"The Puerto Rico and the San Juan that we knew yesterday is no longer there," San Juan's mayor tells @GadiNBC as she fights back tears. pic.twitter.com/M4yL7hHWe5
— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) September 20, 2017
Tough times ahead for Puerto Rico, sadly.
I have no knowledge of architectural history, but thinking back on my youth in Puerto Rico, it strikes me that a high percentage of the “Pre-War” (WW2) housing and buildings might well have been built after the destruction of the 1928 (San Felipe II- 312 fatalities) and 1932 (San Ciprian-225 deaths) hurricanes. I think in the Spanish speaking Caribbean, they named each season’s storms alphabetically, after a Catholic saint name.
Anyway, I listened to the Mayor of San Juan in some of her local interviews and in her MSNBC and CNN interviews last night. She is saying that San Juan is going to have to perform a major reconstruction and reinvention of itself.
In saner times, this would be an opportunity for piles of federal reconstruction dollars that would upgrade Puerto Rico’s infrastructure, make it greener and more resilient, even an example for other vulnerable areas to follow.
Yeah, I know I’m dreaming.
We need the Texas congressional delegation, who voted against FEMA aid for NJ because it was not kosher (included minor perceptible levels of pork, as interpreted by the Texas delegation) but couldn’t vote for hurricane aid for Texas fast enough two weeks ago. Unfortunately, Puerto Rico has one non voting member of Congress (the Resident Commissioner).
The best outcome here would be to establish something akin to the Marshall plan for Puerto Rico. it needs to be a thoroughly coordinated effort to re-build this island with someone in an oversight position to make sure the money goes to re-building and upgrading in a timely fashion.
Unfortunately, there is no interest in DC to doing anything like that.
Trump’s “friends” will flee the political unrest that radical Islam is causing in Nambia and descend on the island like great black vultures to pick the remnants clean.
("It’s like Fox News. I report, you decide)