A Litany of Excuses

“The storm caused these problems, not our response to it.”

Tom Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser.

It is fascinating, in a bad way, how the Trump administration failed so dramatically in the standard early post-Hurricane Maria rescue and recovery efforts in Puerto Rico. That massive storm decimated this rather distant Caribbean island, a land with almost 3.5 U.S. citizens. Did the President forget that this was an American territory? Was he so focused on their governmental debt problem that those financial concerns trumped the need to save human lives and make the land habitable again? Was their Spanish-linked culture an anathema to his base, their predilection to support Democratic policy? Or did he simply not care? Unlike George W Bush, who was attacked for his underwhelming response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, no one expects much from Donald Trump… so his callous failures just don’t stand out that much.

The fact is that the response was exceptionally slow for such a massive natural disaster, even as Trump patted himself on the back at his administration’s excellent good work, throwing packages of paper towels to a very small and hopeful crowd at a shelter far away from the most serious damage, a week after the storm hit. Lambasting the Democratic mayor of San Juan in a series of Trump-tweets seemed to be the height of early federal responsiveness to the horror experienced in that territorial capital. He didn’t even visit or fly over most of the devastation across the island.

With roads and infrastructure fractured still, with most of the island without power (it is now a “generator island”… with full power restoration anticipated for March of next year) and only about half getting potable water, with most of the island’s business operations (and concomitant jobs) shut down, perhaps it is too soon to begin a post-mortem on the disaster. But by comparison, hurricane efforts after Harvey and Irma are moving much more rapidly along, and while Hurricane Nate did inflict some nasty flooding in parts of the Gulf coast, it really wasn’t remotely the disaster of the earlier storms.

The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA, part of Homeland Security) is hardly the be-all and end-all of disaster relief. When infrastructure, access and basics are ripped apart on a massive level, where access is complicated by the lack of land routes into the recovery zone, it is well-recognized within the government and the experts who study such emergency situations, that the only immediate relief possible has to come from an quick and rather logistically complex sea and air effort from the U.S. military. FEMA simply is not and has never been equipped to deal with those problems at that scale.

But it took the President nearly two weeks, well-past the departure of the storm, to order the military to do what it should have been ordered to do on day one. How well would you do without power, food, potable water or the ability to drive for help for two weeks or more? Add raw sewage and searing temperatures to the mix.

Simply, there are obvious logistical realities that separate Puerto Rico from emergency response efforts on the mainland. Ocean. So what? Experts in disaster relief, like Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, can provide us with the obvious background for how to determine appropriate rapid responses to such grand-scale disasters.

“Ten days after Maria made landfall, he said he was ‘shocked’ that planes were landing by pilots’ visuals rather than an instrument landing system. ‘The Air Force is fully capable in rapid fashion of setting up a control tower,’ he said. ‘I thought that that issue alone—the failure of a functioning airport 10 days later—to be a good indication of the slowness of response to this horrendously unprecedented natural disaster.’

“The White House and the DOD [Department of Defense] have said this slowness was due to circumstances beyond their control… [Trump advisor, Tom Bossert, noted the quote above and] “There’s never been a piece of land that we’ve known that was so devastated,’ he said on Monday [10/2]. Plus, DOD officials note that under federal law, they can only give Puerto Rico the military support its governor asks for—the implication being that if the island doesn’t have enough military support, it’s their fault. Their governor should have asked for more.

“Redlener said it’s true that the devastation is unprecedented. ‘The logistical problems are as severe as I’ve ever seen in a disaster,’ he said; roads destroyed, communications down, fuel difficult to distribute. But those logistical problems were exactly why Puerto Rico needed a much larger military presence early on, as that agency is the only one that can essentially build infrastructure out of nothing in a matter of days. ‘They needed a massive engagement, a full, robust, in-force presence of the DOD, and they didn’t get it,’ Redlener said. Logistical problems on the island don’t explain that delay.

“What Redlener thinks could explain the delay is Puerto Rico’s request for military aid. What was in that request, and when was it made? How long did it take for the Trump administration to approve it? And how long did it take for the military to actually deploy? ‘Somewhere between Puerto Rico’s request and the White House and DOD, we ended up with a very slow response,’ he said. ‘And that was very unfortunate.’

“[New Republic writer Emily Atkin] asked spokespeople at FEMA, DOD, and the Puerto Rican government for specifics on the island’s disaster request—the contents, the date, and the timeline of approval. A spokesperson for FEMA recommended [she] contact the DOD for questions about military response. A spokesperson for the military’s Northern Command, which responds to major disasters, referred [Emily] to local response officials for Puerto Rico. An inquiry to Puerto Rico’s emergency response agency went unanswered.” A New Republic article reprinted in MotherJones.com, October 4th.

I’ve seen enough World War II-themed movies to know that the military can build air fields from scratch in days, build temporary bridges and docking facilities in hours and air drop massive supplies to troops completely surrounded by the enemy. The island warfare in the Pacific during that conflict shows how the military has a long, well-earned reputation of overcoming these “oceanic” challenges with unbelievably rapid and logistically solid solutions. This films were not just propaganda; the military really accomplished these amazing feats… repeatedly. And that was WWII; we have vastly better capacity today, coupled with satellite imagery and amazing new technologies.

No, the slow federal response to the crisis in Puerto Rico was governed by Trump’s two standard priorities: self-image and political loyalty. To Trump, that image issue – not a big deal anyway since his base for the most part does not value an Hispanic territory the same way it values U.S. states, especially red states – was handled completely by his one day trip and his congratulating himself on federal efforts. And his battle with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz tells you how his disdain for the island’s Democrat-leanings was vastly more relevant than sending in military troops. The Trump administration chose to limit aid and respond only to public outrage outside of San Juan before doing what was obvious, necessary and appropriate to rescue and sustain millions of non-Trump supporters on an island with an Hispanic culture… so far away. Yet these efforts are still too little, too late.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect that you will see this pattern of image and loyalty become continue to be the driving force in every major policy decision that the Trump administration will make in the coming years… regardless of the real consequences to real human beings.