San Juan mayor: “I cannot fathom the thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out the logistics for a small island…” pic.twitter.com/R1N0xDT0fz
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 29, 2017
Throughout the botched response to Hurricane Maria leveling Puerto Rico, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz has been front and center while lambasting the Trump administration for not treating the situation swiftly and seriously, a critique shared by many others. Strengthening Mayor Cruz’s case, President Trump spent an inordinate amount of time today speaking about the “big water, ocean water” hampering logistics and the debt (some of which he’s responsible for, regarding a golf development) that Puerto Rico faced before the storm.
Mayor Cruz held a press conference Friday where she directly called on President Trump to get a handle on the situation before more people died because of bureaucracy and inefficiency:
“We have no time for patience anymore…So I am asking the President of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives. They were up to the task in Africa when Ebola came over. They were up to the task in Haiti…I will do what I never thought I was going to do. I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying. And you are killing us with the inefficiency.”
Meanwhile, over 10,000 shipping containers full of relief supplies continue to languish in the Port of San Juan because of a lack of workers, fuel shortages, and barely any cell phone service on the island.