I believe that the Puerto Rican Government should be more on top off thing instead of providing unreliable statistics. This could have prevented the amount of deaths on the island. The victims could have gotten help faster, especially the victims who died from diabetes, sepsis, soars, etc. Their government has been so corrupt and disorganized for so many years, they should start to realize that their actions make a difference in the world.
Government had a chance to set the grid with APPA help and rejected it to contract Whitefish Energy. That ended being codfish, the contract was dismissed and between the government storm with the contractors theres people still withouth energy. Government made it almost impossible with their lack of coordination on almost all aspects of this reconstruction. Now Rob Bishop and gang are trying to push Natural Gas instead of renewables on this island full of wind and sun. With this kind of help we are going nowhere... or maybe to the states.
2
“SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) Puerto Rico has conceded that Hurricane Maria killed more than 1,400 people on the island last year and not just the 64 in the official death toll. The government acknowledged the higher death toll with no fanfare in a report submitted to Congress this week in which it detailed a $139 billion reconstruction plan for the island.”
I can vividly remember the Fat Orange Fuk on TV ....just laughing gleefully as he tossed rolls of paper towels into the crowd.....
What An Incredible Chump !
5
Why should the Puerto Rican government tell the truth about the death toll? Why should the Puerto Rican government tell the truth about anything?
2
The governments of Puerto Rico have long been so corrupt and so incompetent that they cannot even count the money the either receive or spend (no kidding, for several years they couldn't even provide an accounting). Any numbers about anything reported by the Puerto Rico governments are thoroughly unreliable and extremely doubtful. Throwing darts blindfolded would yield a more reliable number.
When an administration governs with an optics on satisfying a set of citizens based on color, ethnicity, political affiliations, geography, cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs, but not as Americans as a whole, we will end up with unintended catastrophes. There is a volume of historical examples out there on the consequences and the damage we can expect. Recent vacuous comments on California fires is another one in making. We are supposed to be better than this!
7
Death tolls from a catastrophic storm like Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Katrina depend on what you are talking about. In the case of Maria, a surprisingly small number appear to have died by drowning or battering by the storm itself. A much larger number died from its effects, especially premature deaths of sick and very elderly people because of the destruction of the island-wide electrical grid, water supply, transportation network and medical services. FEMA's performance may or may not have been wanting, but no government, not one with the best of will, not even one headed by Barack Obama, could have prevented most of them.
Wait, they are guessing? They don’t know? Denied.
1
Trump and his minions in congress could care less. Puerto Ricans can't vote in national elections.
4
@Alan Correction: Puerto Ricans can't vote in national elections while living in Puerto Rico. But there are an estimated 5.1 million people of Puerto Rican decent who live on the mainland, Hawaii and Alaska who can. The population of my state is only 3.1 million.
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Not only has been ignored the emergency situation experienced by the island after the passage of Hurricane Maria, but also the great scheme of government corruption by this administration and the past. Despite the emergency, the government awarded millions of dollars in contracts to their friends and still do so. Every Puerto Rican knows that any monetary allocation by Congress goes into the pockets of politicians and not for projects of social impact and improvement of the country. They manipulate statistics, hide information, threaten and destroy evidence. Right now they are closing elementary schools of my city and adding this student population to intermediate schools without capacity to welcome these new students and placing wagons to teach. It is simply absurd and without any logic the decisions of this government.
11
This is so terribly sad.
But at least our President went there for an afternoon and lobbed some paper towels to help. He must be so exhausted from all that throwing. No wonder he plays so much golf to relax while Puerto Rico still deals with the fallout of the hurricane. It's a tough job throwing paper towels for a few minutes.
11
This is a crime against humanity.
Trump is responsible my UN official response is prison for all who lied about this death toll.
7
This article intrigued me. Incredible damage after the earthquake in Puerto Rico caused lots of chaos to break out. Aside from the loss of power and property, many lives were lost, as well. The public was not updated of the accurate estimated deaths. For good reason, citizens were upset and felt in the dark. I found this interesting because after such a serious tragedy, the people going through it were not told the whole story of what was going around them. Yes, now the country has the opportunity to rebuild itself, but only after the loss of lives and the underestimating its extent. In addition, these deaths possibly could have been prevented if citizens knew how serious living conditions were for some. However, since they were not told more people died then they thought. The tragedy in Puerto Rico was beyond unfortunate.
@Sommerlyn Jones
Hurricane, not earthquake. And much of the rest of their economic worries can be traced back to more US profiteering and greed. Ignorance is not bliss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt-mpuR_QHQ
2
I blame Trump for not getting Congress to approve the funds immediately to Puerto Rico when they needed them. This might have saved a lot more lives
11
Not only did Trump throw paper towels at the Puerto Ricans, he then complained that they wanted the government to do everything for them (while promising all kinds of help to Texas). The utter contempt and sadism of this man beggars description.
15
Puerto Ricans are our brothers and sisters and fellow Americans.
The destruction from Hurricane Maria was so extreme that
the island warrants all of the financial assistance required to rebuild and modernize the electrical grid, its hospitals and schools and basic infrastructure.
Do your job, Congress, and provide the funds and support our fellow countrymen deserve.
38
How many of the victims died after Trump have himself an A+ for handling the disaster?
18
Responsibility for this massive failure lies squarely with the White House and Trump. Questions must follow about both the military and FEMA incompetence. Is their senior leadership so weak or corrupt that none dare speak out about this failure? If so, the future looks bleak for this republic.
26
It lies squarely on the people who squandered all the money we gave them all these years. Namely, PR politicians
1
@NYC Dweller Really? I mean is there someone the PR politicians could have given that money to which would have prevented the hurricane from making landfall in PR?
@NYC Dweller
For some facts, try this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt-mpuR_QHQ
It's an object lesson about the perils of deregulation. Profiteers were happy to take advantage.
The White House should be very proud of the job well done. Ignoring US citizens plea for help.
15
The official death toll, by the Trump administration, will always be far less than the actual numbers. In their minds, the lives of people in Puerto Rico count for far less than those that live say in Kansas or Nebraska. Imagine it was left to the Nazis to tally the dead in the concentration camps. The official tally would have been 6 instead of 6+ million. And of course, somebody like Alex Jones might even say that the Hurricane never happened. And the indignity that we have put in the White House will nod his head in violent agreement.
18
Good job Trump. Hope all you Trump backers are proud. These deaths are in him. He and he alone is responsible
14
Elect an idiot, get idiotic responses to everything. Who knew?
He will not learn, he will not study, he will not read his daily intelligence briefings unless it shows 'great ratings' for him. He will only parrot this morning's Fox News talking points because his entire frame of reference is based on some pathetic reality TV show..
He spends 'Executive Time' watching television. Some leader.
Register people to vote. There is a Federal Voter Registration form you can download and use in all 50 states and US Territories- https://vote.gov/files/federal-voter-registration_1-25-16_english.pdf. Print out a bunch and keep them with you. Register people on the spot!
If you need to help people overcome the GOP-led voter-run-around campaign help them do that. This site, https://www.aauw.org/resource/organize-a-voter-registration-drive/, has a how-to on organizing a voter registration drive. Or even sitting outside Wal Mart with a folding chair and a card table. Yes, that's the American Association of University Women.
And while we're here organize a League of Women Voters chapter in your community if you don't already have one. Fair, honest and above board. Democracy functions better with them involved.
Civics, civility and civilization all share the same roots.
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And donate to voter registration groups that will increase voter turnout and the chances of a massive blue wave on November 6 2018 to elect adult leadership.
https://ww2.aauw.org/donate-gift/
https://www.voterparticipation.org/support-our-work/donate-to-vpc/
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@Patrick Conley
Thanks for the info & forms! LET'S GET STARTED!! NOW!!! One by one we will be the majority: popular vote AND the Electoral College (which should be abolished-not relevant any more!)
9
I am curious what the 'official' death counts of other natural disasters would be if we included every person who died after experiencing the event- no matter how far removed.
This number counts people who committed suicide? People who died from health problems after the event?
This is a made-up number. Again- how does this number stack up against other natural disasters when we decide to inflate the numbers as much as possible?
6
The number is based on a comparison of the same time period the year before, without Hurricane Maria.
When care doesn't come to people after a disaster, the disaster is still at fault, hen suicides and other related deaths. If the hurricane hadn't come, they'd likely be alive.
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@WillT26
DJT tossed our fellow citizens (yes they're brown) PAPER TOWELS!!! as his offer of help & compassion! He and his minions have NO shame or conscience!
7
@WillT26
There is no answer to the question you pose, Will, because the definition of "death toll" being applied to Maria has never been used before.
1
Trump's war on people of color has fatal results. Vote out GOP to save lives. Ray Sipe
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During the aftermath of Maria, Gov Rosiello had to be a true politician, or as in the case of PR and Trump, a subservient diplomat, acknowledging the fact that Trump does not even believe Puerto Ricans to be true Americans, and that he needed his help.
He did it well, dancing on a thin line of praise for the administration, while also pointing out slow and inadequate assistance deficiencies in ways that were always excusatory.
While it looks like it may have paid off a bit in the longer run, with the proposed reconstruction monies from congress, it is time to recognize and honor those who died in this horrific catastrophe, by at least acknowledging their deaths.
Trump wont like it. Bets are that he'll tweet something about it and it wont be nice.
19
This "exact" count is probably still too small. Given the lack of basic services, transport, clean water, health care, and the chaos of migration, I doubt it is complete. Imagine a family member needing meds or hospital care ...
"The authors of the Harvard study are well aware of its limitations, which is why they didn’t include the 4,645 figure in the headline of their press release, and also why they made sure that the range of estimates was front and center in all communication ... But the true number? That’s not something that could come from the Harvard research ... The house-to-house survey only allows for a broad range of estimated deaths. It does suggest that deaths remained high for months after the storm, after the time period covered by previous media outlets and researchers. But perhaps the most important contribution of this study is the information surveyors gathered on how difficult it was to access basic health care services after the storm and how consequential that lack of access may have been."
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/media-reports-about-the-death-toll-...
"About a third of the deaths documented by the survey were caused by an interruption of medical services. And in addition to those who died, many more people faced trouble getting care. Fifteen percent of households in the survey said they had trouble getting medicine, and around 10 percent had trouble using breathing equipment."
23
The bottom line is that these are Americans that have been forgotten by this republican administration and President - even worse than in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.
Furthermore, the ''forgetting'' is all in an effort to squeeze the island and its residents to give up and/or leave, so that the money lads and conglomerates can swoop in and buy all for pennies on the dollar.
It is disgraceful and more need to speak up. - especially the press that has largely forgotten them, and have lurched on to the next shiny thing/tweet from this President.
34
Thank you for the paper towel clean-up of Hurricane Maria, Trump Administration.
Heckuva' job, GOP.
Don't forget to tell the "Drop dead, America" party to drop dead on November 6 2018.
45
Brown people in Puerto Rico with no vote get no attention even though the people of Puerto Rico are American citizens. Shame on Trump and shame on the media for not bringing more attention to Trump’s Katrina and calling him out for the avoidable deaths of more than 1,400 people.
20
For this tragedy alone Trump should be impeached.
17
Thanks to Dangerous Donald’s deliberate neglect, over 1,400 Puerto Ricans died due to the hurricane. Most of these deaths could have been avoided had Trump shown some leadership in getting the island up and running quickly. Instead, Puerto Rico remains largely uninhabitable. While the media has provided some coverage of this tragedy, not nearly enough attention has been paid to Trump’s Katrina. I guess brown people who don’t have a vote even though PR is a US territory can be ignored with no consequences. Shame on Trump and the media.
15
The Trump administration has constantly inundated us with information in an effort to cover-up their incompetence in assisting the people of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of devastating hurricanes.
There should be a Congressional investigation into the complete mismanagement of their response, and those responsible must be held accountable so that it doesn't happen again.
42
Trump will quickly LOWER the official death toll to 25. That's how he "doubles down."
5
Don’t rebuild. Move to the lower 48. It’s your best option and cheaper for the rest of us.
4
Many of the homes here in NYC that were destroyed by Sandy were rebuilt using tax payers dollars. Same in Houston and elsewhere. Why would you deny PR the same? On another note, if you have to move out of PR please populate red voting districts and vote the haters out.
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@Shamrock
“...move to the lower 48,” and vote!
1
@Loner from a former puerto rican, they don't go lower state beside florida. Puerto Rican go to New York and the likes.
1
Trump tweet on Puerto Rico:
“
We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico. Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates,...
“
He said tragedy numbers could have been much higher. They were. He lied.
We need an investigation into whether the Trump administration put pressure on accurate reporting of deaths in Puerto Rico and on how bad th ground situation was. Why was there such a huge discrepancy?
This is a major scandal and is a direct manifestation of the Trump administration’s strategy of trying to distract from the truth by shouting “fake news” at any reporting that presents the reality in a way that’s unfavorable to them.
Team Trump wants you to believe their version of the reality. Not what actually exists.
This is worse than “heckuva job, Brownie”...
35
"Official" death toll?
"0fficial" always translates to "lies."
8
Move to the continental United States. Your children and grandchildren will thank you.
4
@Shamrock
PR would be fine is the US did not treat it like a colony. Sucking the island dry of their resources and imposing whatever mono-industry the US sees fitting, while making sure that PR is dependent on everything being imported from the mainland. This is shameful. The US created this, it's this country's modus operandi.
1