hurricane-coast-guard-says/2015/10/05/2bab59ae-6b79-11e5-aa5b-f78a98956699_story.html?utm_term=.c18297800424
Check out the videos of the cruise ships that get caught in Atlantic storms. So, the safest place for the ships are in harbor.
The airport was damaged – they had no electricity, air traffic control system was out, the runways were probably filled with debris. I think they still might be under visual flight rules.
The ports were also damaged – I’m sure that the channel markers are gone, the channel might have shifted and needs to be resurveyed and the docks need to be cleared. So a boat loaded with equipment and supplies just can’t sail into the area before the port is operational.
The storm also took out the infrastructure of cell towers, power supplies, roads and so on. So, FEMA has to scramble to get that specific type of supplies in addition to water, food, basic living supplies.
It’s funny that we heard people complaining about FEMA costs to the two red states, saying that the taxpayers shouldn’t pay for someone living in a storm area. But, I bet that the same complainers will want a Caribbean island rebuilt, even though it is more likely to be hit by a tropical storm.
This is not like Katrina in that the NO mayor told people not to evacuate (Nagin the convicted criminal) and the governor (a democrat) did nothing to ready the state to prepare for the hurricane. Somehow it was Chimp Bush Darth Cheney who did nothing because they wanted blacks to die. In fact the FEMA response was more than adequate and timely. In PR the governor at least attempted to prepare the population should Irma hit the island.
PR has a decaying infrastructure that has virtually collapsed due to the rains and winds of Irma. The msm/dnc harpies are best described as ghouls seeking to score political points on the suffering of the PR population. Their narrative shows logistical ignorance. They don’t give the south end of a north bound mule for the actual citizens of PR. Never let a crisis go to waste is their motto.
Wife works in a DoD civilian office. Last week they asked for volunteers to go to PR to help FEMA. A good number of people just from this one office have left. Of course you’ll never hear about such govt effort in the media.
I understand that various state Air National Guard planes are doing a 24 hr continuous air lift of supplies. It is a 4.5 hr flight each way. This does not seem to be reported on in any media. It was done by accident on either CNN or MSNBC.
We have distant family members who live on Culebra, an island to the northwest of the big island of Puerto Rico that was hit harder than the main island by Irma and then whacked again by Maria. You won’t have heard anything about it in the MSM, of course, but the Coast Guard got there with supplies on the 24th.
Check out FEMA’s twitter account. FEMA was in USVI and PR because of impacts of Irma, but they were also prepping for Maria. This tweet indicates that a VA rescue team was already in PR on Sept 17th. The storm started impacting the island on the 19th, hit on the 20th with aftereffects occurring through the 21st.
https://twitter.com/VATF1/status/909544364543741953
General twitter account – https://twitter.com/fema shows what they have been doing since the storm.
What they need is lots of gasoline, diesel and propane. You can supply food and water by airplane, but the real need is for energy to run bulldozers, front-loaders, trucks, and generators. Only with that will real recovery begin. A battalion of Seabees would be a big help, but even they are relatively helpless without adequate supplies of energy. Fix the ports and get the tankers moving.
> This does not seem to be reported on in any media.
The civilian Katrina effort was also not covered by the media. I donated gas money and watched uploaded video of trucks on the road bringing supplies from churches and stores. If the media had wanted, they could have made a narrative of Americans working together to help. Instead, they wanted to “get” Bush.
Puerto Rico (that’s rich!) has been in progressively bad shape for maybe 30 years now. It is effectively bankrupt due to rotten, sometimes financial but always moral corruption. PR bonds are selling for less than 50 cents on the dollar, which indicates a high belief these bonds will not be redeemed at maturity.
PR is the US equivalent of the EU’s Greece. They are both takers, not makers. One does not manufacture tourists; one attracts them. They both run on Other People’s Money.
The hurricane is an excuse, not a reason. It wiped out shitty, badly built infrastructure like transmission lines even though it is at great hurricane risk.
Read this:
http://www.simmins.org/Site2017/wordpress/september-27-aid-update-for-puerto-rico-and-the-virgin-islands/
Not.Katrina.
Puerto Rico after Maria is a lesson in energy economics and what fossil fuel energy means to all modern places. It is fossil fuels that provide electricity, but especially fuels for trucks, front loaders, bulldozers, and personal cars. You cannot distribute water and food without trucks. There are 6,000 plus containers of relief supplies sitting on the docks in San Juan. Only 20% of the island’s truck drivers have been able to get to work. The other 80%? Probably stuck without fuel for their cars, or their roads are blocked by debris (that can only be cleared by a bulldozer), or their cell phone doesn’t work and they don’t know they are needed (there’s no TV). All moving parts of the society are dependent on energy – electricity and liquid fuels for vehicles – the lifeblood of every modern society.
Anytime you hear someone rail against fossil fuels, just ask them how Puerto Rico is going to rebuild using wind and solar power.