Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Brace for Hurricane Irma

The island’s authorities have also moved to limit potential price-gouging by gas stations, opened up hundreds of shelters, are maintaining flood pumps, and are also clearing drainage waterways that lead to the ocean. In a follow-up release in Spanish, Governor Rosselló notes that he met with the mayors of the towns of Rio Grande and Naguabo, and expressed the need to mobilize more physicians and emergency services.

Still, even with the preparations in both territories, and the progress there since the devastation of hurricanes past, Irma presents a grave threat. The biggest structural issue in the islands is not the strength of the buildings or the drainage systems, but extensive poverty, and the ability of government, infrastructure, and health resources to respond in the aftermath.

Nothing highlights the deep structural poverty and inequalities of a place like a disaster, and those fissures are much deeper in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands than most areas in the continental United States. Puerto Rico especially is already in the throes of health and financial issues, and faces deep strain on the infrastructure across the island. And the Virgin Islands, facing the worst of the storm, has its own health-care challenges that might make long-term recovery difficult.

Those issues will make the national relief response critical, even as entities like FEMA have to manage the ongoing Harvey response, and the aftermath of whatever Irma brings to the mainland. According to Mapp, the federal government is listening.

“[White House chief of staff] General John Kelly and I spoke this morning and he had a message from the president,” Mapp told me. “The president wanted me to know and wanted to convey to the people that [the federal government] is paying close attention to the events, that they are fully committed to providing all the resources that the people of the United States Virgin Islands need, and that they will be following up as the event happens.”

“The president wants us to know that we are in his prayers,” continued Mapp. But after a controversial tour through the devastation of Harvey, the Trump administration might have an equally daunting task ahead in the territories.

Article Appeared @https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/the-american-territories-gear-up-for-hurricane-irma/538869/

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