The Pentagon said it tapped a three-star U. S. Army general to oversee recovery efforts and unclog the distribution of relief supplies, CNN reported.
A mountain of desperately needed supplies is stranded at Puerto Rico’s port. Truck drivers are either incommunicado or scrambling to find fuel. All the while, pleas for food, water and medical supplies grow.
The crisis on the storm-ravaged island showed few signs of improvement Thursday, but it could be on the brink of becoming a massive military operation.
The Pentagon said it tapped a three-star U. S. Army general to oversee recovery efforts and unclog the distribution of relief supplies, CNN reported Thursday.
Lieutenant General Jeffrey Buchanan will lead the effort and is expected to arrive on the island by end of day Thursday.
“Yesterday we were told about a one-star general. My immediate reaction was that I knew a one-star general couldn’t do enough. I guess a three-star could bring necessary help,” San Juan resident Sebastián Peréz told the Daily News.
He said everywhere he looks, people are still standing in long lines for the meager amounts of fuel, food, water and cash making its way to consumers.
“Somehow, a week later, there is not the expected and needed progress done,” he said. “Things are not right. It’s eye tearing, no matter how tough you are.”
Rusel Honore, the retired lieutenant general who oversaw the government’s Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, told Bloomberg that President Trump should have done more to prepare for Hurricane Maria.
“It’s kind of like Katrina: We got it. We got it. Oh, s–t, send in the cavalry,” Honore said.
Frustrating photos show row after row of shipping containers — some 9,500 of them — stacked at the Port of San Juan with no drivers to pick them up.
Jose Ayala, vice president and general manager of shipping company Crowley, said the 3,000 containers under his jurisdiction contained medicines, water, construction materials and food such as poultry and pork.
“So far, our terminal is completely up to its capacity — maximum capacity — and we have been able to dispatch barely 4% of our usual flow at our exit gates,” he told CNN Thursday.
He said the drivers who usually ferry cargo to store shelves across Puerto Rico have been unable to report to work due to hurricane-related problems with infrastructure, transit, communications and gas shortages.
“If this continues on, if we’re not able to start dispatching cargo, we’re not going to (have) sufficient space to unload our next barges that are in line to come to the port,” he said.
“We have plenty of inventory in our ports. There’s enough to supply the needs. It’s just a matter again, ‘How do we move them to the final destination?'” he said.
Local officials said only 20% of truck drivers have reported back to work since Hurricane Maria battered the island more than a week ago.
FEMA and local officials have struggled in the aftermath. The island’s power grid was almost entirely wiped out. Most of the island’s 3.4 million residents still have no water of phone service.
Whitehouse homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said Thursday that 44 of the island’s 69 hospitals were back to offering some form of services — but most were still running on emergency generators.
A doctor at Puerto Rico’s largest pediatric hospital issued another alarming plea on Twitter Thursday.
“Diésel until tonight. Please HELP,” Dr. Felix Seda with San Jorge Children’s Hospital said.
It was Monday that San Jorge first ran out of diesel fuel and had to rely on portable 8-hour battery packs to keep the ventilators going for three highly vulnerable patients, the hospital’s director told the Daily News.
