Desperate plea for help

In Puerto Rico, another desperate plea for help

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, concerns deepen that the U.S. territory is too much of an afterthought.

By JACQUELINE KLIMAS

Days after Hurricane Maria barreled through here virtually no people are on the streets and the usually bustling tourist area is littered with curled sheets of metal. Lines of cars waiting to fill up on gas are backed up along the highway off-ramps.

“We haven’t forgotten about you,” Adm. Paul Zukunft, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, told a gathering on Monday after what the governor has called the "biggest catastrophe" in the U.S. territory's history.

But the political leadership of Puerto Rico worries that the suffering of its 3.5 million U.S. citizens is once again an afterthought in Washington.

“We don’t have a voice in the Senate unless it’s Marco Rubio," Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, Puerto Rico's single nonvoting member of the House of Representatives, said at an emergency operations center here, where POLITICO accompanied visiting dignitaries before touring the Coast Guard's main base in the region, which suffered extensive damage.

"We don’t have two senators,” added Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), whose constituents have been similarly hard hit by the season's historic storms and similarly lack a vote in Congress.

President Donald Trump has come under fire for failing to focus more attention on the plight of Puerto Rico and the nearby Virgin Islands over the weekend, while tweeting over a dozen times about the National Football League. The crisis was also largely absent from the 24-hour news networks, where Hurricanes Harvey in Texas and Irma in Florida received wall-to-wall coverage.

Trump on Monday tweeted about the island's plight but seemed to blame Puerto Rico itself for its woes.

"Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble," he tweeted. "It's old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities — and doing well."

It’s an all-too-familiar predicament for disenfranchised residents of Puerto Rico, which is poorer than all 50 states, has an unemployment rate of nearly 12 percent, and is still reeling from a financial crisis of historic proportions in which it declared a form of bankruptcy earlier this year.

After Maria, the territory’s leaders are hoping their strongest leverage to get long-term aid from Washington will be the sizable populations of Puerto Ricans who reside on the mainland and constitute a powerful voting bloc, especially in places like New York and Florida.

They are focused on building a coalition of lawmakers to gain support for a new federal aid bill. Congress has already passed a $15 billion package to assist those affected by Hurricane Harvey in Texas, but House Speaker Paul Ryan has signaled that more aid is on the way.

While Puerto Rico does not have a vote in Congress, large populations of Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland do have a voice in the midterm and presidential elections, and some experts predict how the White House and Congress respond could have an impact at the ballot box.

About 20 percent of Puerto Ricans live on the U.S. mainland, said Robert Stein, who teaches urban politics at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The two states with the largest Puerto Rican populations, Florida and New York, control 54 House seats and 58 votes for president in the Electoral College.

“This may be a big issue in upcoming elections,” Stein predicted.

Rubio of Florida said on Monday that helping Puerto Rico is personal for him.

“The important part is to make sure it’s not forgotten," the former GOP presidential hopeful said. "We have a fundamental obligation to a U.S. territory and American citizens to respond to a hurricane there the way we would anywhere in the country."

Rubio said it will be a challenge to get more hurricane aid through the Senate, but said lawmakers knew the first aid bill "would not be enough."

“There’s an acknowledgment that we have to go back and do more, and now maybe sooner than anticipated,” he said, noting that he expects Congress to address a funding bill for Maria and Irma later this month or early next.

Florida’s other senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, who is up for reelection in 2018, tweeted Monday that he is “calling on U.S. military to send additional search & rescue, medical and construction teams to Puerto Rico.”

Even before Maria, Nelson and Rubio sent a letter to Trump last week urging a greater role for the federal government in assisting U.S. territories after recent storms emanating from the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Other Puerto Rican officials also argued it is time for lawmakers to make the territory’s needs a greater priority.

“Let them know that we are committed U.S. citizens, that we are proud U.S. citizens, that we helped others when they were going through difficult times not more than 10 days ago and that now it’s the time to help Puerto Rico back,” Gov. Ricardo Rossello told reporters Monday.

The situation in Puerto Rico, where downed trees and power lines and roofs and siding ripped off of buildings are now commonplace, could become more dire before it improves.

Residents lack basic necessities, including food and clean drinking water, and the island could have no electricity for many months. Many residents have no safe place to live. And a lack of temporary housing means residents are at greater risk of disease, such as dengue fever or other mosquito-borne ailments.

Early reports from the island's rich farmland also suggest its agricultural sector, which along with tourism is a major element of its already shaky economy, could be set back for a year or more.

Over the weekend, reports of hysteria started to spread from areas outside the capital, including a warning that a hospital full to capacity was at risk of collapsing, along with a major dam. Rossello, calling Maria the "biggest catastrophe" in the island's history, appealed for far more assistance, especially from the Pentagon.

“We still need some more help. This is clearly a critical disaster in Puerto Rico. It can’t be minimized and we can’t start overlooking us now that the storm passed, because the danger lurks,” he told the The Washington Post.

Plaskett, who was elected to the at-large Congress seat in 2014, also said she expects Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress, and Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who has previously worked on legislation to address Puerto Rico’s problems, to take the lead for Puerto Rico on a recovery bill in the House.

But Plaskett said she is also aware that her fellow lawmakers from the mainland can easily get distracted once Puerto Rico’s plight drops from the headlines.

“They have their own interests to look out for as well,” she said.

Compounding the island's dire situation is the fact that Hurricane Maria itself followed two other major storms in the 2017 season: Harvey in Texas and Irma in Florida.

"We’re tired,” Zukunft told POLITICO en route to Puerto Rico on Monday to assess the damage. “Hopefully we get a chance to take a knee at some point in time.”

At Coast Guard Sector San Juan, the power is still off but sunlight streams in through gaping holes in the roof. There is the overwhelming smell of mold.

A Coast Guard cutter is anchored just off shore to ensure those helping with the storm response have some communications. (Zukunft related that tons of cocaine are aboard because the ship had to be quickly diverted from its drug interdiction mission to aid in storm relief).

But the bigger challenge may be ahead as the government tries to manage the rebuilding of economies from Texas to Florida to Puerto Rico.

“There’s no doubt that agencies are being stretched to their limits. As much as they’ve been challenged up until this point, the real challenge lies ahead,” said Gary Webb, the chair of emergency management and disaster science at the University of North Texas. “It’s a totally different ballgame managing the recovery from three disasters.”

Rubio assured Puerto Rican leaders Monday that he would be a solid voice for them among his colleagues on Capitol Hill.

“I will do everything I can when I get back to Washington tonight to be sure you have the resources and support not just to be able to respond now, but to get ready for the next one,” Rubio told a room full of first responders in San Juan.

But experts predict it will have to be a multiyear investment by Congress to truly rebuild the island. The territory was already suffering from a debt crisis before the storm, and now the hurricane has wiped out its other major industry: tourism.

When asked if he thought there was an appetite in Congress to provide funding over the longer term to support rebuilding Puerto Rico, Rubio, responded, “I don’t know, I hope so.”