We begin today’s roundup with an editorial from USA Today about hurricane season and the Hurricane Maria death toll:
The vast majority died not when Maria came ashore but in the storm's aftermath, when a fumbled response by the White House and the territory's government and utilities allowed 3 million islanders to suffer weeks and months without electricity, running water or cellphone coverage. Interruptions or delays in health care killed a third of the victims.
Presidents are judged by how they handle natural disasters. George W. Bush was rightly criticized for his administration's initially clumsy response to Katrina. And while the Trump administration responded well when Hurricane Irma lashed Texas and Florida last September, it should — and must — bear considerable blame for the terrible loss of life in Puerto Rico.
Friday marks the first day of a new hurricane season. Another disaster-response failure cannot be an option.
Amy Davidson at The New Yorker:
Among the more devastating statements in the report, in a quiet way, is this one: “Our estimates are roughly consistent with press reports that evaluated deaths in the first month after the hurricane.” That is, they matched the stories in the media—the interviews, the footage—about what was happening on the ground. Similarly, the Harvard report notes that the deaths from a lack of medical care are “consistent with the widely reported disruption of health systems.” And again: “Many survey respondents were still without water and electricity at the time of sampling, a finding consistent with other reports.” And yet we somehow suppose that those same estimates come, now, as a shock. We saw the pictures; we heard the reports. What did we think they added up to? Not to sixty-four; not to the grade that Trump said that he would give his Administration’s response, on a scale of one to ten: “I’d say it was a ten.” The shocking thing is that we can still pretend to be surprised.
When Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, was asked about the Harvard report, she responded with a vague restatement of how well everyone was working together. It was, for this White House, a normal response. And it was not enough. It didn’t even come close.