In 2017 many U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico will be ringing in the new year of 2018 by candlelight. Not because it is romantic or spiritual—it is because they still have no power. Living sin luz (without light) is not some poetic reference—it is a nightly reality. A nightmare from which the dawn of the following day brings no surcease. Citizens in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) are not nearly back to normal, are facing a major loss of tourist revenue and a budget crisis.
I’m not in the habit of making New Year’s resolutions, however this year I’ll make an exception. I resolve to continue shouting, writing, tweeting, calling elected officials and doing anything in my power to keep the untenable, unacceptable, disgraceful state of affairs facing our sisters and brothers in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in front of politicians and the general public who have allowed the unimaginable to become normal. Since when is it normal for a travesty like this to become simply a matter of ticking off the number of days that pile up, and moving on in our minds to something of greater urgency?
I ask that you join me, and resolve to raise the media profile of Puerto Rico and the USVI. Daily Kos readers can make a difference —Chris Reeves pointed out that during this last year “90,843,894 unique readers visited DailyKos.com.” If only a fraction of those readers would take up the cause of Puerto Rico and the USVI—we can make a heck of a lot of noise and political fireworks.
First, a review: While we still hear and see references to the damage wrought by Hurricane Maria let us not forget that our island citizens were hit first by Irma. While diarists from the Daily Kos Weather Center were writing about Irma (kudos to the work they do) the major media was falling down on the job, which prompted me to write “Attention news media covering Hurricane Irma—Puerto Rico is part of the U.S.”
What has bothered me, and other people who are watching the storm closely is that many news reports state when they think Irma will “hit the U.S.” — and refer to Florida, when the storm is bearing down on a part of the U.S. — Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
I updated that story with this:
A Category 5 storm, which starts at 157 mph winds, is the strongest classification on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. "Catastrophic damage will occur" with Category 5 storms, the National Hurricane Center said.
"A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse," according to the National Hurricane Center. "Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months."
Advanced warning was already in place. The devastation Irma unloaded on other parts of the Caribbean like Barbuda, and projections of Irma hitting PR and the USVI should have been a wake up call for U.S. government agencies and Trump. Instead we heard this from the guy occupying the White House:
On September 6, 2017, Hurricane Irma hit Puerto Rico and the USVI. This is footage live-streamed on Facebook showing residents struggling to help others:
NBC News reports “Hurricane Irma Skirts Puerto Rico, Leaves 1 Million Without Power.” (Some “skirt.”) The article has very little detail about PR.
While Irma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, skirted Puerto Rico on Wednesday night as it stayed just out to sea, it was expected to graze the Dominican Republic before targeting the Bahamas and Turks & Caicos on Friday. A hurricane watch was issued Thursday for portions of southern Florida and the Florida Keys.
It does mention four deaths. Think about this. One million people are without power and the immediate segue is to the hurricane watch for Florida. Few news agencies have reported that there are people on our islands that have had no power since Irma. Most posts count the days from Maria which hit later.
The Atlantic’s Maria timeline post does start with Irma. They mention “skirts” too.
Wednesday, September 6
The eye of Hurricane Irma, then a powerful Category 5 storm, skirts north of San Juan. Puerto Rico experiences a deluge and 100-mile-per-hour gusts, but it avoids the worst of the storm’s effects.
Irma kills four people. It cuts off power to about two-thirds of the island’s electricity customers, and about 34 percent of its population loses access to clean water.
Major network media news coverage of Irma’s impact on the USVI was also skimpy or nonexistent.
On Sept. 9, former NBA star Tim Duncan wrote, “Don’t Forget About the Islands” for The Players’ Tribune.
Hey, it’s Tim.
I’m not normally one to speak directly in the media, or write stuff publicly. So I’m a little out of my comfort zone here. I don’t use Twitter. I don’t have a Facebook. Interviews are O.K., I guess, but I prefer when they’re on the shorter side.
But here I am, talking right to you, asking you for a favor. I promise I wouldn’t be asking if it didn’t matter so much. The basketball community has already given so much to me over the years. But right now I need your attention for a couple of minutes.
Right now as I type this, the U.S. Virgin Islands — the place where I was born and where I grew up — has been badly damaged by Hurricane Irma. The people there, many of whom are old friends of mine, are suffering. Weather reports say that another Category 5 storm, Hurricane Jose, is close behind. No one knows what the place will look like when the rain stops.
Now time is of the essence.
I’m donating $250,000 immediately — tonight — to the storm relief efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And going forward, I pledge to match your donations up to the first $1 million. That’s where you come in: You can go here to make a donation. I’ve included more information at the end of this article, too.
There were a few USVI stories.
Seven days after Hurricane Irma devastated two of the three major U.S. Virgin Islands, access to communication lines and critical supplies remain spotty and residents across the islands’ do not know how long recovery will take or what it will cost.The U.S. Virgin Islands are typically thought of as lush tourist getaways in the Caribbean. But the hills have turned brown. Many of the islands’ approximately 100,000 residents, who are American citizens on American soil, insist that the Category 5 storm was unlike anything they’ve weathered before. Irma is responsible for at least 38 confirmed deaths across the Caribbean, four of them in the US territories. The storm’s 185 mile-per-hour winds and water stripped away the entirety of St. John and St. Thomas of plant life and, according to USVI Governor Kenneth Mapp, left well over fifty percent of properties destroyed. Vice News’ Antonia Hylton spent time with residents who have almost nothing left.
Hurricane Irma made landfall in the U.S. Virgin Islands as a Category 5 storm just over one week ago, knocking out electricity and running water, and cutting off communications with the outside world. Now, Governor Kenneth Mapp says the islands of Saint John and Saint Thomas are still nearly entirely without power. The hurricane also destroyed schools and the main hospital on Saint Thomas. The devastation was so extensive, it can be seen from space. Earlier this week, a U.S. military amphibious ship arrived on Saint Thomas ladened with equipment and supplies. The islands have also received emergency aid from residents of the nearby island of Puerto Rico, where volunteers banded together to collect supplies and transport them on dozens of ships. But while Hurricane Irma hit the U.S. Virgin Islands days before it made landfall on the Florida Keys, the Virgin Islands have been largely forgotten in the wall-to-wall U.S. media coverage of the storm. And that omission is even more striking given that the U.S. Virgin Islands are in the midst of celebrating their centennial as U.S. territory. We speak with Saint Thomas native Tiphanie Yanique, award-winning poet and novelist.
More bad news is announced in a very short period of time.
Saturday, September 16—Four days before landfall
The trough is still in the open ocean, several hundred miles east of the Caribbean’s Windward Islands. But it has begun to form convective bands around its center, and its central pressure has continued to fall.
The National Hurricane Center anticipates that it will become some kind of tropical storm. Starting At 11 a.m., the center dubs the storm “Potential Tropical Cyclone 15” and issues its first forecast discussion.
By 5 p.m., the trough has strengthened into a tropical storm, with estimated 50-mile-per-hour winds.
The National Weather Service names it Tropical Storm Maria. John Cangialosi, the hurricane specialist on duty, warns that “Maria could also affect the British and U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico by midweek as a dangerous major hurricane.”
Then Maria hit.
Here’s a sample of network news coverage.
Most of the national news coverage was being reported from San Juan. Donald Trump begins a series of tweets. His first tweet was inoffensive:
They quickly deteriorated.
It was interesting to watch the response on The View to his lobbing paper towels incident in San Juan:
After Maria hit the first major national political figure to call out for more support was Hillary Clinton:
The USNS Comfort was sent, however, after it arrived on Oct. 4, it was not providing much assistance which was only corrected after a public outcry. When it finally got it together—it was removed.
The most vocal governor demanding support for Puerto Rico and the USVI was New York’s Andrew Cuomo.
Two Puerto Rican-born congresspeople have been relentless in attempts to push Congress, the president and his appointees to do more—Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) and Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL):
Celebrities have emerged as heroes who have managed to garner the attention of the media—most notably Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Chef José Andrés.
On October 6, Miranda released “Almost Like Praying”:
He has written op-eds like this recent one for the Washington Post:
In spite of the loss of his grandmother on Christmas, he continues efforts for Puerto Rico.
Andrés arrived in Puerto Rico September 26 one week before Trump:
Before arriving in Puerto Rico, he was organizing meals and relief in Houston after Hurricane Harvey. And as he organizes food, workers, and supplies to feed those in need, Andrés has been harshly criticizing Trump's response to the humanitarian crisis in a series of tweets starting with: "If I was .@realDonaldTrump..."
He developed a plan—to feed the island.
As of Nov. 27, he and his team served over 3 million meals.
Another major figure emerged and became the face of PR to many mainlanders—the Mayor of San Juan Carmen Yulín Cruz.
We have been doing what we can here at Daily Kos. On September 27, due to the lack of comprehensive media coverage the Daily Kos group SOS Puerto Rico was started here by noweasels. The list of stories written or republished by group members is extensive—so I cannot review them all—I’d like to suggest that you take a look at many you missed, and that you join up, or follow in order to help get the word out.
Months have passed—we now know the death toll in Puerto Rico has been grossly undercounted with the New York Times reporting that it could be 1,052, FEMA assertions about water quality are fabrications and the complete restoration of power won’t happen for months. Meanwhile, more Puerto Ricans are coping with leaving the island and attempting to settle on the mainland. Daily Kos member Kathy Scheidel had a heartwarming story of one such family. Contrary to predictions that the island will be left with not enough people to rebuild, most Puerto Ricans are remaining—even under the current dire conditions.
One aspect not often considered is that Puerto Rico will be receiving immigrants from other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America—discussed in this op-ed “Los nuevos residentes de Puerto Rico” (in Spanish) by Dr. Luis M. Baquero Rosas, who points out that Puerto Rico will be attracting many Dominicans and Venezuelans in the years ahead. This family spent Christmas in the dark, and that darkness will continue, till May and who knows … it may be June or July.
The NY Times reported:
Most of the island will have power by the end of February, said Gen. Diana M. Holland, commander of the South Atlantic Division of the Army Corps of Engineers. But the last stretch, the hard-to-reach rural areas, will not get power until the end of May, just in time for the 2018 hurricane season.
“Our power grid has never seen anything like this,” said Justo González, the interim director of the power authority, known as Prepa.
The Army Corps said the areas that were expected to take the longest were the central towns of Lares, Utuado and Adjuntas — together home to about 80,000 people.
Frankly, I no longer believe the reports of completion dates—since none have been fulfilled.
Puerto Rico Rises:
At 98-years-old, Felicita still remembers Hurricane San Felipe in 1928 and San Ciprianin 1936. They stood out as the deadliest in Puerto Rico's recorded history. Felicita says Maria was worse. "The strongest one was this one, that just passed."
We visited between Toa Alta and Toa Baja, where the highest death toll occurred. The town of Toa Baja was caught between river flooding from the La Plata Dam and the storm surge from the ocean further north. The mayor reported that eight people drowned and another two thousand were rescued from their homes according to Governor Pedro Rossello.
"Water kept rising and rising," said Felicita. "There was nothing to do. I lost everything because it rose too high and I live on a lower level."
"Literally, the kayak would pass over the electric cables," explained Luis Daniel "D.Ozi" Otero. "We were practically on our own."
D.Ozi explained that there was flooding from the ocean on one side and the river on the other. A mix of freshwater and saltwater fish swimming along.
D.Ozi is a famous Puerto Rican rap producer. He has lived his whole life in El Ingenio. When he realized the water was continuing to rise, he found a neighbor with a boat and rushed to rescue his great grandmother.
In the days that followed the storm, the water remained stagnant. Animal corpses were rotting and people were hungry.
It’s good to also take a look at footage from Puerto Rico—not posted by journalists:
I take a drive through Puerto Rico and see where the news crews do not go. I'll be in Puerto Rico for the next 7 days documenting the state of the island three months after Hurricane Maria. In this third video, I leave San Juan and get a first view of what the rest of the island is dealing with. I have to warn you, some of the footage in this video can be difficult to view. We're talking about people who have lost everything.But I think it's important that we continue to talk about this, because the Puerto Rico situation deserves a lot more attention then it is getting. 90 days later, things are not okay in Puerto Rico. But the Puerto Ricans I meet are still strong people who are full of positivity.
As we ring in the New Year tonight, and as we move into 2018, please spare some of your thoughts, prayers and actions for Puerto Rico and the USVI. Some of you have already done so, and we can always do just a little bit more.
Make a New Year’s Resolution to help.
Thank you.