Hurricane Maria, charged up with lots of energy from usually warm ocean temperatures, made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. Next week marks the 6-month anniversary of the day the storm wreaked so much devastation and death.
And people are still dying, in 2018, from causes that are directly related to the storm’s impacts — largely a lack of access to electricity. Many lack access to permanent shelter and potable water. Almost 10 percent of the island, according to the official status page, remains unpowered as of March 15. The island’s population is about 3.3 million, which translates to about 300,000 people still without power. That’s about the same number of people who lost power in Texas after Hurricane Harvey hit, though the vast majority had regained power 19 days later. Puerto Rico is a different story.
It’s by far the longest blackout in U.S. history, and the island’s power company is struggling to stay in the black. Last month, a power substation outside the capital of San Juan exploded, which again turned off the electricity supply to millions who had slowly regained power over the previous five months.
Maria dealt $102 billion in damage to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, a total surpassed only by the price tag from Hurricane Katrina. The Trump administration and Congress finally passed a $23 billion aid package in February, a fraction of what is needed in a U.S. territory that was vulnerable even before the storm hit. The White House has sought to limit the funding options available to the Puerto Rican government.
Still, national attention has moved on to other things. At the time of the storm, almost half of Americans did not know Puerto Ricans are citizens. And more tangible support has also receded. FEMA ended food and water aid to the island in January. And contractors working on the power grid began to leave in February.
President Trump, when he visited the island, famously downplayed the death toll and destruction amid the storm’s aftermath in comparison to “a real catastrophe like Katrina.” He was comparing an official death toll of 16 people from Hurricane Maria (that number would later rise to 64) to Katrina’s death toll of over 1,800 people. However, Maria’s real death toll is closer to 1,100 people, according to several estimates. According to the New York Times, at the time of Trump’s visit, 556 more people had died after the storm than normally would have died in prior years. Puerto Rico’s governor has ordered an outside review of the official death count.
Meeting with Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello in the Oval Office a month after the storm, Trump gave himself a 10 out of 10 on storm response. A former Puerto Rican governor disputed that grade in a tweeted photo of surgeons operating under the light of cell phones.
This is what POTUS calls a 10! Surgery performed with cellphones as flashlights in Puerto Rico today. pic.twitter.com/5pnK5dkkE6
— Alejandro (@agarciapadilla) October 21, 2017
Hospitals and clinics either had unreliable generators to power critical medical devices or had to make do without. Refrigeration, lighting, climate control, communications and water systems all impacted by blackouts and brownouts served to make daily life across the island a treacherous thing to manage for an already-vulnerable population made even more vulnerable by the storm. Teachers are struggling with the trauma of the storm’s aftermath in their own lives and that of their students.
In the Virgin Islands, which also suffered a direct hit from Hurricane Irma, the New York Times reported that in January, critical patients were still being evacuated off the island, despite the fact that most residents and hospitals had regained electricity by then. The only major hospital on St. Thomas, which serves residents of St. John as well, suffered major structural damage and as of last month, could only take care of patients in a third of the hospital beds normally available. The hospital on St. Croix was damaged even worse. And hospitals are clinging to the staff they still have, as about a quarter of nurses and support staff have left the island, often because they have lost their own homes.
A search of the White House website shows very few mentions of Puerto Rico in 2018.
Trump barely mentioned Puerto Rico at the State of the Union. Vice President Pence, in a speech last month to the nation’s governors he hosted at the Naval Observatory, mentioned visiting Puerto Rico and other Hurricane Maria-impacted states and territories with governors, as an example of the great job governors were doing. The president extended some federal disaster assistance for debris removal and emergency protection on February 23, 2018. The initial disaster declaration, signed on September 26, 2017, was due to expire after 180 days, which would be March 25, 2018.
This week, Trump mentioned Puerto Rico and other states impacted by hurricanes when congratulating the Houston Astros for winning the World Series last year — but he called out Texas’ “incredible” ability to recover, glossing over the struggle facing Americans in Puerto Rico right now..
In the month after Maria hit, Trump assured Floridians and Texas that his administration “will be with you EVERY SINGLE DAY AFTER, to restore, recover, and REBUILD!” But for Puerto Rico, Trump showed derision — he claimed that Puerto Ricans “want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort” and said that aid agencies cannot be in Puerto Rico “forever.”
A recent analysis from CityLab found that 135,592 Puerto Rican residents have resettled on the mainland United States, mostly in Florida and New York (but also in Pennsylvania Amish country). However, so far in Florida at least, fewer than expected are registered to vote.