Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands Hurricane Recovery

[RTH10260]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/hou ... d_nn_tw_ma

House Speaker Paul Ryan is heading to Puerto Rico at week’s end, a day after the House is expected to consider a disaster relief spending package and as the death toll has risen.

His visit will take place more than three weeks after Hurricane Maria left millions on the island without electricity and water and with many still unreached by disaster supplies or without sustained supplies.

On Tuesday, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló raised the death toll to 43.

Will he take that helicopter ride round the island that potus skipped ?

[Volkonski]

Hey Trump! Tell us again about the great job you are doing in Puerto Rico.

Hospitals are running low on medicine and high on patients, as they take in the infirm from medical centers where generators failed. A hospital in Humacao had to evacuate 29 patients last Wednesday — including seven in the intensive care unit and a few on the operating table — to an American military medical ship off the coast of Puerto Rico when a generator broke down.

There are urgent attempts to help. The federal government has sent 10 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams of civilian doctors, nurses, paramedics and others to the island. Four mobile hospitals have been set up in hospital parking lots, and the Comfort, a medical treatment ship, is on the scene. A 44-bed hospital will soon open in badly wrecked Humacao, in the southeast.

But even as the Army Corps of Engineers is installing dozens of generators at medical facilities, and utility crews work to restore power to 36 hospitals, medical workers and patients say that an intense medical crisis persists and that communications and electrical difficulties have obscured the true number of fatalities directly related to the hurricane. The official count rose on Tuesday to 43.

[Kendra]

White House correspondent Jenna Johnson dissects the holes in President Trump's Puerto Rico relief video.

More here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 6a7e8a2c01

[Volkonski]

Death toll now up to 45.

[Addie]

Vox

Everything that's been reported about deaths in Puerto Rico is at odds with the official count ...

At Vox, we decided to compare what the government has been saying with other reports of deaths from the ground. We searched Google News for reports of deaths in English and Spanish media from Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria. We found reports of a total of 81 deaths linked directly or indirectly to the hurricane. Of those, 45 were the deaths certified by the government. The remaining 36 deaths were confirmed by local public officials or funeral directors, according to the reports. We also found another 450 reported deaths, most of causes still unknown, and reports of at least 69 people still missing.

The broader issue here relates to how storm deaths are counted. There are clear deaths from the storm, clear deaths indirectly from the storm, and then deaths that are harder to determine — for instance, a sick patient who died in a hospital experiencing frequent power outages. And then there’s the issue of how effective authorities are at finding and investigating the deaths to make sure they’re included in the count. The breakdown of these categories suggests that the government is being much more cautious in designating deaths as directly or indirectly hurricane-related, given the public information available.

At a Sunday news conference, Karixia Ortiz, press officer for the Department of Public Safety, said that “every death must be confirmed by the Institute of Forensic Science, which means either the bodies have to be brought to San Juan to do an autopsy or a medical examiner must be dispatched to the local municipality to verify the death,” according to an audio recording obtained by Huffington Post.

John Mutter, a disaster researcher at Columbia University who studied the death toll in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, says he’s skeptical of this methodology. “This is the way to go about it if you want to come up with smallest number possible,” he said, adding he suspects the death toll in Puerto Rico from Maria should already be in the hundreds based on what’s known about the conditions on the ground.

[Volkonski]

The Trump Administration Is Still Playing Defense on Hurricane Maria

http://time.com/4978461/puerto-rico-hur ... picks=true

Despite the Administration's defenses, Puerto Rico remains in trouble. Authorities now put the death toll at 45, with more than 110 people still unaccounted for. Only 16 percent of the island territory's residents have electricity. Hospitals are running low on medicine, and a shortage of safe drinking water remains a concern.

After widely praised responses to hurricanes Harvey and Irma in Texas and Florida, respectively, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has faced questions over the preparations for and pace of the response to Hurricane Maria. But Brock Long, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, argued that his agency’s role was improperly understood.

“FEMA is not a first responder,” he told reporters in the conference room of the National Response Coordination Center, where he leads daily coordination meetings on emergency response. “We’re not designed to be a first responder.”

Excuses, excuses.

[Maybenaut]

The Trump Administration Is Still Playing Defense on Hurricane Maria

http://time.com/4978461/puerto-rico-hur ... picks=true

Despite the Administration's defenses, Puerto Rico remains in trouble. Authorities now put the death toll at 45, with more than 110 people still unaccounted for. Only 16 percent of the island territory's residents have electricity. Hospitals are running low on medicine, and a shortage of safe drinking water remains a concern.

After widely praised responses to hurricanes Harvey and Irma in Texas and Florida, respectively, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has faced questions over the preparations for and pace of the response to Hurricane Maria. But Brock Long, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, argued that his agency’s role was improperly understood.

“FEMA is not a first responder,” he told reporters in the conference room of the National Response Coordination Center, where he leads daily coordination meetings on emergency response. “We’re not designed to be a first responder.”

Excuses, excuses.

I really have to stop reading this thread.

[Orlylicious]

The brilliance of this took away a minute of feeling so sad for Puerto Rico. West Side Story was first produced (ready?) in 1957.

West Side Story-America
10,863,934 views
bravenewworld711 Published on Feb 19, 2007
Bernardo (George Chakiris) and Anita (Rita Moreno) are hot, hot, hot! Everyone in this film is excellent, but these two really stand out. No wonder they both got Oscars for the role.

Look how fabulous Rita still looks, what an inspiration! She was with Lin Manuel for the fundraiser remake of "Maria," here they are and she talks about the dancing in "America"



People Chica caught up with Rita Moreno before she headed into the studio with Miranda, and she gave us a sneak peek of what’s to come. “I’m flying to Los Angeles because Lin-Manuel Miranda has written a song to the tune of “Maria” from West Side Story,” she said. “But he’s written new lyrics that mention every single town and city in Puerto Rico.”
http://people.com/chica/lin-manuel-mira ... ory-maria/

Here's the new "Maria" track:

Atlantic Records
Published on Oct 6, 2017
Download and stream here: https://atlantic.lnk.to/almostlikepraying

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Almost Like Praying” was written and recorded to benefit hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico with proceeds benefiting The Hispanic Federation's Unidos Disaster Relief Fund

Proceeds go to https://hispanicfederation.org/unidos/

[MsDaisy]

Trump: We can't keep FEMA, military in Puerto Rico forever

President Donald Trump warned Thursday that there is a limit to how much federal aid he is willing to expend on Puerto Rico and that “we cannot keep” federal response workers on the island “forever.”

"’Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their making,’ says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of accountability say the Governor. Electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes,” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday morning in a series of posts. “Congress to decide how much to spend. We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”

Attkisson hosts a weekly newsmagazine show for conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcasting.

Puerto Rico has struggled in recent weeks with the devastation from a particularly heavy hurricane season, one that included a direct hit from Hurricane Maria late last month that left much of the island destroyed. The official death toll from the storm has risen to 45, CNN reported Wednesday, and at least 113 people are unaccounted for.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/1 ... 5?lo=ap_b1

[AndyinPA]

That is truly disgusting. There are no limits to how low he will go.

I knew this was going to be bad when he was elected; I just had no idea it could be this bad.

[pipistrelle]

That is truly disgusting. There are no limits to how low he will go.

I knew this was going to be bad when he was elected; I just had no idea it could be this bad.

I did have an idea. What I don't know is where the American people's breaking point is. That we haven't reached it yet is terrifying. I don't mean action, but at least universal condemnation. I mean, even Billy Kristol is tweeting against him and Pence.

[Kendra]

That is truly disgusting. There are no limits to how low he will go.

I knew this was going to be bad when he was elected; I just had no idea it could be this bad.

[RoadScholar]

But we can keep forces in Afghanistan forever, right?

What horrid people.

[Volkonski]

But we can keep forces in Afghanistan forever, right?

What horrid people.

[Fortinbras]

It's only been about three weeks since the hurricane, not all the bodies have yet been located and dug out, and Trump is already saying we've been there "forever". A new measure of excessive time. And it feels like the wrong people have been in office in Washington forever.

[neeneko]

But we can keep forces in Afghanistan forever, right?

What horrid people.

I thought leaving our military in places forever was kinda our thing. Seriously, we are even still holding onto PR itself.

[Turtle]

[Volkonski]

Puerto Rico: US officials privately acknowledge serious food shortage

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... cane-maria

Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) say that the government and its partners are only providing 200,000 meals a day to meet the needs of more than 2 million people. That is a daily shortfall of between 1.8m and 5.8m meals.

“We are 1.8 million meals short,” said one senior Fema official. “That is why we need the urgency. And it’s not going away. We’re doing this much today, but it has to be sustained over several months.”

The scale of the food crisis dwarfs the more widely publicized challenges of restoring power and communications. More than a third of Puerto Ricans are still struggling to live without drinking water.

However, Fema provides no details on food deliveries, keeping its public statements to the most general terms. On its website, Fema says it has provided “millions of meals and millions of liters of water”.

This is a disgrace.

[Turtle]

Rachel Maddow on her show last night said people are starting to die from waterborne illness.

[Dan1100]

Rachel Maddow on her show last night said people are starting to die from waterborne illness.

I just heard a story on CBS News Now about a man who died of leptospirosis.

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edit: Here is the story.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/puerto-ric ... ted-water/

Four people there have died from the bacterial disease known as leptospirosis, which is spread through contaminated water.

Jorge Rivera, who died of the illness Friday, was initially diagnosed with dengue and sent home, according to his daughter Johanna. Her older sister Evelyn says the last thing she told her father is "I love you."

Leptospirosis is easily treatable with antibiotics.

Lepto is spread by contact with water contaminated by animal (or people) urine or direct contact with urine. You have to get it on an open cut or mucus membrane to catch it. People who work with pigs get it.

[Volkonski]

[Volkonski]

I am sure that those Republicans who voted "No" did so because they thought that the amount of relief should have been higher.

[Volkonski]

[Dan1100]

The incubation period for leptospirosis is 7-12 days per wikipedia. IIRC, it was 10 days when I had it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptospirosis So more than likely more people are going to get sick in the next week or 2. Hopefully now that they know what it is, they will give them the right antibiotics right away and there won't be anymore fatalities.

[stoppingby]

That is truly disgusting. There are no limits to how low he will go.

I knew this was going to be bad when he was elected; I just had no idea it could be this bad.

I did have an idea. What I don't know is where the American people's breaking point is. That we haven't reached it yet is terrifying. I don't mean action, but at least universal condemnation. I mean, even Billy Kristol is tweeting against him and Pence.

THIS! I knew Trump was a racist ball of narcissistic slime, but the fact that our country is not universally outraged is what I find devastating. I've been trying to convince myself that Trump got elected because of a perfect storm of circumstances, and that he did not represent our country. But I'm starting to have some doubts.