{"slug":"trump-puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-response","title":"Hurricane Maria: Catastrophic Federal Failure in Puerto Rico","date":"2017-09-20","lastUpdated":"2018-08-28","description":"Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017 as a Category 4 storm, devastating the island's infrastructure. The Trump administration's federal response was widely documented as severely inadequate: FEMA was understaffed and undersupplied; the Jones Act waiver was delayed compared to prior hurricanes; Trump spent days attacking San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz for requesting help; he visited the island ten days after landfall and distributed paper towels by throwing them into a crowd. An official Harvard study published in 2018 estimated the death toll at 4,645 — the administration's official count had been 64.","summary":"Puerto Rico lost nearly all electrical power — the largest power outage in U.S. history at that point. FEMA's response was slower and less resourced than its response to simultaneous Hurricane Harvey in Texas. The Jones Act (prohibiting foreign ships from transporting cargo between U.S. ports) was waived immediately for Texas and Florida but not for Puerto Rico until 11 days after landfall. Trump attacked Mayor Cruz personally, calling her 'nasty' and suggesting Puerto Ricans wanted 'everything done for them.' Trump's visit ten days after the storm became notorious when he tossed paper towel rolls into a crowd of disaster survivors. Harvard's independent study estimated 4,645 deaths attributable to the storm and its aftermath — 73 times the official government count.","category":"rule-of-law","severity":"critical","ongoing":false,"sources":[{"url":"https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/us/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-deaths.html","title":"Puerto Rico's Hurricane Death Toll Was 4,645, Study Finds","publisher":"The New York Times"},{"url":"https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-administration-paper-towels-puerto-rico/2017/10/03/story.html","title":"Trump tosses paper towels to Puerto Rico storm victims","publisher":"The Washington Post"},{"url":"https://apnews.com/article/puerto-rico-maria-jones-act-fema-response","title":"Puerto Rico hurricane response: What went wrong","publisher":"The Associated Press"},{"url":"https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1803972","title":"Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria","publisher":"New England Journal of Medicine"}],"draft":false,"status":"published","tags":["Puerto-Rico","Hurricane-Maria","FEMA","first-term","rule-of-law","disaster-response","Jones-Act"],"relatedEntries":[],"timeline":[{"date":"2017-09-20","title":"Hurricane Maria strikes Puerto Rico — Category 4","summary":"Hurricane Maria makes landfall in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm with 155 mph winds. The entire electrical grid is destroyed. 3.3 million U.S. citizens lose power. Flooding isolates communities. Initial FEMA presence is limited."},{"date":"2017-09-25","title":"Trump tweets attacks on Mayor Cruz — 'they want everything done for them'","summary":"San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz appears at press conference in waders asking for federal help. Trump attacks her on Twitter, calling her 'nasty' and accusing Puerto Ricans of wanting everything done for them."},{"date":"2017-09-30","title":"Jones Act waiver finally granted — 11 days after landfall","summary":"The Jones Act is waived for Puerto Rico 11 days after Hurricane Maria, compared to near-immediate waivers for Texas and Florida after Harvey and Irma. Administration officials deny requests had been made sooner."},{"date":"2017-10-03","title":"Trump visits Puerto Rico — throws paper towels","summary":"Trump visits Puerto Rico ten days after the storm. At a church in Guaynabo, he throws paper towel rolls into the crowd of disaster survivors. Video of the visit circulates globally. He calls it a 'great thing.'"},{"date":"2017-10-01","title":"Whitefish Energy contract controversy","summary":"Puerto Rico's power authority awards a $300 million grid restoration contract to Whitefish Energy, a two-person Montana company sharing a hometown with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. The Army Corps of Engineers had led grid restoration in Texas but was not given the same primary role in Puerto Rico."},{"date":"2018-08-28","title":"Harvard study: 4,645 deaths attributable to Maria","summary":"A Harvard University study published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimates 4,645 deaths attributable to Hurricane Maria and its aftermath — 73 times the official count of 64. A subsequent Puerto Rican government study estimates 2,975 deaths."}],"location":{"name":"Puerto Rico","lat":18.2208,"lng":-66.5901},"custom":{"era":"first-term","posture":"reported","warCrimeClassification":"enabling","internationalLaw":[],"iccRelevance":false,"victims":"Puerto Rican residents: estimated 4,645 deaths attributable to the hurricane and federal response failures; 3.3 million U.S. citizens without power for months; patients dependent on medical equipment who died during outages; communities without clean water for extended periods","structuredPerpetrators":[{"name":"Donald Trump","role":"President; delayed adequate federal response; attacked local officials requesting help; personally minimized the crisis; approved Jones Act waiver delay compared to other hurricane responses","institution":"White House"},{"name":"Brock Long","role":"FEMA Administrator; led inadequate federal response; stated FEMA had not been adequately prepared for the scale of Puerto Rico's infrastructure destruction","institution":"Federal Emergency Management Agency"}],"updateLog":[{"date":"2018-08-28","summary":"Updated with Harvard death toll study publication."}]}}