More than six weeks after Hurricane Maria plowed through Puerto Rico killing and destroying, the situation for most of the 3.4 million Americans living there remains grim. And that’s understating it.
As Denise Oliver-Velez and Pakalolo have written here and here, thanks in great part to the Trump regime’s failure to respond effectively, that situation includes a lack of basic human necessities like safe drinking water, the spread of diseases like scabies and conjunctivitis, stench-saturated piles of debris that are breeding grounds for rats, roaches, mosquitos, and that include human feces and decomposing animal corpses, contact with which can spread worse diseases such as plague, dengue, chikungunya and Zika. And most Puerto Ricans still don’t have electricity.
How many have had their power restored? CNN reporters tried to find out. They couldn’t.
The island’s leaders say that 40 percent of power has been restored. But there is a difference between getting power stations back on line and actually delivering electricity to residents and businesses. The government and the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority don’t know what that number is. But one union leader at PREPA, Evans Castro Aponte, told CNN that, based on what he’s been hearing, he estimates just 5 percent of customers have electricity.
That may be an exaggeration. But even if it’s 50 percent, it’s appalling.
CNN reporters phoned officials at all 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico. They got through to fewer than half of them:
Of the 36 towns we did reach, 10 said they had 0% power restoration. Others estimated 1, 2, 10, perhaps 20% of homes, businesses and amenities had electricity. Just four regions reported that they were more than half back on line—Ponce and Guayanilla with 60% of residents with power; San Germán, where 75% of buildings have electricity; and Culebra—an island off Puerto Rico that's home to just fewer than 2,000 people, where the mayor said 90% had power.
Humacao, an area where almost 54,000 live, has no power. Las Piedras, home to nearly 40,000, has no power. The same story for Loiza, where 30,000 live. And the list goes on and on, six weeks after the blackout.
This situation has been worsened by the Whitefish mess in which a tiny Montana company with family ties to Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke—but without a single line-person on staff—signed a $300 million no-bid contract to repair or rebuild Puerto Rico’s power lines. The FBI and three congressional committees are scrutinizing the circumstances of that contract, which was canceled Oct. 26. It has since become public that a second company, Oklahoma-based Mammoth Energy Services’ Cobra Acquisitions, got a $200 million contract that includes language that prohibits government oversight of its implementation.
Scandalous as these matters may be, however the investigation into contracting practices turns out eventually, it does nothing now to address the humanitarian situation for Puerto Ricans. Some observers say that it could be well into next year before the power is on across the island.
Surviving in the darkness amid the wreckage of disaster without refrigeration or untainted water to drink or even to clean off the grime isn’t something any population in this rich nation of ours should have to suffer. Indeed, it’s morally criminal not to intervene massively.
Congress should focus some of the energy it’s now expending on figuring out how to give more tax breaks to the already wealthy on accelerating Puerto Rico’s recovery.
Since we can’t count on that, we need alternatives. Here’s one: Progressives throughout the nation should urge their own municipal leaders on the mainland to adopt one of those 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico as a sister city. Because delay will generate more suffering, city councils should establish these with emergency resolutions rather than the usual two- or three-step approach that takes weeks or months to complete. These sister-to-sister arrangements can form the basis for two-way communications that lead to providing various kinds of support, including technical expertise, to our brothers and sisters on the island.
But while there are many benefits to such connections, the needs of Puerto Rico are much greater than what sister cities could possibly hope to provide. Moreover, global warming is going to produce more disasters like this one and worse as well as a boatload of other major problems, including vast numbers of climate refugees. We therefore need national planning and national programs to deal with them. That means much more than just supercharging FEMA. Puerto Rico is just one example of what we will see much more of. How we address the current situation from now going forward will give us a good idea of how we will handle (or work to prevent) the plethora of disasters to come.
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Below are some links Pakalolo has compiled to organizations working to ease the immediate suffering of the Puerto Ricans.
www.internationalmedicalrelief.org
You can donate right to the José Andrés’s Chef’s group at https://www.worldcentralkitchen.org
Americares
Hurricane Maria Community Recovery Fund
Catholic Relief Services Hurricane Relief (Caribbean-wide)
Here is a GoFundMe we can get behind as well. To help those in the most need, celebrities and others started sending their private planes to pick up cancer patients, elderly, people needing medical care, etc.