A Puerto Rico opinion about climate change

The San Juan Daily Star in Puerto Rico

By John Schwartz

More records for both wet and dry weather are being set around the globe, often with disastrous consequences for the people facing such extremes, according to a study published that offered new evidence of climate change’s effects in the here and now. 

Extreme rainfall, and the extreme lack of it, affects untold numbers of people, taxing economies, disrupting food production, creating unrest and prompting migrations. 

So, factors that push regions of the world to exceptional levels of flooding and drought can shape the fate of nations. “Climate change will likely continue to alter the occurrence of record-breaking wet and dry months in the future,” the study predicts, “with severe consequences for agricultural production and food security.” 

As a matter of fact, heavy rainfall events, with severe flooding, are occurring more often in the central and Eastern United States, Northern Europe and northern Asia. The number of months with record-high rainfall increased in the central and Eastern United States by more than 25 percent between 1980 and 2013. In those regions, intense rainfall from hurricanes can be ruinously costly. 

Munich Re, the reinsurance giant, said that the 2018 hurricane season caused $51 billion in losses in the United States, well over the long-term annual average of $34 billion. In 2017, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria contributed to a total of $306 billion in damage from extreme weather events in the United States. Parts of Africa, on the other hand, are experiencing more months with a pronounced lack of rain. The number of record-setting dry months increased by nearly 50 percent in sub-Saharan Africa during the study period. Jascha Lehmann, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and lead author of the study, compared extreme weather events to a high roll of a die. “On average, one out of six times you get a six,” he said. “But by injecting huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humankind has loaded the dice. In many regions, we throw sixes much more often with severe impacts for society and the environment.” While much climate research relies on complex models to make projections, this new work interprets already-observed monthly rainfall data from 50,000 weather stations around the world. “That’s not to say models are not good,” Lehmann said in an interview, but his observational data “fits what we expect from physics and what models also show.” Climate models have long predicted that because of the greenhouse gases human activity has pumped into the atmosphere and the warming that results, the world’s wet regions are likely to grow wetter. Warmer air causes greater evaporation from oceans and waterways, and warmer air can hold more moisture. 

Also, there is evidence that changes in atmospheric circulation in summer have caused some weather systems to stall. The combination of such factors can lead to torrential rains like those that inundated the Houston area during Hurricane Harvey last year, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, during the floods of 2016. Regions that tend to be dry, by contrast, are expected to grow even more parched as higher temperatures dry the soil and air. “Climate change drives both wet and dry extremes,” Lehmann said. 

To conduct the study, which appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Lehmann’s team searched the databases of an authoritative repository of rainfall measurement, the Global Precipitation Climatology Center in Germany. Given natural weather variability, some extreme weather events were to be expected, so the researchers tried to determine how many events would have occurred without the influence of global warming. 

Moreover, the researchers determined that one-third of the record-dry months recorded in the African regions under study would not have occurred without the influence of climate change. The findings dovetail with another report Monday that detailed the connections between climate change and recent extreme weather events. That report, which was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, presented 17 peer-reviewed analyses of weather events around the world. The researchers evaluated heat waves, droughts, flooding and other phenomena and determined, for example, that marine heat waves off the coast of Australia in 2017 and 2018 would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change. The report said that climate change made last year’s drought in the northern Great Plains of the United States and a pounding six-day monsoon in northeast Bangladesh far more likely. Out of 146 research findings in the series of papers, only about 30 percent did not find a substantial link between an extreme event and climate change. Stephanie C. Herring, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and an author of the report, said that, over the years, the attribution work has helped to establish the present-day effects of climate change. “We’re taking out that factor of ‘climate change might impact us someday,’ ” she said. “Climate change is impacting us now.” 

The message of the studies is “painfully clear,” said Heidi Cullen, a climate scientist with Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. “Burning fossil fuels is making our weather worse right now,” with greater likelihood of deadly heat waves, wild fires, droughts and floods, she said. “And the more we burn coal, oil and gas, the worse it will get.”

Failed leadership in disaster response ~ Donald Trump

Daily Comment echo published in The New Yorker ~ by Jon Lee Anderson

What Donald Trump Fails to Recognize About Hurricanes—and Leadership

Catastrophes, natural or man-made, can make or break leaders. They offer the ultimate opportunity to show the qualities that people seek in those whom they have chosen to take command: courage, empathy, serenity, fortitude, decisiveness. 

Under extreme circumstances, true leadership comes to the fore; if one does not possess the requisite qualities, their lack is immediately evident to all and sundry.

Few such leaders of modern times come to mind more readily than Winston Churchill, in the face of Hitler’s aerial onslaught against Great Britain, during the Second World War. As odd as it may seem to mention Rudy Giuliani in the same paragraph as Churchill, when Giuliani was the mayor of New York, he behaved well, even heroically, during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His actions earned him a measure of public respect that, his latter-day transmogrification into Donald Trump’s chortling henchman notwithstanding, has endured, at least among certain Americans.

By contrast, after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, in late August of 2005, President George W. Bush flew back to Washington, D.C., from a four-week vacation at his Texas ranch, and was photographed looking down from the window of Air Force One, in passive detachment, at the devastation of New Orleans. It was one of the great failures of his two-term Presidency, and despite his trying to make up for it in the succeeding days—authorizing a massive aid package, sending in thousands of National Guard troops, and visiting the Gulf Coast—Bush never quite overcame the stigma of Katrina.

It is much the same with Trump and Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico a year ago next week. Evidently immune to the idea that he might be held to the same standards of judgment as his predecessors, Trump behaved with negligent condescension toward the disaster from the beginning. He had made two visits to Texas in the days after Hurricane Harvey hit that state, gushing fulsomely over the handling of catastrophe and “great turnout” for his visits. But he waited two weeks after Maria struck to visit Puerto Rico, and then spent a mere four hours there, during which time he was driven around a middle-class suburb of San Juan that was not badly affected, and appeared at a church where he cavalierly tossed rolls of paper towels to local residents. In a press conference, he appeared to issue a scolding for the cost of the assistance, saying, “Now, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” and he minimized the island’s tragedy by drawing comparisons between its reportedly low death toll and the “hundreds” of people who had died in Katrina. (The official toll in Puerto Rico eventually rose to sixty-four.)

In the year since, Trump has mentioned Puerto Rico mostly to compliment himself for his performance, as he did again on Tuesday, describing his government’s response to Maria as “an incredible, unsung success.” His rosy rendition stands in direct contradiction to the opinion of most Puerto Ricans, eighty per cent of whom view his response unfavorably, according to a recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Over all, the government response, at both the federal and the local levels, is viewed as having been sluggish and inefficient, with inexplicably long delays in reactivating the island’s devastated power grid and in repairing damaged roads and homes. The crisis has also deepened the unemployment problem and accelerated an exodus of people from the island.

Meanwhile, the Milken Institute School of Public Health, at George Washington University, published a report that found that nearly three thousand people ultimately died as a result of Hurricane Maria. Trump’s reaction—against the backdrop of a new hurricane season, and with Hurricane Florence approaching the coast of the Carolinas—was to decry the report as an attempt by Democrats to besmirch his reputation. “3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico,” he tweeted on Thursday. “When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. . . . Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3,000. . . . This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible.”

Those comments elicited an unusually bipartisan condemnation. In Florida, where a large influx of Democratic-leaning Puerto Ricans have become a highly courted political constituency, Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, tweeted, “I disagree with @POTUS. . . . I’ve been to Puerto Rico 7 times & saw devastation firsthand.” Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American Republican who represents the Miami area, said that Trump’s remarks were “heartless,” and that only “a warped mind” would “turn this statistic into fake news.” In Puerto Rico, Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, who has verbally sparred with Trump since last year, tweeted, “YOUR LACK OF RESPECT IS APPALLING,” and “Simply put: delusional, paranoid, and unhinged from any sense of reality. Trump is so vain he thinks this is about him. NO IT IS NOT.”

Trump’s self-centeredness and his lack of empathy are not a point of contention for most Americans; what is more egregious, in Puerto Rico’s case, is the obviousness of the double-standard that he has applied to the island—an unincorporated U.S. territory—and the suspicion that it is racist in nature. Trump’s sign-off on his tweet denying the death toll was, “I love Puerto Rico!” That felt about as convincing as his proclamations of “I love Hispanics!”during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Indeed, the blatancy of Trump’s condescension led Ricardo Rosselló, the pro-statehood governor of Puerto Rico, to say at a press conference on Thursday, “After the storm, it is evident that the treatment that was given, say, Florida or Texas, was very different than the treatment given in Puerto Rico. We are second-class U.S. citizens. We live in a colonial territory. It is time to eliminate that, and I implore all the elected officials, particularly now in midterm elections, to have a firm stance. You’re either for colonial territories or against them. You’re either for giving equal rights to the U.S. citizens that live in Puerto Rico, or you’re against it.”Roselló’s remarks suggest that a shift of sorts is taking place in the Puerto Rican political landscape. Until recently, the governor was criticized for maintaining a milquetoast posture toward Trump, and for upholding his claims of a low death toll. But, in May, an investigation conducted by Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health found a tally of more than four thousand hurricane-related deaths. That led Roselló to commission the George Washington University study, whose results he has accepted. He has also acknowledged that he had “made mistakes.” The Puerto Rican journalist Héctor Feliciano told me, “It’s true that the relationship with the United States is changing. It’s very rare to see annexationists”—a term for pro-statehood Puerto Ricans—“taking the same side as other Puerto Ricans in criticizing the President about an important issue.”

In the past, referenda have shown Puerto Ricans to be split roughly into three groups—the smallest being in favor of independence, the next largest in favor of the current relationship, and an apparently growing majority in favor of statehood. 

Wherever the debate heads next, it seems likely that judgments about leadership will be key, and that, in the wake of Hurricane Maria, and the continued offensiveness of Trump’s response to the crisis, fewer Puerto Ricans will want to stick with the status quo.

If Ohio were Puerto Rico - Arizona echo opinion

"What would Ohio do?

Echo opinion from Arizona by E.J. Montini in Arizona.com

Hurricane Maria analysis.

If a storm killed 2,975 people in Ohio, would Donald Trump call it an 'unsung success?'.

I’m not 100 percent convinced that Donald Trump understands that the men, women and children living of Puerto Rico are Americans.

They are.

But, I’d guess that even if Trump knows this to be true, he still may not think of Puerto Ricans as real Americans, because if he did I don’t believe he would have said what he said about the government’s response to the disaster that was last year’s Hurricane Maria.

The latest Puerto Rican death toll from that storm, based on a study done by researchers from George Washington University, is 2,975.

Nearly as many who died on 9/11.

The island is still recovering

In addition to the 2,975 dead there were many injured and many others still suffering after effects, and Trump this week called the work done by FEMA and law enforcement in Puerto Rico as "an incredible, unsung success."

Hurricane Maria caused what is said to be the largest power outage in U.S. history, one that took nearly a year to fix.

Recovery efforts will continue for years.

And Trump called it “an incredible, unsung success.”

Without labeling that remark ethnically insensitive – at the very least – is it not safe to say that if a monster storm killed 3,000 men, women and children in Ohio Trump would NOT call it an “unsung success?” No matter how well FEMA and law enforcement responded.

Insensitive? Ignorant?

We all hope and pray that the government is prepared to respond to whatever occurs when Hurricane Florence reaches the East Coast.

(Our family has relatives in the Carolinas.)

Hopefully, as well, that no matter how well the government responds, that Trump would choose not to brag about it, at least in deference to those who suffer losses.

It’s like what San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said in response to Trump’s “unsung success” remark.

She said, “In a humanitarian crisis, you should not be grading yourself. You should not be just having a parade of self-accolades. You should never be content with everything we did. I'm not content with everything I did, I should have done more. We should all have done more.”

Reach Montini is a columnist for the Arizona Republic newspaper.

Puerto Rico re-visited: Return of a native

An Arkansas resident described the devastation he saw after visiting his native Puerto Rico, published in the Arkansas The Baxter Bulletin:

Congress is indifferent to Puerto Rico's tragedy ~ Joe Guzzardi

Hurricane Maria was a category 5 storm

After an absence of more than 50 years, I returned to Puerto Rico this month to view firsthand the September 2017, Hurricane Maria's devastation. (Regarded as the worst natural disaster on record in Dominica and Puerto Rico.)

In fact, I spent most of my formative years growing up in Puerto Rico, attended a local high school, and took my first post-college job on the island. My emotional ties to Puerto Rico are strong; my son, a true borinqueno, and one of my sisters were born in San Juan.

Over the years, I had thought often of going back to visit old haunts, but never did. I knew that decades of booming tourism had spawned rampant development along miles of unspoiled Atlantic Beach coastline, forever changing Puerto Rico's landscape. From Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again," "Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same." But things only remain the same in a person's mind if he never goes back.

Some sections of Puerto Rico are slowly returning to normal. Tourism is slow, but the hotels and restaurants that serve visitors are up and running. Most advertise: "We have electricity," a reminder that even in Puerto Rico's biggest cities, residents were without power for weeks.

Outside of the major municipalities, however, much of the island is still coping and wondering when full power will be restored, and end the longest and largest outage in U.S. history. Trees, traffic lights and bridges are down, and store fronts, closed. 

Nearly four months ago, Puerto Rico's Gov. Ricardo Rossello promised that 95 percent of electricity delivery would be functional by Dec. 15. But in a December study, local experts estimated that roughly 50 percent of the island's 3.3 million people were still without power. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicted that all Puerto Rico won't be fully electrified until May.

In addition to the daily physical challenges that being without power present, Puerto Ricans have endured an emotional roller coaster of Washington, D.C. follies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced on January 29 that it would discontinue its food and water distribution to the island effective January 31. The responsibility would be turned over to the Puerto Rican government, a prospect that terrified residents, especially the elderly and poor. Two days later, FEMA walked back its original statement, and assured Puerto Ricans that it would continue its assistance.

Then, a scam of unprecedented magnitude victimized Puerto Ricans. FEMA awarded a $156 billion contract to the one-person Tribute Contracting LLC to provide 30 million meals to hungry Puerto Ricans. Only 50,000 were delivered. Because of previous questionable dealings, the federal government had barred Tribute from government work until 2019. An investigation is underway, too little, too late.

Hurricane Maria's death toll was originally estimated at about 65; however, more than 1,000 perished. Despite the far-reaching extent of the Puerto Rico disaster which came on top of the island's bankruptcy because of its combined bond and pension debt that totals about $120 billion, Congress has shown little interest in extending a helping hand to its fellow U.S. citizens. About half of Americans don't know Puerto Ricans are citizens, status granted a century ago during Woodrow Wilson's administration.

Ahead of the brief government shutdown, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that his top priorities are passing a two-year budget deal.

But Ryan said nothing about Puerto Rico, and the ongoing suffering that tens of thousands of Americans still endure while Congress and Donald Trump prioritizes legalizing illegal immigrants.

For anguished Puerto Ricans, being shunted by Donald Trump is a bitter pill to swallow. Americans are suffering in Puerto Rico.  

Puerto Rico - history, poverty and hurricane recovery

Stories like his are common across the island.

America Magazine, the Jesuit journal, featured the daunting problems with Puerto Rico's recovery after the Category 4 Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September 2017, during the storm's direct hit.

Hurricane Maria ~The island was still recovering from Hurricane Irma, which hit weeks before Maria. 

By JD Long-Garcia

José Luis Vázquez sought refuge in his daughter’s house as Hurricane Maria ravaged the mountainous village of Las Marías, Puerto Rico. The storm snapped bamboo like toothpicks.

Some of his neighbors died when mudslides swept away their homes. After the hurricane had passed, Mr. Vázquez, 83, peeked out the door and saw the roof of his house in the middle of the road.

“I had never experienced anything like that,” he says. “We felt the earth shake during that storm. It left the roads covered with trees. We don’t expect to have electricity for, I don’t know, two years.” 

A tractor driver slid over a cliff and lost his life as he tried to clear debris. It took weeks to clear the roads.

Mr. Vázquez says he has seven children living in the United States. “I haven’t spoken to them for years,” he says of his estranged children through tears. 

Reconciliation will have to wait, as telephone lines have been knocked down and Mr. Vázquez cannot afford a cell phone.

Stories like his are common across the island.

“One of the things Hurricane Maria has done is to uncover the great amount of poverty that there is in Puerto Rico, which had been camouflaged by the trees, the leaves, the forest,” Archbishop Roberto González Nieves of San Juan says in an interview with America. “Now it’s all out in the open.”

“Now it’s all out in the open.” 
Archbishop Roberto González Nieves of San Juan

The archbishop welcomed us into his humble office at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in San Juan. His workspace, complete with sugary, strong coffee, water and a refrigerator, also serves as a breakroom for the staff. 

Stacks of St. Francis of Assisi and Blessed Oscar Romero prayer cards sit on the archbishop’s desk as he speaks. His residence is still without power. The church and parochial school rely on a generator to serve the community.

Yet the parish community is better off than most. Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, and flooded the coastal valleys and unleashed mudslides in the mountain terrains of the small Caribbean island. The hurricane came at what may have been the worst possible time. The island was still recovering from Hurricane Irma, which hit weeks before Maria. These tragedies only added additional hardship to a territory that since 2006 has been in the middle of a severe economic crisis.

For years the church in Puerto Rico worked to raise awareness of the 60 percent of children who live in poverty on the island, but the efforts met with a disappointing response. 

“It seems to me that some people, especially [government] leadership, did not believe that the percentage is that high,” the archbishop says. “Now, it’s unquestionable. It’s impossible to not see it.” The high level of poverty among the elderly, many of whom rely only on their monthly Social Security check, which typically ranges from $500 to $800, has also been laid bare.

“It is very difficult to pay for your medicines and adequate food supply, your rent, your water, electricity,” Archbishop González says, adding that the hurricanes have uncovered the island’s poverty and unemployment.

‘The World’s Oldest Colony’

Murals decorate walls lining Calle Tiburcio Reyes, a street in Old San Juan. “The World’s Oldest Colony” one reads; “PROMESA es Pobreza,” reads another. The latter refers to the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, which gives power to approve the island’s budget to board members appointed by the president of the United States. The street leads to Castillo San Felipe del Morro, a 16th-century citadel that the Spanish built to defend the island after they conquered it. 

Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery, where remains of prominent Puerto Ricans have been buried for hundreds of years, sits just outside the walls. The hurricanes damaged some of the graves.

El Morro, one of the oldest such structures in the Caribbean, is symbol of both fortitude and conquest. Columbus encountered Taíno indians when he arrived here in 1493. While the Spanish adopted some things from the Taínos, like straw huts, hammocks and maracas, the population of the native peoples plummeted not long after the European arrival. Boricua, another name for Puerto Ricans, has its origin in Borikén, the Taíno name for the island.

Columbus renamed the island San Juan Bautista after Jesus’ cousin.

After colonists found gold in the river, it was renamed Puerto Rico, or Rich Port. For 400 years, Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule.

As early as 1868, beginning with an uprising known as The Cry of Lares, separatists began working for the independence of Puerto Rico. Thirty years later, during the Spanish-American War, the United States invaded Puerto Rico. In 1898 Spain ceded the island to U.S. governance through the Treaty of Paris.

According to Nelson Hernández, a history professor at San Juan’s Universidad Sagrado Corazón, Puerto Ricans hoped the United States would grant them more freedom than they had under the Spanish. Perhaps someday they would become an independent nation like Cuba. The U.S. Congress dashed those hopes with the Foraker Act of 1900, which established a U.S.-controlled government in Puerto Rico. While residents would vote for local representatives, they would not have a vote in the U.S. government.

“Through the Foraker Act, the United States absorbed much power,” Mr. Hernández says. “It marks a beginning of U.S. colonization and imperialism.” The law lasted 17 years, during which the promise of independence was not fulfilled, he says.

The Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship and the right to vote in presidential primaries, but residents still do not have an electoral vote or a voting representative in Congress. The Jones Act, also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, mandates that U.S.-flagged ships be used between U.S. ports. Those ships must be built in the United States and staffed by U.S. legal residents. While it benefits U.S.-owned shipping companies, the regulation drives up the cost of imports for Puerto Rico, an island that relied heavily on imports even before the hurricanes.

“It is really strangling us,” Archbishop González says. “If we buy Bibles in Spanish, for example, from Colombia or Peru or wherever, you have to put them on a ship to the United States and then from there to Puerto Rico. So that doubles, triples the cost of the Bibles.”

Mr. Hernández says that in the 1940s Puerto Rico began receiving a series of minor concessions from the United States. 

In 1948 the island elected its own governor. “But in essence, little changed,” he says. In 1952, the title of Associated Free State of Puerto Rico, known as ELA an acronym from the Spanish, was adopted when the island drafted its commonwealth constitution.

Puerto Rico’s economy slowly began to pivot from sugar cane, coffee and tobacco to pharmaceuticals and technology manufacturing. Starting in 1976, tax incentives lured more corporations to the island. The incentives ended in 2006, but some economists argue that it helped investors more than Puerto Rico residents.

Many believe the loss of incentives led Puerto Rico into a deep recession in 2006, one from which it has yet to recover. 

Trade agreements, like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and the Dominican Republic–Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2003, weakened Puerto Rico’s exports. Puerto Rico sought bankruptcy protection this year for its $70-billion debt crisis.

Puerto Rico’s relationship to the U.S. mainland continues to be a contentious issue. A poll conducted this fall found that nearly half of Americans did not know that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, The New York Times reports. This despite the fact that there are more than five million Puerto Ricans living on the U.S. mainland. In 2012 Puerto Ricans voted on statehood for the fourth time. The majority of voters wanted a change from its current status as a commonwealth. Some states, like Massachusetts or Kentucky, refer to themselves as commonwealths. Puerto Rico, while it calls itself a free state in its Spanish-language constitution, is not a commonwealth in that sense, nor is it a state.

Puerto Rico is also referred to as an unincorporated territory, but that name does not fit perfectly either, because Puerto Rico elects its own government. Some economists argue that this mixed relationship with the United States contributes to the island’s sputtering economy, and resolving it might be a step toward recovery. But, Mr. Hernández says, hurricanes Irma and Maria have put talk of statehood on hold indefinitely.

Migration to the Mainland

Hurricane Maria blew the roof off Françoise Cepeda’s two-story house in San Juan. The flooding destroyed the first floor. “What wasn’t ruined from above was wrecked from below,” she says.

The single mother of three young boys has nothing—no furniture, no clothes, no food. In what is left of her home, there is no access to electricity and no water. Her boys—ages 5, 8 and 10—had to change schools because their old one has yet to reopen. Ms. Cepeda spends $20 a day on public transportation to get them to class on time, and her employer has not given her hours to work since the hurricane.

“These aren’t the ideal circumstances, but we have to fight through it,” she says. She is standing in front of a Santurce community outreach center supported by Universidad Sagrado Corazón. She will receive clothes, food and toiletries to help her get by. The boys, donning their aqua blue school uniforms, stand close to her. The eldest flicks the ear of the youngest. Even before the hurricane, Ms. Cepeda’s life was far from ideal. She lives in a San Juan neighborhood run by gangs.

Residents there crammed ruined furniture and debris between the cramped cement homes. Mosquitos and flies multiplied after the flooding. Streetlights dangle from broken wooden posts, but they do not come on at night.

Puerto Rico’s population had been steadily growing until 2004, according the U.S. Census Bureau. That year, the population topped out at 3.8 million. Today there are fewer than 3.4 million Puerto Ricans living on the island, and many estimate the number may sink below three million in the aftermath of the hurricane.

Pascual Cubero, a teacher at José Celso Barbosa School in San Juan, says his sister left the island after the hurricane. She returned eventually, but then left again because “she couldn’t take it.” His mother, who lived in rural San Sebastián, left because she could not count on getting access to medication for her diabetes.

“I can get up at 4 a.m., I can go out to look for food, but I can’t expose my mother to that,” Mr. Cubero says, adding that some of his coworkers also left. A number of his students’ homes in San Juan were destroyed.

Many schools in Puerto Rico have yet to reopen, Mr. Cubero says, and some parents have moved to the U.S. mainland to ensure their children’s education continues. Power and water were restored quickly at Mr. Cubero’s school, however. “We live close to the governor’s house,” he says with a laugh.

The shrinking population will make recovery even more difficult, according to Jorge Iván Vélez-Arocho, president of the Pontifical University of Puerto Rico. The majority of those who have been leaving the island over the years are young. As a result the median age has been steadily increasing, to 36 in 2015 from 18.5 in 1950. There is some fear that the exodus will leave towns abandoned, Mr. Vélez-Arocho says.

“The new generation has confronted the fragility of this island for the first time,” he says from the university campus in Ponce. “The devastation is physical, emotional and social. Puerto Rico has fallen decades behind. More than half of Puerto Rico still does not have electricity. Today, you could think of our history as before and after Maria.”

Yet Mr. Vélez-Arocho also notes that many young people, especially students at the university, have responded to the hurricane with a humanitarian heart. In Guaynabo, a San Juan suburb, Jorge Javier Díaz Sánchez says he has gotten involved with a local group of Puerto Ricans in their 20s who are helping those in need. He has both power and water at his home.

“You have to take to the street and do all you can to help in the rebuilding,” says Mr. Díaz, who drives for Uber. Many are desperate for basic necessities, he says. Mr. Díaz answers a call on speaker as he drives. It is his mother. She does not have power at her home yet, and she wants him to bring her ice.
Widespread Poverty

While there are some wealthy and middle class Puerto Ricans, nearly half live below the poverty level. The median salary is under $20,000. Father Enrique Camacho, executive director of Caritas Puerto Rico, says many in the middle class were losing their jobs even before the hurricanes.

“We were working very hard because there are many communities that don’t have enough to feed their families. That was before Maria,” Father Camacho says. “The problem with the poverty in Puerto Rico is sometimes you cannot see it directly.”

Visitors to Puerto Rico may be impressed by the highways or high-rise buildings and beaches. But Father Camacho says that going to the mountains or even the poorer neighborhoods in San Juan will reveal a different story.

“People sometimes said, ‘No, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, they are not poor.’ But now, the people are looking at the images [and] seeing that we’re not really rich,” he says. 

“We are in need and Maria has helped people see that.”

In Punta Santiago, a beach town where Maria first hit the island, winds topped 200 miles per hour. The town was flooded from all directions, from the ocean, rain and nearby rivers, according to Father José Colón, pastor of Nuestra Señora del Carmen.

“They lost everything. They didn’t have anything to eat—some even lost their dentures,” the bearded, spectacled young priest says. “We were battered by the waves from the sea. The church was left standing, so on the second day after the hurricane, we began the process of trying to rebuild Punta Santiago.”

Father Colón says residents were left to sleep on the floor with only the clothes on their back. So on the third day after the hurricane, the church started offering meals.
The Next Puerto Rico

Despite obstacles, Father Colón believes Puerto Ricans are strong enough for the challenging recovery ahead.

We’ve so often heard, ‘Puerto Rico will pick itself up.’ But Puerto Rico will only pick itself up when we can do so on our own,” he says. “We’re not asking for handouts. We’re asking for the tools to be able to work. We’ve simply stumbled and fallen. Now we will pick ourselves up and keep walking. We just need a push.”

Mr. Vélez-Arocho of the Pontifical University of Puerto Rico says that Puerto Rico today is like the field hospital that Pope Francis speaks about: “There are wounded, there are dead, there are those who are leaving.”

The next Puerto Rico should be judged according to Catholic social teaching, he says: It should right past wrongs and be built on sustainability. That includes alternative energy sources that make use of the Caribbean island’s climate, like wind and solar power. The island needs to prepare for future natural disasters, like another hurricane or an earthquake.

“We must be a people that empowers individuals to move from misery to poverty to development,” Mr. Vélez-Arocho says. “There are actions we need to take as we look toward the future so that we do not suffer as we have in the past.”

Father Camacho of Caritas Puerto Rico believes the hurricanes have also revealed something deep inside the spirit of the people. In his relief efforts, he met a formerly homeless person whom Caritas had helped to find shelter.

After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, “he came with a lot of one dollar bills and nickels and other coins in his socks,” Father Camacho says. The man had brought all his money—$138—which he had raised recycling cans, even though he was still without electricity, water and food.

“I still have a home,” he told Father Camacho. “So, as I was homeless, I know what people are passing through. So, I want to give this to the people who are in most need.”

In this way, too, Hurricane Maria has revealed something about Puerto Ricans, the priest says. They are people who care for the vulnerable.

“We’ve been passing through difficult moments but very peacefully trying to help each other,” Father Camacho says. “It’s a sign that we are good-hearted people, and there is a lot of hope for the future that we are going to construct together.”

José Dueño contributed reporting to this story.

Puerto Rico - still suffering: echo opinion from New York

New York newspaper Newsday - a sad but badly needed opinion about Puerto Rican dispair.

Puerto Rico
 Recovery after Hurricane Maria September 20, 2017

Four months after Hurricane Maria, still desperate in Puerto Rico
The island's people need more help, and billions of dollars more from Washington.

By The Newsday Editorial Board: February 3, 2018

Here is what is happening in Puerto Rico more than four months after Hurricane Maria slammed through the island: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is still providing food and water, after mistakenly prompting fears it would stop. 

Tarps cover roofs across the island. Approximately a third of the population is still without power.

No power usually means no hot meals and no refrigeration. 

No power means no air conditioning in tropical heat that is already breaching the 80s.

And that’s all far better than it was in recent weeks.

The island’s disaster was more far-reaching than some of the worst ever seen on the mainland. More than three times as many generators were provided by FEMA to Puerto Rico after Maria as compared with Hurricane Katrina. For the 3.4 million people who call Puerto Rico home, it has been an unconscionably slow recovery. The federal government must extend the true helping hand our fellow Americans desperately need.

The odds were stacked against the island long before hurricane winds swirled. A decadelong recession has prompted a stream of migration away from the island. With the economy faltering after a repeal of a federal corporate tax break, successive governments borrowed excessively and the island is now tens of billions of dollars in debt — which has led to a federal control board demanding austerity.

Mismanagement caused deep cracks in infrastructure. There were bad local decisions after the storm. The Puerto Rico Electric Power (PREPA) Authority chose not to immediately call in hordes of power workers via mutual aid agreements with mainland utilities. 

Instead, PREPA at first relied on Whitefish Energy Holdings, a Montana company, due to logistical difficulties and cost concerns, but this only delayed energy restoration. The mountainous terrain posed its own challenges.

Meantime, the federal response has been scandalously inadequate. It started with early logistical stumbles like delayed opening of ports, slowing the delivery of supplies. President Donald Trump obscenely overstated the island’s recovery when he visited in October and squabbled with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz as she and others asked for more aid.

The inadequate response continues today with an omnibus $81 billion supplemental disaster-relief package that is stalled in the Senate. It’s hardly enough for Puerto Rico, but miserly when split with other disaster-struck areas such as Texas and Florida.

And the future looks dire: The Republican tax bill disadvantages Puerto Rico businesses compared with mainland ones, making it even more difficult for Puerto Ricans to get back on their feet.

New York has done more, in many ways, because of its bond with Puerto Rico. The Empire State has long been the heart of the Puerto Rican diaspora, particularly since hundreds of thousands migrated to the mainland in the 1950s. 

As an American territory, Puerto Rico has only a nonvoting member of Congress and does not vote for president, making New York politicians de facto surrogates.

New York’s efforts to get the power back on have been particularly helpful. New York power workers were on the ground within days of Hurricane Maria to analyze damage, and more than 450 New York State utility workers have helped restore power to more than 90 percent of San Juan area customers.

But the devastation requires a wider response. Today in Puerto Rico, you will find fallen trees aside major highways and still-broken bridges. Many storefronts are shuttered and traffic lights are dead, symbols of the scale of the storm and the slow return to normalcy. The disaster aid package should be approved immediately — including, at the very least, funding for the island’s Medicaid crisis, caused in part by the federal government contributing much less than it does for states.

Also needed: a waiver for the portion of disaster response for which Puerto Rico would be responsible after the first 180 days post-storm. That local cost-share was waived for Louisiana after Katrina. The legislation also must reform Stafford Act requirements, which stipulate that federal dollars be used largely on simple reconstruction. The federal government should build to a higher standard, trying to prevent this level of destruction from happening again. Puerto Rico in turn must marshal political will to modernize its electrical grid.

Beyond the bills, Puerto Rico’s economy needs help. The commonwealth needs some leniency as it seeks to restructure its debts. Why sow salt in fields that one day must be fertile?

There is hope for Puerto Rico.

Many Puerto Ricans see the disaster as an opportunity to rebuild smartly. Better bridges can span rivers, roads will be cleared and improved, and tourism will again flourish with New Yorkers and others hopping on cruise ships and flights, sustaining the economy as Puerto Rico rises.

But to do so, the island needs more help, and more recognition by Washington, with respect for the Puerto Ricans, that these are fellow citizens, too.

Puerto Rico babies need care - thank midwives

Donald Trump has abandoned Puerto Rico.  

In addition to being unable to calculate the accurate number of post Hurricane Maria* deaths, the focus is now on protecting new lives.  Thankfully, Puerto Rico has the help of midwives to care for and save the lives of babies.

Midwives are caring for mothers and babies while dealing with unsanitary conditions, a high risk of Zika infections and the challenge of working with a lack of electric power.  

Delivering babies and saving lives in Puerto Rico- by Alexa Liautaud, Cassandra Giraldo, Tessa Paoli

Vice News in Puerto Rico reports

More than half of Puerto Rico remains without power, and a fifth of residents don’t have access to clean drinking water, much less prenatal or labor and delivery supplies. 

Women are unable to find their doctors and fears of Zika carried by mosquitos amid the flooding are high. 

In this environment, many expectant mothers are forced to make panicked decisions about where to have their babies — should they drive to a hospital that might not take them or try a potentially dangerous home birth?

“The system is just overwhelmed. The doctor-to-patient ratio is too high,” said Ted Held, a physician and volunteer OB-GYN with Circle of Health International, an NGO (Non-governmental Organization)that trains and sends volunteer medical professionals to crisis zones to assist mothers and pregnant women.

After the hurricane, Held spent two weeks assessing the quality of maternal healthcare at nine clinics located around San Juan and found that many pregnant women were living in poor conditions without enough clean water or food. Many could not afford their doctor appointments or the gas to get there. 

In fact, Held is especially worried about women in cities like Loiza, where 68 percent of the residents live below the poverty line.

Puerto Rico’s maternal health care system was already weak, with the highest cesarean rate and the fifth-highest preterm birth rate in the United States. 

A mountain of rubble remains in front of the house of the Oliveras Gonzalez family, in Morovis, Puerto Rico.
(AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)

Jose Cordero, the former dean of the University of Puerto Rico’s Graduate School of Public Health, worries that stress may contribute to even more preterm births following the hurricane.

“We know that an environment where you go through a disaster is an extremely stressful environment, and so one of the concerns is that the stress could be a factor for early delivery,” he said. “At this point we don’t know yet. But that’s something that we are looking for.”

Martinez found the uncertainty around her delivery stressful. She had planned to give birth in a hospital 10 minutes away, but it closed its operating room and maternity ward as it struggled to keep up with demand for other services.

She was lucky to find a midwife who was trained to deliver babies under crisis conditions. After a long labor in the middle of the night and under cell-phone light, Martinez delivered a healthy baby girl with a full head of hair.

“The baby has to get born one way or another, but what better way than in our house, in peace,” Martinez said. “I don’t know how things would’ve ended if I didn’t have a midwife.”

Some of the disaster relief effort in Puerto Rico has been directed to pregnant women and new mothers. 

Circle of Health collected 4,000 pounds of maternal healthcare supplies, including syringes, tubing, gauze, speculums, gowns, pads and diapers, and sent them to midwives on the island. FEMA also sent baby kits including baby food, formula, diapers, and bottles.

Experts in public health say the need for midwives as first responders during and directly after natural disasters is significant. Midwives are especially helpful because they can work with few resources and they are trained in dealing with stress and trauma.

Martinez’s midwife was one of 11 volunteer midwives at a clinic outside San Juan called Mujeres Ayudando Madres, or Centro MAM. They’ve been busy these last two months caring for more than 200 women and families all over the island. In addition to facilitating home births, services include a breastfeeding station at the office (to minimize the chance of babies drinking formula made with contaminated water), Zika prevention, and prenatal and postpartum checkups.

Centro MAM was facing financial hardship and nearly closed before the storm. But when the hurricane hit, calls from desperate women came flooding in, and they reopened their doors.

“The hurricane came and we realized we cannot close right now because people need us,” said Vanessa Caldari, a certified professional midwife and the clinic’s founder. 

“We didn’t have any money, but we were going to work as much as we can.”

To contact Centro MAM, visit their website.

http://mujeresayudandomadres.com/

*Over three months have passed since the 155 mph winds of Category 4 Hurricane Maria tore through the American territory of Puerto Rico. The island’s power was knocked out. Hospitals and dialysis centers were shut. Entire towns were stranded by mudslides. Water ran dry.

Puerto Rico at Christmas 2017- post Hurricane Maria

Americans in Puerto Rico are still recovering (or, may never fully recover) from the devastating hit by Hurricane Maria.  

"...instead of offering condolences, Donald Trump reminded Puerto Rico about how much money it was costing the federal government to respond to the crisis."~ Trump threw paper towels...

There is not a lot of reason for them to celebrate Christmas or the New Year, when tens of thousands of residents have fled the island to find a residence on the US mainland.

What's Happening With the Relief Effort in Puerto Rico?

Vox.com reports: by Alexia Fernandez Campbell

Five things to know about Puerto Rico, 3 months after Hurricane Maria. Some people have experienced improvement in their dire situation, but not everyone.

Three months since Hurricane Maria's 155-mph winds plowed through Puerto Rico, leaving the island severely crippled and desperate for help.

The storm — which knocked out all power and most cell phone service — was the worst disaster to ever hit the Caribbean island, home to 3.4 million American citizens.

The reaction from the White House was one of the ugliest moments of President Trump's administration this year. 

When Trump visited Puerto Rico two weeks after the storm, he suggested that Maria wasn’t “a real catastrophe” like Hurricane Katrina. And instead of offering condolences, he reminded Puerto Rico about how much money it was costing the federal government to respond to the crisis.

He then walked around throwing paper towel supplies to hurricane survivors, and spent weeks insulting the mayor of San Juan on Twitter after she accused the federal government of abandoning Puerto Rico.

Helping Puerto Rico recover is a gargantuan task — FEMA has called it the "largest federal response to a disaster" in American history. But this response has also been unusually painful to watch, with the shady contracting deals, a drinking water crisis, and the army of federal responders stretched too thin to effectively get help to everyone quickly. Congress was slow to respond too. 

Many lawmakers visited the island, but Congressional leaders have done little to help the island beyond voting to add more money to FEMA’s disaster-relief fund.

The island is limping back to some semblance of normalcy as Christmas approaches. But hundreds of thousands have fled as the conditions fail to improve. More than a third of the island still has no power, and federal workers are still sending food and water supplies to some towns.

Here are five important things to know about Puerto Rico three months after Maria:

1) Electricity probably won’t be entirely restored before May

The single biggest problem facing Puerto Rico is still the lack of power. Gov. Ricardo Rosselló promised that 95 percent of the island would have power by now. Only 65 percent does.

Protests broke out across the island, in towns such as Trujillo Alto and Aquas Buenas, which have not had any power since the hurricane. In fact, the blackout is now the largest in US history. 

Just take a look at this chart published by the research firm Rhodium Group:

There are many reasons why it’s been so hard to restore power. For one, the power grid was a mess before the storm hit. The public utility company, PREPA, had been putting off repairs for years as the island sank into a deep economic recession. The utility company is also bankrupt and understaffed, as thousands of electrical workers have retired or moved to the US mainland in the past decade to find better jobs.

While the storm didn’t destroy the entire power grid, it did knock down 80 percent of the island's utility poles and all transmission lines. And because Puerto Rico's government is broke, it didn’t have the money to start repairing the grid right away. Instead, the head of PREPA at the time, Ricardo Ramos, signed two questionable contracts with little-known private American energy companies that required little payment up front. Ramos planned to pay the rest of the contracts with reconstruction grants from FEMA.

The main energy contract never got the far. It was a massive $300 million deal with Whitefish Energy, a tiny Montana company that had two employees at the time.

A Congressional investigation later found that Whitefish Energy ended up charging Puerto Rico more than double the regular wages for utility crew line workers and higher-than-normal daily meal rates, and included clauses making it hard for PREPA to enforce a timeline.

The public backlash led Ramos to cancel the contract and resign from his job, and PREPA had to find a new contractor.

Now the US Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing grid repair contracts with more experienced utility crews from the mainland. But the logistics are still a mess. Building and shipping thousands of utility poles and power lines to the island, then setting them up on mountainous terrain has become a headache for utility crews. 

Just getting utility polls to erect for the power lines is a supply and demand problem:  Unfortunately, Puerto Rico is competing with Texas, California, Florida, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, all of which need these sorts of materials too (and even in Maine, where a severe October wind storm destroyed utility polls). As a result, more than 50k utility poles have been ordered, but only about 11k have been delivered to the island so far

Roberto Ferdman, a reporter for Vice News, described the logistical nightmare:

The new estimate, he says, is that utility workers will restore power to 95 percent of PREPA’s customers by the end of February, and to 100 percent of them by the end of May.

“Puerto Ricans don’t necessarily believe that,” Ferdman tweeted. 

“And why should they? The original estimate was December 15th...About a third of the island is still in the dark.”

2) Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans have fled the island, probably for good

The blackout, food shortages, and unreliable running water plaguing Puerto Rico in Maria’s aftermath have triggered an exodus from the island.

It's impossible to know exactly how many Puerto Ricans have left, but more than 269,000 people have arrived in Florida on flights from Puerto Rico since the hurricane, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

Some people are are staying with relatives, some have decided to relocate to the US mainland; others are staying at hotels paid for by FEMA. Most Puerto Ricans have headed to Florida.

Before the hurricane, the Orlando area had seen a surge of migration from Puerto Ricans leaving the island for job opportunities in the United States as a result of the recession.

That pattern of migration has sped up since the hurricane.

Demographers expect the Maria to trigger an even larger migration in the long term. The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at the City University of New York estimates that Puerto Rico will lose up 470,335 residents by the end of 2019 — about 14 percent of the population.

They believe that many of them will move in Florida — up to 82,000 people a year.

The migration has already impacted Florida. More than 10,000 Puerto Rican children have enrolled in Florida’s public schools in the past three months.

On January 15, FEMA’s voucher program to cover hotel costs for displaced families will expire for Puerto Rican disaster victims. This has led Florida lawmakers to panic over the possibility of finding shelter for thousands of Americans who have nowhere else to go.

“There are tens of thousands of families living in Florida,” state Sen. Victor Torres (D-Orlando) said in a statement Wednesday to the Orlando Weekly. “If just one family becomes homeless due to lack of action by the federal government or those officials making decisions in Puerto Rico, it is one family too many.”

3) FEMA is overwhelmed

At FEMA, the responders are stretched thin, to say the least. Aside from Puerto Rico, the agency is responding to multiple federal disaster zones in California, Texas, and Florida.

It’s the longest activation in FEMA’s history, and the agency is “tapped out,” FEMA administrator Brock Long told lawmakers at a November 30 Congressional hearing.

“It is time to question what is FEMA’s role in disaster management and emergency recovery,” Long told members of the House Appropriations Committee. “Let’s hit the reset button. FEMA was never designed to be first or only respondent in a disaster, but we often find ourselves in that situation.”

The reconstruction of Puerto Rico is arguably the agency's most challenging mission ever. As FEMA has moved from emergency response to recovery mode, it's now focused on providing federal grants to rebuild public buildings, help homeowners repair homes, and provide loans to small businesses.

But reconstruction is difficult when residents are still in a state of emergency —without power or proper shelter. FEMA said it is still distributing tarps, food, and water to some communities. 

More than 450 people are still living in shelters.

The agency has also been inundated with 1 million applications for individual disaster assistance, which is aid for disaster victims who lost their homes and jobs and need money for temporary shelter or to pay their bills, among other challenges. So far, FEMA has approved 350,000 individual aid requests, adding up to about $705 million, said FEMA spokesman Daniel Llargues.

The agency is also reviewing grant applications from local governments who need help rebuilding schools, roads and other infrastructure. All 78 municipalities in Puerto Rico have applied for these reconstruction grants, Llargues said, and all of them have had grants approved. So far, FEMA has wired $453 million to Puerto Rican government agencies to rebuild. That includes $60 million for the Department of Transportation to start fixing 15 impassible bridges, according to El Nuevo Día newspaper.

Here’s a chart FEMA made to remind people of the gargantuan efforts the agency has made in Puerto Rico since the hurricane hit:

4) The government still doesn't know how many people died

More than 90 days after the hurricane hit, the government has no idea how many people died as a result of the storm. 

As a matter of fact, the governor recently ordered a recount.

The official hurricane death toll has been a source of controversy since President Trump visited the island on October 3 and congratulated Gov. Ricardo Rosselló for the low number of deaths. At that time, the number was six. The official death count —now at 64 — has since been disputed by the press (including Vox), by academics, and by members of Congress.

In November, Vox published an analysis by social science researchers who used mortality data from the Puerto Rico Vital Statistics System to compare the historical death averages for September and October and found that the number of people who died from the storm is closer to 1,085. A New York Times analysis of similar data found that the death toll could be at least 1,052.

This prompted two members of Congress, Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), to request a federal investigation by the Government Accountability Office. In a letter to the head of the GAO, they said they worried that the death toll had been “artificially suppressed.”

Five days later, Rosselló ordered a recount of all hurricane deaths.
Staff from Puerto Rico's Public Safety Department and Demographic Registry will investigate each death recorded in the hurricane's aftermath, regardless of the official cause of death listed on the death certificate, Rosselló said. He did not give details about how the investigation will work or how long it will take.

But many are skeptical about Rosselló’s ability to provide accurate estimates at this point. Rep. Velázquez said she will continue to press for an independent federal review.

5) Trump failed Puerto Rico

President Trump is ultimately responsible for what happens in Puerto Rico.

Under the Stafford Act, the president takes the lead role in disaster response and recovery in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. 

He could unilaterally order FEMA and other federal agencies to send more people or direct more resources to the island.

Trump could also publicly pressure the governor to be more forthcoming about the death count. The local government surely shares the blame for the slow response, but the president is ultimately responsible for the lives of the 3.4 million US citizens on the island.

His casual treatment of their struggle may come back to haunt Republicans. Puerto Ricans who live on the island may not have a voting member in Congress, but once they move to the United States, they do.

With hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans fleeing the island, they will likely voice their frustrations in the voting booth in the coming midterm elections.