(09-12-2018 08:23 AM)Machiavelli Wrote: CBS News' David Begnaud, who has covered Maria's impact extensively, noted soon after the president's remarks that the government itself has admitted serious shortcomings in the response to the hurricane. More than half of the workforce -- 54 percent -- that FEMA sent to Puerto Rico lacked proper training, according to U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Most of the deaths blamed on Maria in Puerto Rico, according to researchers, resulted not from the physical impact of the hurricane, but rather because of the shortcomings in preparedness and response -- the lack of access to medical care; to dialysis treatment and diabetes medication, for example. Begnaud says there was not a single cot in a warehouse in Puerto Rico before Hurricane Maria struck.
OK, so let's get this straight. When was FEMA supposed to train these people before Maria hit? Remember that FEMA was already responding to hurricanes in Texas and Florida, and they were already stretched pretty thin. FEMA has something like 200 employees, and that doesn't go very far with 3 hurricanes. They have to hire contractors on an ad hoc basis. So what do you expect? Do they go out and hire a bunch of people in March and say, "OK, we're going to spend 6 months training you, and by the way you have to speak Spanish, because a bad hurricane is going to hit Puerto Rico"? I mean, seriously, what are you expecting to happen and how and why? And who pays for all that? They train them on the fly, because that's the only way they can do it. Hell, the contractors they hire here in Houston were learning on the job, and we got first crack at them because our storm was first. Florida took some of ours when Irma hit, and Puerto Rico had to make do with what was left. That's my point about lacking any dedicated response capability. We are nowhere close to having the capability to deal with three major hurricanes at once.
Most of the deaths from any hurricane result from shortcomings in preparation and response. Duh. You don't have many from the physical impact of the hurricane because, unless you have an idiot like Blanco in charge, everybody GTFO beforehand. It is a lot harder to GTFO of Puerto Rico than from the outer banks.
So whose responsibility is preparation and response? The 200 people who work for FEMA or the state and local people on the ground in PR? Who was responsible for having cots in warehouses in Puerto Rico? And once the storm hit and those cots weren't there, exactly what did you expect FEMA to do about it? And suppose there were cots. Who was supposed to pay for them? And who paid the rent on the warehouses?
You're acting as if everything required to respond just shows up magically and it all works fine and lasts a long time. It doesn't.
Exactly WTF do you expect? And who pays for it? Nobody has answered either of those so far.
With it being a state and local responsibility, the tendency is to spend nothing and hope the storm goes elsewhere. But storms of go somewhere, and so there needs to be some preparation somewhere.
