We've had a record number of destructive hurricanes, wildfires in California, tornadoes and earthquakes. Millions of people are without a home in, Houston, US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and many more. In Puerto Rico, specifically, the effort to help these American Citizens is failing badly. There are people dying and some surviving by unclean water because they don't have any. This is week 3 by the way. Now they're dying of treatable illnesses. According to El Vocero, which is one of the largest Newspapers in Puerto Rico there are 350 bodies being stored at the state Medical Examiners office which are not being counted in the official death tolls. A lot of the deaths are from the lack of disaster support and not the hurricane itself. Sure there's a hospital ship there named the USNS Comfort is on the shore. They have a capacity of 800-1000 hospital beds and large well trained medical staff. It took over a week to send the ship there. The miracle has finally got there right? No they officially have 7 patients. It's not their fault though. They are very qualified and equipped to handle many people. Why aren't they doing it then?
There are hundreds of sealed shipping containers with supplies waiting to be opened and used. Why can't they just get those supplies out? The American Government.... They signed a 1 week waiver to help so the shipping containers could be used and distributed. The Waiver is over now and the Jones Act is preventing the supplies from leaving the shipping containers in the port to help those MILLIONS of American citizens. The supplies are there but they can't use them because of the Jones Act.
To me this seems like there are many things going wrong at the same time here. We need an effective leader for this disaster. A strong FEMA leader and more military presence there to help get the supplies to where they need to go. A strong leader to coordinate the efforts to get the food and supplies to where they need to go and medical supplies to get to the hospital. Electricity and running water restored. Critically ill to be taken to the USNS Comfort. We need to press our government to lift the Jones Act and send more help. Americans are dying and it's only getting worse. We need to UNITE and come together for these American Citizens. This is not ok.