Trump calls Puerto Rico hurricane effort an 'unsung success' – here's the reality

Amanda Holpuch in New York
Updated
Trump calls Puerto Rico hurricane effort an 'unsung success' – here's the reality

The president’s comment, made as Hurricane Florence nears the US, ignored the government’s slow response and crisis that lingers

Donald Trump’s definition of an “unsung success” was immediately questioned on Tuesday when he used those words to describe the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria.

His comments, made as Hurricane Florence churns toward the US, ignored the stark reality that the US government was slow to respond when the devastating storm hit Puerto Rico, and a crisis still lingers on the island nearly a year after the category 4 hurricane made landfall on 20 Sep 2017.

A look at the destruction Maria left on the island of 3.3 million Americans and how the government responded:

  • The government’s official death toll from Maria is now 2,975 people, after initially being listed as just 64.

  • Officials said last month that of the nearly 1.4 million people who lost electricity in the island-wide outage after the hurricane, 25 still did not have power as of 7 August. Blackouts are common, including an island-wide outage in April.

  • The day before Maria hit Puerto Rico, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had delivered four generators to the island, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published this month. The day Hurricane Harvey hit Texas the previous month, 35 generators had been delivered. Fema has repeatedly contested comparisons between the storms because the agency was already stretched when Maria became the third hurricane to hit US territory in a month, and because Maria devastated an entire island.

  • After Maria made landfall, 80% of water customers did not have service and some residents remain skeptical about the safety of the island’s water supply.

  • Fema did not have enough bilingual employees deployed to Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico to assist with communication and translate aid documents, according to the GAO report.

  • Nine days after Maria, Fema had approved $6.2m in assistance for its victims, compared to $141.8m to victims of Harvey nine days after it struck. There was also less food, water and tarpaulins delivered to Puerto Rico and 20,000 fewer people deployed in the Maria response in the same time period compared to Harvey, according to Politico.

  • From November 2017 through January 2018, the island’s suicide hotline, Línea PAS, saw a 246% increase in calls from people who said they had attempted suicide compared with the same period a year earlier. The long-term disruption to daily life has exacerbated feelings of despair, anxiety and hopelessness, provoking a mental health crisis across the island.