And it was really hard to predict the hurricane's trajectory and force, not.
With Harvey and Irma The Dutch and French marines were already partly on the spot on the islands that are/were part of the nation's territory before the storms hit, and partly waiting a bit outside the trajectory on nearby islands and at sea with emergency aid to deploy as soon as the harbors and airfields were made accessible, and ready for airdrops of emergency supplies in case it would take too long to clear roads and restore electricity.
These activities need to be done, before the storm actually hits, or is likely to hit. Apparently little was done to protect the citizens of Puerto Rico against the aftermath of the devastation, making their situation even worse.
It's a bloody disgrace for such a powerful country doing so little for even its own citizens.
Cheers,
Bart
First of all, the US through FEMA started prepositioning even before Irma the storm that hit long before Maria even became a direct threat.
FEMA bulletin of 9/5/17:
"Approximately 124 FEMA staff have been deployed to the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, with an additional 83 staff currently serving in the FEMA call center in Puerto Rico. FEMA has pre-staged meals and water in preparation for the storm, to be provided as requested by Commonwealth and territory partners. Regional Response Coordination Centers in Atlanta, Georgia, New York, New York, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, are all activated with interagency partners to monitor Hurricane Irma, and respond as the storm track changes. FEMA regional and national Incident Management Assistance Teams are on the ground in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and en route to Florida."https://www.fema.gov/news-release/2017/09/05/fema-and-federal-partners-prepare-catastrophic-category-5-hurricane-irmaBeside that, there an issue with scale. I'm not knocking your marines. But. my wife and I cruised to St Martin, a very rich and well developed island. It's tiny. It's so small, we were able to hire a cab that took us to sightsee both the Dutch and French sides in just a few hours. The island is split approximately in two with the French owning one half and the Dutch the other half. The island is only 34 square miles compared to Puerto Rico which is 3500 square miles, more than one hundred times the size of St. Martin and larger than the State of Delaware. It's 1000 miles at sea from the American mainland. Beside the main island, there are two other islands making up Puerto Rico-Vieques and Culebra. That complicates the support. St. Martin has about 80,000 people, French and Dutch sides total. Puerto Rico has about 4,000,000 people about 50 times the size. If Puerto Rico was a city, it would be the second largest city in America before NYC the largest but ahead of LA and Chicago. When I was in St Maartin, the Dutch side, there were 5-6 100,000+ ton cruise vessels in a modern port beside mine. The infrastructure is top notch because of tourists as it's a very rich island.
Puerto Rico which governs itself has let its infrastructure deteriorate over the years. They went into huge debt like Venezuela even though they pay no US taxes and for many years corporations, including many of the largest American pharmaceutical companies, who located there also didn't have to pay taxes. This created many great jobs and wealth for the island. Additionally, the US federal government has bailed them out before due to storms and will again. But P.R. did nothing to improve their infrastructure situation and probably won't again. We should help them as quickly as we can. But they have to do better to improve their infrastructure especially electricity, telephones, marine ports and airports. Frankly considering their debt, I don't know how they'll do it. Maybe they'll vote to become a state so they can get bailed out.
