UPDATED – WASHINGTON (CNS) — More than a week after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, much of the island remained without communication and in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
News programs have been broadcasting about long lines of travelers, who have little food or water, and are desperate to get off the island at the San Juan airport to no avail.
But the scene of destruction outside the airport is even more stark: An island whose dense tropical landscape, along with its infrastructure, towns and cities, has been greatly stripped by winds that reached 155 mph.
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Catholic Church groups have mobilized to send help. Some organizations, however, have reported problems mobilizing the aid out of airports and into the places and people who need them.
Officials say Hurricane Maria left 16 dead in Puerto Rico, 27 dead in Dominica and one in the U.S. Virgin Islands. But accurate information has been hard to come by since cellphone service and electricity, along with access to water and fuel, have been knocked out. Many roads into rural areas still are blocked by debris, making it difficult to access those who live there.
Many Puerto Ricans in the mainland U.S. have been making desperate pleas on social media to see if others can give them information about relatives or conditions in town or cities where their relatives live but which remain without communication.
President Donald Trump is set to visit Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory of 3.4 million, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands on Oct. 3. He has largely been criticized for what some perceive as a slow humanitarian response and for spending time tweeting against athletes as Puerto Rico suffered. But when he got around to tweeting about the island’s misery, he also offended many by bringing up its debt, including debt to Wall Street, as well as the island’s pre-existing failing infrastructure.
It took a week for the U.S. to send a plane carrying 3,500 pounds of water as well as food and other supplies to the island, but the president said, “It’s on an island in the middle of the ocean. … You can’t just drive your trucks there from other states.” A hospital ship also has been sent.
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Scarcity of food, water and fuel is rampant. The deaths of two patients in intensive care at a San Juan hospital were blamed on lack of fuel.
On Sept. 28, the Trump administration said it would temporarily waive shipping restrictions known as the Jones Act to get fuel and supplies to the island.
Many, such as New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, are in the meantime offering Masses as well collecting donations to help in a long recovery ahead for Puerto Rico.
Cardinal Dolan will celebrate a Mass in Spanish at St. Patrick’s Cathedral Oct. 8, to “express prayerful solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico and Mexico — and their relatives and friends in New York — in the wake of the natural disasters that have ravaged both lands this month,” according to an article in the archdiocesan newspaper, Catholic New York.
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Would be helpful if you listed where financial contributions could be sent. Does Catholic Relief Services operate in Puerto Rico?
Once again, and on a weekly basis, Catholic Philly does a “hit piece” on President Donald Trump, without cause.
Puerto Rico has an elected governor who had to request special disaster aid (before and after the hurricane) from President Trump before any shipments could occur, just like with U.S. states and Commonwealths.
Even with that being the process, President Trump’s administration prepositioned tens of thousands of tons of critical supplies on U.S. Territories in the path of Maria.
The U.S. Navy had to position its ships at a safe distance from Maria and the devistated U.S. Territories for their own safety. After Maria struck, and once the Puerto Rican government’s assessment of her impact were understood, the request for more aid went up the chain, to D.C.
Yesterday when this article was penned, Puerto Rico’s governor said that the problem wasn’t a dirth of supply’s, but truck drivers, as indigenous P.R. drivers were trapped in their own neighborhoods. Additionally, roads are blocked or destroyed slowing the flow of supplies to mountainous, inland areas and preventing military and private contractors from rebuilding the power grids. Catholic Philly is nothing more than another leftist media organ, hell bent on smearing President Trump.
It pains me to see the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, through its Archbishop, Charles Chaput using Catholic Philly as a propaganda arm.
When Barack Obama was our president, where were the weekly articles denouncing the attacks on the ‘right to life,’ the slaughter of Christians throughout the world, and the demonization of Christians and our history?
Archbishop Chaput has let Philadelphia’s Christian Catholics down, as he is the ultimate publisher of Catholic Philly, and, I’ve told him so.
The story in question, by Catholic News Service, reflected reports throughout the media that the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico has been slow. The story reported on conditions as they existed at the time it was written. The article also reflected some criticism of the Trump Administration in this regard. It was hardly a “hit job,” as you describe. If criticism is warranted, it should be presented with charity, as was the case here. CatholicPhilly continues to report on news locally, nationally and internationally, always in the context of church teaching and without ideology couched in political terms.
As a point of fact, CatholicPhilly and it predecessor, The Catholic Standard and Times, reported extensively during the years of the Obama Administration on stories regarding respect for life from conception to natural death, on the persecution of Christians around the world and on the need to strengthen religious freedoms abroad and at home. CatholicPhilly will continue to report on issues objectively and always rely on Catholic teaching as a sure guide. — Editor