Comments on: Wishful thinking: hoping for the Trump Katrina

By: J.J.

J.J. — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 02:42:55 +0000

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.

By: Fausta

Fausta — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 16:41:06 +0000

Read this:
http://www.simmins.org/Site2017/wordpress/september-27-aid-update-for-puerto-rico-and-the-virgin-islands/

Not.Katrina.

By: Frog

Frog — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 02:08:20 +0000

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.

By: chuck

chuck — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:26:41 +0000

> 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.

By: J.J.

J.J. — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:13:28 +0000

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.

By: Liz

Liz — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 23:32:12 +0000

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.

By: Mrs Whatsit

Mrs Whatsit — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 23:31:46 +0000

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.

By: lynndh

lynndh — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 22:34:49 +0000

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.

By: physicsguy

physicsguy — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 21:37:50 +0000

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.

By: parker

parker — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 21:33:21 +0000

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.