(08-29-2018 05:56 PM)swagsurfer11 Wrote: Like I said. Worse than Katrina.
Because the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was even more poorly prepared to respond to a hurricane than were the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans.
You seem to have a gross misconception about how natural disasters are handled in our system. The federal government has next to no role in responding. FEMA is a management agency, not a response agency. The state/commonwealth and local governments respond, they send the bills to FEMA, and FEMA reimburses them. Now if there is some indication that FEMA has failed to pay bills on a timely basis, and that caused people to die, then there may be some basis for holding the federales responsible. But I've seen no evidence to that effect. Have you?
The biggest problem seems to have been restoration of power. Power plants must be repaired or replaced and transmission and distribution systems must be rebuilt. The latter requires wire, poles, pins, and bucket trucks. There is no federal agency with wire, poles, pins, and bucket trucks in sufficient amounts to have any material impact on the restoration of power.
The Navy sent a couple of ships. Back in my Navy days, we had a Caribbean Amphibious Response Group (CARG) that was on standby 24/7/365 to respond to military or other crises. We planned and practiced responding to hurricanes and other emergencies as a regular part of training for our mission. But the Navy is a lot smaller today, and there are not enough ships to maintain a CARG any more. This by the way is analogous to the problem in Benghazi. In my day we would have had an amphib with a company of Marines standing offshore the entire time the ambassador was there, just in case something like what happened took place. Of course, that was a strong deterrent against anything like that taking place. But we don't have enough amphibs to do that today. At the time of the incident, the two closest were one in Bab el Mandeb and one west of Gibraltar, neither close enough to have any impact for days.
Does relying almost exclusively on state and local governments mean that responses are very uneven? Absolutely. Texas responded to Rita a lot better than Louisiana responded to Katrina. The solution in my opinion is to create some organization with people, resources, and responsibility to respond to emergencies. My idea is that it should be the primary mission of the national guard, and federal support of the guard should pay for equipment and training to support this mission. That would be a step toward solving the problem. Blaming Trump for Puerto Rico, or Bush for Katrina, misses the point entirely.
