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Since the Dilly, Dally, Delay & Stall Law Firms are adding their billable hours, the Toyota U.S.A. and Route 44 Toyota posts have been separated here:

Route 44 Toyota Sold Me A Lemon



Showing posts with label Puerto Rico devastation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Puerto Rico devastation. Show all posts

Sunday, October 1, 2017

There is NO Defense for Drumpf's PUERTO RICO FAILURES!





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01 October 17 AM
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Residents of Puerto Rico walk across a flooded street after Hurricane Maria pummels the island. (photo: AFP)
Residents of Puerto Rico walk across a flooded street after Hurricane Maria pummels the island. (photo: AFP)

ALSO SEE: Puerto Rico's 
Natural and Unnatural Crises


General Overseeing Puerto Rico Response Breaks With Trump: We Don't Have Enough Troops or Equipment

By Ellen Mitchell, The Hill
30 September 17

he Defense Department has not sent enough troops and vehicles to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico but will soon send more, according to the three-star general newly in charge of coordinating the military response.
Army Lt. Gen. Jeff Buchanan said Friday morning that the Pentagon has 10,000 people helping with the response after Hurricanes Irma and Maria ripped through Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands earlier this month.
“We're certainly bringing in more [troops]," Buchanan said on CNN’s “New Day.”
"For example, on the military side, we're bringing in both Air Force, Navy, and Army medical capabilities in addition to aircraft, more helicopters. ... [But] it's not enough, and we're bringing more in.”
The Pentagon has already allocated more than 4,000 troops to help in rescue and restoration efforts to the U.S. territories, but it wasn’t until Thursday, eight days after Maria slammed the Caribbean, that U.S. Northern Command (Northcom) sent Buchanan.
The head of Northcom's Joint Force Land Component Command is now serving as the Defense Department’s primary liaison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

ANOTHER INCOMPETENT BRAIN DEAD TRUMPER! 
Tom Bossert, the President Trump’s homeland security adviser, has defended the wait time in between the end of the storm and appointing Buchanan.
“It didn’t require a three-star general eight days ago,” Bossert said of the government response.
When asked whether it was a mistake to not have Buchanan on the ground in Puerto Rico earlier, Bossert replied, “No, not at all.”
“In fact, that doesn’t affect the way that we stage equipment and the way we area command and field operational command. This is textbook and it’s been done well,” Bossert told reporters Thursday at the daily White House press briefing.
The Pentagon has been steadily increasing its help to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands after both were slammed by the two Category 5 storms. The hurricanes knocked out power across Puerto Rico, leaving nearly half of its population of more than 3.4 million without drinking water.
Puerto Ricans and lawmakers, however, are frustrated with the federal government's response.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Friday on CNN that Trump should put the U.S. military in charge of handling and delivering aid to Puerto Rico. He asserted that only the Pentagon could repair the logistical issues preventing aid from reaching island residents.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz on Friday urged Trump to ramp up the federal assistance, ripping acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke for referring to the government’s response as a “good news story.”
“Damnit, this is not a good news story,” Cruz said. “This is a people-are-dying story.”

Here's How to Support Puerto Rico as It Recovers From Devastating Hurricane Maria
Remezcla
Excerpt: "With the island expected to go without power for months, Puerto Rico now needs our help. The US territory is in the midst of a financial crisis and already struggling in many ways."
READ MORE

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Jeremy Konyndyk on Trump's Puerto Rico Failures




Tweet storm from Jeremy Konyndyk (fmr. US Foreign Disaster Assistance chief):

"The White House took their eye off the ball at the worst moment.
The 2-3 days immediately after a major event are critical; that's when you gauge damage to calibrate a response.
During that critical window, rather than shaping a response, Trump was at his golf club. He held no meetings on Puerto Rico.
Senior administration officials didn't visit Puerto Rico to assess situation first-hand until 5 days post storm. That's inexcusable.
What finally set Trump off and spurred his attention was not briefings - it was bad press coverage.
He didn't hold a high level meeting on the storm response until Tuesday - Six DAYS after landfall. This is disaster mgmt malpractice.
And it has become clearer and clearer that response hasn't had the resources and people it needs - as Dept. Of Defense is now admitting.
Why do I call this malpractice? Because they had all the tools they needed to see this for what it was; if only they'd paid attention.
Storm played out exactly as forecast. Was clear it would be devastating, and it was. And then....the President left things on autopilot.
And that has had real, tangible, harmful consequences for the speed and effectiveness of the response.
FEMA staff deserve better. DoD staff deserve better. And most of all, the people of Puerto Rico deserve better. This is not leadership."


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Monday, September 25, 2017

CLG: Shocking emails reveal editor of food science journal was on Monsanto's p-yroll at $400 per hour








Sunday, September 24, 2017

Puerto Rico's Weak Infrastructure Creates Big Challenges for Recovery



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Reader Supported News
24 September 17 AM
It's Live on the HomePage Now: 
Reader Supported News



A resident faces the damage to her suburban San Juan 
property from Hurricane Maria. The lack of electricity and other key 
elements of infrastructure make recovery that much harder. (photo: Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)
A resident faces the damage to her suburban San Juan property from Hurricane Maria. The lack of electricity and other key elements of infrastructure make recovery that much harder. (photo: Alex 

Puerto Rico's Weak Infrastructure Creates Big Challenges for Recovery

By Laurel Wamsley, NPR
24 September 17

ell before this year's series of historically powerful hurricanes, Puerto Rico already had a notoriously fickle power supply and crushing debt — the power authority effectively declared bankruptcy in July. Power outages were routine, even in cities.
Then came Hurricane Maria, knocking out the entire power grid and more than 95 percent of the cellphone system on an island of more than 3 million people.
And Puerto Rico's weak infrastructure will make it difficult to provide the aid that it desperately needs.
"Private and public infrastructure is just down," William Villafane, an adviser and chief of staff to the governor of Puerto Rico, told NPR on Thursday. "We are without power, without water service. No hospital has power service. Our streets are all — you just can't go through. When you go through and you have to literally take out the trees that are on the streets — it's the worst hurricane ever."
When you think infrastructure, you might think of bridges, pipelines and fiber-optic networks. But some of the problems in Puerto Rico at the moment are more basic — and they have a way of piling up.
"We have fuel, but we don't have the way to take the fuel to the hospitals. And many of the gas stations, for example, are just with great damages," said Villafane. "We have 34 hospitals around the island, and many of them are operating with their own generators, but they will go out of gas promptly. We are making the adjustments to provide them with the oil and gas and to provide them the electricity as soon as possible."
Garrett Ingoglia is the vice president of emergency response at Americares, a Connecticut-based relief organization that is working to provide medical supplies and assistance to Puerto Rico. He said the obstacles in responding to Maria started immediately: Like other organizations, Americares hasn't yet been able to get anyone into Puerto Rico since the storm.
"We are sending an assessment team to Puerto Rico and are having trouble getting in. They've been on various commercial flights that have been canceled," he told NPR. "Some of our partners think they can get us on a flight in from Fort Lauderdale tonight."
When Florida was hit by Irma, Ingoglia said, workers from Americares were able to drive in to deliver supplies and aid. "But you know, you can't do that with islands."
After Superstorm Sandy, he says, people in parts of New Jersey were without power for weeks, and his organization delivered blankets because it was getting cold. "But without power for months? I don't know if we've faced that."
Providing aid "in a place with as many people as Puerto Rico without power for weeks or months on end — that's going to be very challenging," he said.
Some medicines, like insulin, need to be kept at certain temperature. Ingoglia said if refrigeration isn't possible, it's going to be very difficult to provide people with the medicines they need.
"You can use generators, but those need diesel fuel, and that's going to be in short supply as well," he said. "These are some of the challenges when you have a grid that's not that great."

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