While our idiot in chief President Donald Trump picks fights with football players over kneeling at NFL games, millions of citizens in American territories continue to suffer the effects of the devastation from hurricanes Irma and Maria. And the feeble federal response to their cries for help could cost lives. A news dispatch described Puerto Rico after the storms like this:
“Its force and fury stripped every tree of not just the leaves, but also the bark, leaving a rich agricultural region looking like the result of a post-apocalyptic drought.”
Maria in particular has ravaged the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico more than any other storm in nearly a century, and now more than 3 million Americans are living without electricity or adequate sources of food and clean water. The storm tore apart the island so badly that its agricultural capacity has been destroyed, and with cell towers out the local government has no way of communicating with residents in dire need of emergency help. So what has the federal government done to help?
Not nearly enough.
A very small FEMA contingency was deployed to the islands, but it took them many days to even get in contact with the hardest hit communities. Disaster experts say that this echoes the failed FEMA response to Katrina under the Bush administration, and that is the worst possible condemnation I can think of. Emergency supplies are running out already, and with President Snowflake more interested in antagonizing Kim Jong Un and other useless ventures these American citizens are being put at serious risk.
What most people don’t realize is that the situation in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands is so vastly different from the situations in Houston and Florida. As part of much larger economies and directly connected to the rest of the contiguous United States, the amount of private and government aid is so much more easily accessible. These people are stranded. There are 3.4 million citizens in Puerto Rico, and they can’t just drive north and hunker down in Dallas or Atlanta until the rebuilding can begin.
There’s just nothing to rebuild with right now.
Learn more about the devastation here:
Feature image via YouTube screengrab
