What a horrible situation.

Military ships/planes, and boots on the ground troops would have been hovering by the periphery long ago and would have been there for a week already taking the place over...no delays.

Drumf can take his "it's surrounded by water...." bullshit elsewhere. But I can already imagine FOX repeating his BS and his base saying "he had no way to get stuff there..."

Naomi Klein's book on DISASTER CAPITALISM..

Why aren't the corporate leeches there sucking up everything?

god, what an opportunity to totally remake a society at a huge profit...

who has a lot of pilot friends

I have been sharing it too, but don't have connections. My heart is breaking for them. one of my close friends from high school is from Puerto Rico and still has lots of family there that she has not heard from. This is just unreal.

My heart breaks for all those in PR.
I don't know which is worse..them having no communication with the outside world and *wondering* where the US rescue/help/supplies are (like, is stuff coming any minute now)...or if it would be more devastating for them if they had adequate communication and actually heard how drumf and his klan have just been acting like nothing has even happened and..hey....FOOTBALL!

response:
No radar. No comm. We've been notified by FEMA to standby since before the storm hit.
Trust me, I'll be spending the next few weeks going back and forth.

For what it's worth, the American College of Surgeons is putting together a team of surgeons to go down to help provide relief and support for medical providers in PR. The situation there is heartbreaking and infuriating that Americans should have to suffer through such a devistating event with only minimal support from the federal government.

Don't we have any?

to ferry cancer patients off the island to the mainland. Where the fuck is our government??????????????????

would help as much as hinder. Perhaps seaplanes can deliver repair materials to a seaside estate without getting in the way, but that's not what is called for.

Democrats believe in the power we have as citizens to meet big problems by acting through our government.

Measly little here-and-there efforts sound nice (and can and do make a worthy contribution in small emergencies, such as when we and neighbors cleared our road with our chainsaws), but at all times anti-government conservatives grab onto them to pretend private, usually local efforts can meet the needs of 330 million people better than government.

We need to insist OUR government made up of our people serve us when we need it. Huge no to imagine begging for charity, from an inadequate few who happen to be in the mood when it's needed, is an answer.

no problem for private pilots to land and take off there.

File a flight plan.

There is also an airport on Isla Grande, with 5500' runway, used all the time for flights throughout PR and nearby islands.
And other airports on the island as well-


- Ceiba
- Rafael Hernández Airport in Aguadilla,
- Ponce

Not fine is abandoning faith in government -- and especially abandoning OUR duty to require OUR government to act in full faith. To instead place hope on individual whims in a huge disaster like this is a result of Koch-soaked brains. A lack of belief in the ability of our government to serve us is what the Koch types have been working to inculcate for decades.

But it's a lie. When 3.5 million people are in trouble, deaths mounting, we don't abandon our responsibilities to charity. Big ships and planes are arriving in increasing numbers. Ours. That's how we do it, not by waving our hands in despair and hoping some amateurs with Cessnas and yachts can do "something" for patients in critical condition.

PPRuNe Forums (The Professional Pilots Rumour Network)
http://www.pprune.org/

I read them a lot when MAH 370 went missing and they had a lot of good (and bad) info.