The U.S. President’s Role in a Time of Devastating Disasters

Today’s Houston Chronicle carries a photo and report of ‘thousands of piles of Hurricane Harvey wreckage on Houston curbs’ still waiting for removal. The devastating flooding from Hurricane Harvey in late August has impacted low income families the hardest with another article in the paper reporting that residents of a public housing complex in Houston ‘have been asked to pay rent for flooded units deemed uninhabitable even as the mayor has condemned private landlords for similar practices.’
In the Florida Keys, where major devastation occurred when Hurricane Irma hit the area on September 10 as a Category 4 hurricane, the schools remain closed and will begin to reopen on a staggered basis beginning Monday. The Miami Herald’s digital edition today shows a photo of the devastation unleashed on Big Pine Key by Hurricane Irma, which made landfall at Cudjoe Key, approximately 20 miles north of Key West. Monroe County, home to the Keys, estimates that 20 percent or more of the homes in the Keys were badly damaged or destroyed.
As millions of impacted Americans attempted to assist others and rebuild from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, another monster Hurricane hit Puerto Rico yesterday, Hurricane Maria, leaving it darkened and without any municipal electric power whatsoever. The U. S. Territory was still attempting to recover from damage caused by Hurricane Irma, which had brushed the northern side of the island two weeks earlier, when Hurricane Maria hit as a Category 4 hurricane yesterday, the strongest hurricane to make landfall in Puerto Rico since 1932. The extent of the devastation there is still uncertain. The San Juan Daily Star newspaper’s website shows that it was last updated two days ago, on September 19. Last evening, weather officials reported that ‘catastrophic’ flooding was occurring in parts of Puerto Rico.

This post was published at Wall Street On Parade on September 21, 2017.