Nearly 7 months later, Puerto Rico hasn't recovered. The power grid still hasn't been restored for large swaths of the island, and on Wednesday, a contractor accidentally caused an island wide power failure for the areas which had gotten their power back. Power, for the lucky ones who have it, was expected to be back by midday Friday.
It's hard to think a response to a natural disaster could be worse than W. Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, but Trump and the US Government's response to this catastrophe is substantially worse. After a month, W. Bush was shamed into action, but such shame doesn't seem to exist with Trump. Puerto Rico only recently got their water service re-established, and the power grid seems to be getting repaired with a "when we get to it" mentality. Puerto Rico still hasn't been able to get the basics reestablished. It's so bad, at this point I don't think we can technically label Puerto Rico a 'natural' disaster anymore, as most of the damage done over the last 6 months has been at the hands of Trump and his unbelievably incompetent response.
Imagine the recent Minnesota blizzard took out power around Lake Minnetonka, with the damage done exceeding what the state of Minnesota was capable of repairing. How many days without power would it take for the politicians, both Republican and Democrat, to be screaming for Federal assistance? 5 days? 6? Trump's Federal Government would pull out all of the stops to get the power grid back up and running within a week and a half; two weeks at most, with a "Thank Me" Trump pep rally scheduled immediately afterwards.
Parts of Puerto Rico have been without power for 210 days. It's now the second largest power outage in the history of the world. OF THE WORLD! Only a typhoon that scoured the Philippines and parts of Asia clean was worse. We could fix Puerto Rico if we wanted to, but Trump has decided against it. Instead, Trump continues to golf at his private resorts (at tax payer expense), never mentioning Puerto Rico. Instead, he's getting ready to put on a military parade for himself, at a cost of tens of millions in tax payer dollars.
In the initial aftermath of the hurricane, cronyism derailed initial relief efforts, mistakes which were detrimental to the recovery. The mysterious Whitefish Power, a Montana(?) company with two employees, a company with no major rebuilding or big storm relief maintenance experience, a company which has unexplained ties to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, was awarded the contract to rebuild the island's power grid. They were horribly unprepared, ill-equipped for the task, and snarky when questioned about their work. Their ineptitude showed. The current power outage was caused when a line Whitefish Power claimed to have repaired, failed. Whitefish was stripped of it's contract after it was determined they were incompetent.
There comes a point where even a bad President should realize the massive failure (W. = a month), making the command decision to send in the any military, manpower and experts to get the Puerto Rican power grid back up and running. Considering the current Administration's failure, either Trump is purposely withholding the needed fixes for bigoted reasons, or he's quite literally one of the dumbest, meanest and most callous individuals who's ever lived.
Puerto Rico is populated with US citizens!!! Trump, his Administration and the Republican Party are all to blame for this unacceptable result. The shame they've manifested is on all of our shoulders. We could call them and tell them to do something, but they won't care. We need to hold these horrible human beings, these so called Christians, accountable for they're failure. In the age where the 'Trump/GOP failure list' is mighty long, Puerto Rico needs to be near the top.
If you'd like to help out, the Hurricane Maria Community Relief & Recovery Fund is still taking donations. Thanks: https://connect.clickandpledge.com/w/Form/cb4a3c78-5694-4324-bead-42c8ad94c1bf
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