Donald Trump came, he praised himself, he threw paper towels. But though talk of Puerto RIco seems to have slipped out of the media, that doesn’t mean things there are suddenly fine. Or anywhere close.
"It is way too early to even think about recovery. Right now, it's about survival," said Orlando Bravo, a Puerto Rico native and co-founder of private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
"You have shelters, towns, rural communities that are running extremely low to this day — almost three weeks after the hurricane hit — on food and water," Bravo told CNBC's "Squawk Box."
In some locations, the level of supplies reaching families are still well below what’s needed. And despite push for more, things aren’t getting a lot better.
“There is this view that, somehow, we don’t merit that level of concern or attention or respect from this government,” said Melissa Mark-Viverito, the speaker of the New York City Council, comparing the response in Puerto Rico with areas struck by recent hurricanes in Florida and Texas. “Somehow, we’re a burden and we’re mooching. That’s the kind of language this president is throwing around.”
While water is back in many areas, it needs to be boiled—hard to do when many are homeless, and those who are not displaced are still without electricity. Puerto Rico was damaged everywhere. These is no well-stocked shelter in an area just down the road. People aren’t asking for luxuries. They’re asking that desperate needs be met.
Officials and nonprofit groups in Puerto Rico say the immediate need remains for essentials like food and water.
And it adds up.
Does Trump consider Puerto Rico a “real” catastrophe yet?
One thing that Trump and politicians ignoring the needs of Puerto Rico might want to keep in mind is one of the effects of not fixing the island.
Two weeks after the storm devastated Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of hurricane evacuees are packing scheduled flights and charter jets in what officials there and in states across the U.S. fear is the beginning of a mass exodus of historic proportions.
The mainland had already been absorbing record numbers of Puerto Ricans fleeing economic decline and a mounting debt crisis, with more than 700,000 migrating between 2006 and 2015. Some people also moved back over that time, but after decades of population growth, the island saw the total number of residents drop from about 3.8 million to 3.4 million — or more than 10%.
Right now, Americans on Puerto Rico are leaving not because they don’t love their island—but because they have to leave. The level of aid being given the island is only a fraction of what’s needed to hold things together, much less put Puerto Rico on the road to recovery.
But while it may be tempting to see some good in the influx of Puerto Ricans moving to states where they can tip the political balance, their departure may only exacerbate the problems for Puerto Rico, putting a new disaster on top of the old.
“If just 10% of people leave, it’s going to have a huge impact, both in Puerto Rico and on the mainland,” [said Jesse Keenan, a Harvard professor who specializes in climate adaptation and resilience.] “If as many as 20% left, which wouldn’t surprise me, it would completely collapse the island’s economy and burden jurisdictions across the United States.”
But right now, the economy is not the concern of most people on Puerto Rico. That concern is in the form of dry shelter, clean water and getting enough food to make it through the day.