Author of Be Ready for Anything and Build a Better Pantry on a Budget online course
If you think that the government will be providing aid to save you after a disaster strikes, you might want to note what’s going on in Puerto Rico right now.
A warehouse full of emergency supplies was never distributed after Hurricane Maria.
Back in 2017, when the island territory was devastated by Hurricane Maria, loads of emergency supplies were sent to help residents who lost power, many for as long as a year after. But…those supplies were never distributed. Instead, water, food, and cots were stashed away in a warehouse ever since. Watch the video below, which has rightly gone viral.
Residents in Ponce, a city in the southern part of Puerto Rico, discovered the stash of supplies and blogger Lorenzo Delgado posted the video footage above. People broke into the building after Puerto Rico was hit by a powerful earthquake last week.
With anger spreading in the U.S. territory after video of the event in Ponce appeared on Facebook, Gov. Wanda Vázquez quickly fired the director of the island’s emergency management agency.
The governor said she had ordered an investigation after learning the emergency supplies had been piled in the warehouse since Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in September 2017.
Vázquez said inaction by the fired official, Carlos Acevedo, was unacceptable.
“There are thousands of people who have made sacrifices to help those in the south, and it is unforgivable that resources were kept in the warehouse,” the governor said…
…The mayor of Ponce, María Meléndez, said he had not known about the warehouse and its contents.
“This is outrageous,” she said. “Everyone knows what us mayors went through after Hurricane Maria to try and get help to our cities and how we’ve worked these weeks to provide basic supplies to people affected by earthquakes. Those involved owe us an explanation.” (source)
The White House was criticized for a lackluster response.
You may recall that during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, President Trump was harshly criticized for not sending sufficient aid to the hard-hit island. But it appears that much of the aid that was dispensed was never given to the people who needed it the most. It’s interesting to note that President Trump is currently under fire for restrictions placed on billions of dollars of aid that were just approved to help Puerto Ricans recover from a recent earthquake, citing corruption in the Puerto Rican government.
Even as pressure has mounted for him to release emergency assistance, the president has maintained his assertions that the money will not be well spent. On Wednesday, the White House budget office made clear how those assertions had shaped relief.
To gain access to $8.2 billion in recovery money and $8.3 billion in disaster prevention funds, Puerto Rico will have to submit budget plans to its federally mandated fiscal control board, which will track where the money goes. It will also have to bolster its property registration database…
…the fiscal control board is viewed in Puerto Rico as unaccountable to the people. And Puerto Rican officials are not inclined to tell workers they will be paid less than the minimum wage. With regard to the property and deed registrations, Puerto Ricans have long used informal ownership records.
The restriction relating to the electrical grid may just be a practical one: Congress has already appropriated a separate tranche of money specifically for the electrical grid, though it has yet to be allocated. (source)
Given the fact that all this aid was hidden in a warehouse while people struggled for two years, it’s difficult to dispute that the new funds could likewise be misused.
This is why we can’t depend on anyone else to save us
Imagine a major SHTF event in the continental US. It’s not a stretch to think that government aid, if dispensed, could easily make its way into the hands of someone less than enthusiastic about helping others. Jose has repeatedly pointed out how aid was unfairly dispensed in Venezuela and Selco has also shared many similar stories.
When it hits the fan, you really are on your own. You should never expect to receive assistance in a timely fashion, nor should you expect that the aid received will be sufficient.
You should have plans to feed your family, keep them safe, and provide clean water for them to drink for an indefinite period of time. The government is working with limited resources doled out among a lot of people, and to be perfectly frank, many of the people handing out the aid don’t actually care about you and your family.
It’s difficult to imagine that the vast amount of supplies in this warehouse were merely forgotten and not deliberately mishandled.
About Daisy
Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, globe-trotting blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, voluntaryism, and the pursuit of liberty on her website, The Organic Prepper. She is widely republished across alternative media and she curates all the most important news links on her aggregate site, PreppersDailyNews.com. Daisy is the best-selling author of 4 books and runs a small digital publishing company. You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
it is not always the Government that is to blame, as NGO’s, like the Red Cross, are just as bad if not worse.
The Red Cross likes monetary donations for disaster relief, not local goods and services, then they decide how much to use on that disaster and how much to pocket for ” other” expenses.
This is a common practice with “aid” organizations.
So the question is; to whom did these supplies belong to? The Government or an NGO?
Probably an NGO, as it is cheaper to store and eventually dispose of them, than to ship them home.
Plus since they rotate people in and out of the disaster area, it is easy for the supplies to get lost in the people and paper shuffle. So if they are discovered later on it is often to late to release them to the public.
Often they have already sent most or all of their team home by that time.
That is OK though, as they can always ask the Public and the Government for more stuff next time around.
As long as they are never made accountable, this can continue this way forever.
Some friends and I did a thing on you tube for the people that were affected by the tornadoes in Joplin MO and surrounding areas and we raised a good amount of money. All of it went to buying supplies for the people affected. When the (volunteer with his own money) truck and trailer full of stuff showed up The Red Cross would not let him disperse anything and sent him away.I think he was threatened with arrest.
He found people in remote areas to give to that the Red Cross did not reach. RC is a crooked organization
Dang
I feel for them folks getting sold out like that after 2 major hits.
The media went ballistic when the Governor criticized President Trump during the Maria fiasco.
Yup. Slip some payola to a corrupt official and viola` — the rescue is botched to feed a media frenzy who care little that the people suffer.
Even so, we can’t count on the good intentions of the good guys to meet our individual needs. It does seem that Puerto Rico has had it’s fair share of disaster but at least the scum has risen to the top for all to see.
Oops. Puerto Rico has had MORE than it’s fair share of disaster.
This is just such a disaster in and of itself. Because our government rushes aid during emergencies, things can accidentally get misplaced. However in this instance it appears to be purposely hidden! You are right in that some people (in the desire of profit) give no care of their fellow man (or woman). This is why many of us older citizens are so untrusting. Yes it has always happened, even our time of many years ago! But it just seems to be happening so much more in the present! So many people seem to be on a power trip.
This article illustrates that some cultures will never want to assimilate into their host country.
Puerto Rico will never vote to become a U.S. state since as a territory it can ride the gravy train without taking any responsibility for being on the dole.
Interesting timing that the ‘discovery’ was made now when it probably was known all along by the Puerto Rician government?
To put it a bit more specifically,
If Puerto Rico voted not to become a state, then when the SHTF they want FEMA to treat them as a state …
time is to quit sitting on the fence and make a choice.
Puerto Rico is USA colony. All goods to Puerto Rico must go through USA customs. Moreover, Puerto Rico has 20BLN$ surplus since 2000 with the USA .Pls check trade balance data before writing any comments.
The last I checked the commonwealth/territory is still NOT a state.
best
Would not be surprised if someone was keeping this stash for the next emergency to make a “profit.”
Never understood why we have lost our sense of self-reliance. This nanny “why isnt the government doing something to help me right now!” mentality is mind boggling. It is the government. Sometimes they are slow to react. And other times, the logistics are just not there or take time to get there.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Puerto_Rico
The island is neither a sovereign nation nor a U.S. state, but may be described as …
… an unincorporated territory of the United States, not a non-self-governing territory, subject to the Territorial Clause of the U.S. Constitution, according to the Insular Cases Puerto Rico is “a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States within the revenue clauses of the Constitution”, after four status referenda’s a Commonwealth, a term without a clear and stable legal definition a potential Caribbean nation with its own national identity ( “The term ‘Commonwealth’ does not describe or provide for any specific political status or relationship. It has, for example, been applied to both states and territories. When used in connection with areas under U.S. sovereignty that are not states, the term broadly describes an area that is self-governing under a constitution of its adoption and whose right of self-government will not be unilaterally withdrawn by Congress), the Constitution extended ex proprio vigore to the territories also established the doctrine of territorial incorporation but only applied fully in incorporated territories, that the United States could acquire territory and exercise unrestricted power in determining what rights to concede to its inhabitants (“While in an international sense Porto Rico (sic) was not a foreign country, since it was subject to the sovereignty of and was owned by the United States, it was foreign to the United States in a domestic sense, because the island has not been incorporated into the United States, but was merely appurtenant thereto as a possession.”), hence an “unincorporated territories” (“”an unincorporated territory is a territory as to which, when acquired by the United States, no clear intention was expressed that it would eventually be incorporated into the Union as a State”.), Puerto Rico’s current political status limits to the autonomy of the Puerto Rician Government, for example, the Island’s government is not fully autonomous, meanwhile three main alternatives were presented to Puerto Rican voters in status plebiscites: Full independence, Maintenance or enhancement of commonwealth status, Full statehood, along with Indemnified independence with phased-out U.S. subsidy, Expanded political but not fiscal autonomy, Statehood with a gradual phasing out of industrial federal tax incentives, Puerto Rico “clearly does not meet the decolonization standards set by the United Nations in 1960”, UN Resolution “748” removed Puerto Rico’s classification as a non-self-governing territory, yet, under international law, a freely associated state is a sovereign nation in a joint governing arrangement with another nation that either nation can unilaterally end.”, at the local level, it has been observed that Puerto Ricans “consider themselves a territorially distinct national unit, a nation defined by its cultural distinctiveness”, in recent plebiscites Puerto Ricans have not expressed themselves in favor of a political status with the intention of becoming a sovereign state, but the idea that Puerto Rico is a separate social, political and cultural entity from the United States has been repeatedly expressed, “the world’s oldest colony”, “post-colonial colony”, it no longer has its own Puerto Rican citizenship free maritime control, nor congressional representation as it did in the Spanish Cortes, a possession, …
… and on and on and on ….
What the heck is it? It ain’t dis and taint dat.
So, before we toss perfectly good inflationary fiat money at PR perhaps first we should find out what it is and if it will do any good to the populace, and not wind-up in someone’s warehouse waiting to monetary gouge people in a panic buying mode when a hurricane is breathing down their neck.
For general Information:
A while back I was at a garage sale and noticed a table with library books, not discarded library books, current books. I asked someone about that, and they said it’s similar to the situation with parking fines. Someone with multiple surnames can apply for a driver’s license with one surname, rack-up multiple parking/traffic fines and leave, only to return at another date and apply with a different surname.
So, it’s expedient if you have various names or labels to use the one that would benefit you the most in a given situation.
tl;dr: puerto rico has been riding uncle sugar’s gravy train for over a century.
puerto rico will never become a state of the united states.
when you live in PR, you file a 1040 at tax time, but the money goes to the island commonwealth government, not the US Treasury.
AND – and and and – the US Treasury MATCHES tax payments. So, if you live in PR and pay $15,000 in income tax, the US Treasury ponies up another $15k of mainland taxpayer’s cash in addition to yours.
Now, what if PR becomes a state? all that tax money goes off-island to the US Treasury, not the commonwealth treasury. So basically, PR would lose $30,000 for every $15,000 in income taxes paid.
PR would have to institute a state income tax to make up the difference.
People who live in PR freely admit that their government is totally corrupt. Hurricane aid is notorious for ending up outside the distribution chain. I’ve seen USA FEMA roof tarps in ST MARTIN after hurricane Marilyn.
I’m guessing someone forgot that cache was stored there and forgot to pass it on to their cronies.
I lived in the Caribbean (US, French, Dutch) for 20 years, including PR. I absolutely LOVE PR. But PR will never become a US state.
Democrats would LOVE to see PR become a state. It would mean two Bernie Sanders clones in the Senate and another 3-5 in the House — few or none of whom would speak any English.
To prevent that, PR must be given its independence (whether the people want it or not). The only reason Congress made them citizens in 1917 was so they could be drafted into WW1. Most important, cutting that dysfunctional colony loose would also mean the PRs on the mainland could no longer vote.
Remember that famous 2017 video of San Juan’s mayor screeching about lack of aid — while standing in a warehouse full of pallets? She was obviously acting on orders from the DNC and MSM, and just as obviously too stupid to notice what was right behind her!
Puerto Ricans have invaded central FL en masse. Stage 1 was in the late 1990s, stage 2 was after Maria. With the recent earthquakes, we can expect more of those two-legged locusts to swarm in, and like their predecessors bringing their corruption and “dame ese” (Spanish for “gibsmedat”) attitude with them. Last fall I visited the part of SE Orlando where I lived in the early 1990s; the PRs have taken over and turned it into a virtual suburb of San Juan, which is definitely a VERY negative thing.