Puerto Ricans are U.S citizens. It doesn’t require a passport or visa to travel to Puerto Rico from the mainland U.S. As a Territory, they’re not a State, but they are part of the United States.
A week after the hurricane, our federal government is telling us Puerto Rico is an island, so it’s difficult to get aid there and distribute it because the infrastructure is ruined. Wouldn’t that be part of any disaster plan; realizing that it would take extra effort to get aid to an island, and maybe even expect that the infrastructure would be ruined if the island takes a direct hit from a hurricane? Meanwhile, we all see on the news what they’re going though. They’re running out of food and water. They have no sanitation; no communications. In the heat and humidity of a tropical environment, they have no prospects for electric power for months.
People in Puerto Rico are helping each other as they can, but this is not a situation where they can just pull themselves up and restore a normal life. The entire island was devastated. The island can’t help itself. Help has to come from somewhere else; like maybe their own federal government. Fifty years ago, it didn’t matter where I was in the jungle, the Army got food and water to me every day. It didn’t matter if there were roads and bridges, it didn’t matter if it was hard, they did what they needed to do and got it done.
This doesn’t look like disaster recovery in Texas, Florida, or New York, but it looks a lot like Katrina. It doesn’t look good.
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