Public Is Not Buying Trump's Lies About Hurricane Maria

These charts reflect the results of a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between September 16th and 18th of a national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,195 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 2.8 points, and for registered voters is 2.9 points.

Donald Trump is upset because the truth has been revealed about his grossly inadequate and slow response to the disaster wreaked on Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. He has denied the fact that nearly 3,000 people died as a result of that hurricane -- saying that less than a hundred people died. He has also given his administration an "A+" on its handling of that disaster.

Fortunately, the American people aren't buying his ridiculous lies about Puerto Rico. By a 31 point margin, they understand that the death toll from Hurrican Maria was closer to 3,000 than under 100. By a 22 point margin, they say the federal response was not as fast as it should have been. By a 23 point margin, they say the federal response was not adequate to meet the Puerto Rican needs. And by a 14 point margin, they say the federal government was not properly prepared for the hurricane.

The Trump administration failed the people of Puerto Rico (American citizens). The public knows it.

U.S. Government Failed Puerto Rico (And FEMA Knows It)

While Donald Trump will never admit it, his administration failed the people of Puerto Rico (American citizens) in the response after Hurricane Maria. The disaster planning was grossly inadequate -- and the response was incompetent, inadequate, and far too slow.

The charts above are from the 2017 Hurricane Season FEMA After-Action Report. The top chart highlights the inadequacy of FEM's disaster planing for Puerto Rico. The second chart shows how slow the response was. After Hurricane Harvey in Texas, it took FEMA about a month to reach peak deployment. It was about the same after Hurricane Irma hit Florida. But it took over two months to reach peak deployment in Puerto Rico -- and that deployment was far from what was needed.

Here is how Arelis R. Hernandez sums up the FEMA report for The Washington Post:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency experienced personnel shortages, was caught with a critical lack of aid supplies, had trouble coordinating logistics and found itself struggling to do the work of the territorial government while responding to Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico last September, according to an official after-action report released late Thursday.

Despite repeated Trump administration efforts to play down federal failures in responding to a humanitarian crisis on the island territory, the new report is a public acknowledgment of systemic failures during what was one of the most destructive hurricane seasons — and costliest disaster responses — in the nation’s history.

It shows that responses to Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida taxed the agency and left it understaffed and out of position for the catastrophe that unfolded in Puerto Rico, where millions of U.S. citizens suffered through widespread communication blackouts, massive infrastructure failures and lengthy power outages. . . .

The sobering report runs counter to the White House narrative that President Trump presented at the time, when he praised FEMA’s performance and characterized the devastation on the island as not being “a real catastrophe like Katrina.”. . .

In Puerto Rico, the Category 4 Hurricane Maria knocked out communications and left more than 3.5 million residents without power for months while FEMA scrambled to provide food and water and restore electricity. Resources that had been redirected to deal with Hurricane Irma in the U.S. Virgin Islands left few supplies for Puerto Rico when the hurricane hit — and communication lapses, transportation challenges and a lack of situational awareness caused major delays in help for those living on the island.

The inability to communicate, or to reach isolated areas of Puerto Rico, was a particular problem. FEMA officials conceded that in the first 72 hours after the hurricane, they had little understanding of what was happening across the island and could not assess road conditions or damage to water and wastewater facilities. A week after the hurricane made landfall, according to the report, officials had been able to assess about half of the island’s wastewater treatment sites and did not have information on the status of 37 out of 69 hospitals.

Hurricane Deaths In Puerto Rico Were Vastly Undercounted

(Photo of hurricane damage in Puerto Rico is from The American Genius.)

The official government count of deaths in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria is 64. Donald trump has used that figure to belittle the disaster that struck that island. It may also be the reason that federal government help was slow in coming and inadequate.

But the real death toll that can be attributed to the hurricane is much higher. A new study puts it at over 4,600 (and could even be higher than that). Most of the deaths came in the three months after the hurricane, and resulted from the inadequate response by the U.S. government. That inadequate response left many without medical care, food, and water.

George W. Bush has been vilified for his slow response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans -- a response that surely added to the death total from that hurricane. The death toll from Katrina was about 1,883.

The death toll in Puerto Rico is much worse, and the sad fact is that a quick and adequate response from the government could have prevented most of those deaths. I believe Trump has to accept the responsibility for most of the Puerto Rican deaths. He should have done much more, and done it much more quickly.

Here is how The Telegraph reports the terrible truth about Puerto Rico:

Hurricane Maria, which pummeled Puerto Rico in September 2017, is likely responsible for the deaths of more than 4,600 people, some 70 times higher than official estimates, US researchers said on Tuesday.

The government-provided death toll stands at just 64, but experts say an accurate count was complicated by the power outages and widespread devastation wreaked by the storm, which caused $90 billion in damages and is ranked as the third costliest cyclone in the United States since 1900.

Earlier independent investigations have put the true toll at closer to 1,000.

But the latest estimates, compiled by researchers at Harvard University, came back far higher - at 4,645 deaths from the day of the storm, September 20, until December 31, 2017.

For comparison, the death toll from 2005's Hurricane Katrina - the costliest hurricane in US history - was far lower, and estimated at 1,833.

Most deaths after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico are blamed on interruptions in medical care due to power outages and blocked or washed out roads, said the report published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Approximately one-third of post-hurricane deaths were reported by household members as being caused by delayed or prevented access to medical care," said the report.

Public Is Unhappy About Slow/Inadequate Aid To Puerto Rico

George W. Bush hurt his presidency by his inadequate response to the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Now it looks like Donald Trump is creating the same kind of problem for himself with his slow and grossly inadequate response to the disaster in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane Maria.

A majority of Americans believe the federal response to Puerto Rico has been too slow, and they don't believe the federal government is doing enough to help Puerto Rico. Trump is already the most unpopular of our modern presidents, and his lame response to the Puerto Rican disaster is not going to help that. It may well make him even more unpopular.

These charts are from a new Kaiser Family Foundation Poll -- done between October 4th and 8th of a random national sample of 1,008 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.