Both cell phone and internet communications failed on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands after thieves stole the generator at the AT&T’s Gallows Bay cell tower. The failure of the tower brought down AT&T’s communications island wide. The commander of the St. Croix rescue squad’s extrication unit took up guard duty to ensure continued communications after a wealthy local business owner, Robert Armstrong restored power to the cell tower by personally transporting a privately owned generator with his bobcat. Securing communications is essential to all efforts to rescue, distribute fuel and supplies and begin the process of recovery. This is a job for security professionals such as the National Guard and the U.S. Navy, when the local police is overwhelmed by a disaster, but it is now being done by David Goodrich, rescue squad commander.
viconsortium.com/…
While Donald Trump, AWOL commander in chief, is busy Tweeting about football protests, first responders in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are desperately trying to protect and save lives.
While the Trump regime is announcing new restrictions on travel, U.S. citizens in the Caribbean are fending for themselves without assistance from the federal government.
At the tower now is David Goodrich, commander of the extrication unit at St. Croix Rescue, who has been guarding the site since private citizens took it upon themselves to not only provide a generator, but security as well. Robert Armstrong, a member of the well-known Armstrong family on the island and owner of multiple businesses, used his bobcat to transport a generator he provided to the site, and received help from Tom Schoenbohm, a communications tower expert, to install it. Mr. Schoenbohm dried certain parts of the tower that had collected water, and turned it back on. The thieves damaged the automatic transfer switch in the process of stealing the generator, so Mr. Schoenbohm hardwired the replacement into the tower.
Yet, even after turning it back on, the tower did not work because it had lost linkage with an AT&T tower in La Grande Princesse. Mr. Schoenbohm linked the tower to AT&T’s tower in Miami, and then went to the Cheese Burgers in Paradise tower, performed some maintenance, and turned that tower on as well.
As of Saturday afternoon, the towers were being guarded by private citizens who were volunteering their time. Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Goodrich are calling on local authorities to provide security for the sites, noting the importance of communication.
“During a natural disaster, the key things are communications, security and fuel. You need communications to communicate with everybody, you need fuel to run those communications, and then you’ll also need security to secure that fuel and communications. You need that before food and water, because if you don’t have communication to distribute supplies, it’s not going to work,” Mr. Goodrich said.
Hillary Clinton has tried to get the Trump regime’s attention to help the 3.5 million American citizens living in Puerto Rico and the USVI. If Hillary were sitting in the Oval Office help would be on its way. The U.S. Navy medical ship, the U.S. Comfort is sitting in port at Newport News while the nurses and doctors who could be saving lives in Puerto Rico are waiting and watching the surf rise at Norfolk as Maria heads towards the waters east of Cape Hatteras.
The governor of the Virgin Islands said today a cruise ship is on the way with FEMA, lineman food, water and supplies, but at this time on St. Croix basic security necessary to protect communications and essential services is being supplied by private citizens and rescue squad leaders. It is unclear from reports which island the cruise ship will go to and how supplies and people will be distributed from island to island. viconsortium.com/...
The territory’s leader indicated that Federal Emergency Management Agency (F.E.M.A.) personnel, linemen and relief workers from around the country were on the way to the USVI and would be housed on a cruise ship.
Mr. Mapp said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D.) was continuing work on a plan to aid those public housing residents displaced by the storm and that an announcement was expected next week in that regard.
Mr. Mapp and Mr. Potter explained to senators that the E.O.C. would soon be moving to the University of the Virgin Islands, where the gym will serve as the center of operations for the local and federal governments’ relief efforts.
Before Maria hit all of the U.S. Virgin Islands were devastated by category 5 Hurricane Irma. As of September 14 St. John and St. Thomas were struggling without housing and power. Restoring power to those islands was expected to take perhaps 8 months before Maria hit slamming St Croix and setting back recovery efforts on St. John and St Thomas.
Please see the related diary on the situation in Puerto Rico caused by hurricane Maria written by Denise Oliver Velez. www.dailykos.com/...
Update: Monday morning 25 September 17
I have found, with some help from commenters here, several videos of Navy helicopters around St. Croix. The Navy has helped evacuate people in urgent need of medical attention. The Navy is also assisting the people of the Dominica which is the island that saw hurricane Maria’s strongest winds.
The scale of the response does not meet the scale of the need. The people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands need far more help on the ground. Evacuating a few people is not the same as having the U.S. Comfort in San Juan harbor where it can serve as a medical center for the 3.5 million Americans living in the islands.
This video below would be helpful if it showed the condition of the airport. It looks like St. Croix was spared the worst wind damage when hurricane Maria went through an eyewall replacement cycle and wobbled away from the island but the turbid water is evidence of the effects of the huge waves that slammed the port of Frederiksted.
A FB video of the dire condition of the power grid on St. Croix can be seen here. viconsortium.com/…
The most recent location of the USSWasp, which is the Navy ship that helped with the evacuation of hospital patients on St. Croix, is the island of Dominica. twitter.com/… Stranded tourists were helicoptered out by Navy sailors. The U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are fending for themselves.
USS Wasp
USS Comfort