It’s been just over a year since Hurricane Irma hit, and the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria follows closely behind. While these storms impacted the mainland of the United States, no one suffered the way Puerto Rico did.
I remember this time last year very vividly when pictures of the destruction in Puerto Rico came out. It was truly devastating to see everything just gone, and the people of Puerto Rico left without anything.
The way the Trump administration handled this disaster was less than acceptable, and the people of Puerto Rico suffered for much longer than they should have. Supplies as basic as food, water and medical goods took too long to arrive, and this increased the death toll beyond initial counts.
The White House did not take proper preparations before the storm, and even afterward, they were extremely slow to act. It took weeks before the Federal Emergency Management Agency committed its full resources to the island.
Additionally, FEMA contracted an Atlanta-based caterer who had never dealt with emergency services. She was assigned the task of providing 30 million meals and was only able to get 50,000 out before FEMA terminated the contract.
The lack of action from our government is astounding, particularly because Puerto Rico is not just an island nearby — they are our responsibility as an American territory. Therefore, the full capability and financial power of the American government should have been put into the recovery of Puerto Rico.
Of course, when Trump was dealing with repairing Puerto Rico, he often declared how amazing of a job he was doing and how few deaths were occuring because of him and his efforts. This, of course, was a complete lie, much like the one he told this past week.
Recently, the governor of Puerto Rico formally raised the death toll to almost 3,000 people due to a study conducted by researchers at the George Washington University. CNN has also published that their reporting “reflects similar numbers.”
To put that into perspective, 2,977 people were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Puerto Rico suffered a similar death toll to that of the most devastating terrorist attack to ever occur on American soil, and yet Trump is still denying it and talking about himself.
Trump claims that these numbers were made up by Democrats to make him look bad, as if the fact that Puerto Rico did not have power for months and months wouldn’t make him look bad.
Trump made poor excuses and senseless decisions following this natural disaster, yet he refuses to acknowledge the results of our complacency as a government. The death toll is another consequence of our government’s lack of action, and it is a real fact that was not made up to make him look bad.
Fortunately, many politicians, including Republicans, have denounced Trump’s statements. Even Paul Ryan said, “Casualties don’t make a person look bad, so I have no reason to dispute these numbers.”
Perhaps the best reaction to Trump’s continuous incompetency came from the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, who said, “You should never be content with everything we did. I’m not content with everything I did, I should have done more. We should all have done more.”
Maybe if we had someone like Cruz running this country, 3,000 people would not have perished. Instead, we must suffer through Trump’s false claims to hide his inadequacy and lack of capability in any emergency.
