Posted on 11/11/2017 1:27:53 AM PST by markomalley
Puerto Rico’s top emergency management official resigned on Friday.
Abner Gomez, the director of the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency, left the post on Friday amid the country’s lagging response efforts following Hurricane Maria, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló (D) announced.
Officials revealed in October that Gomez was on a two-week vacation despite the American territory’s struggles to recover following the storm. The governor’s office at the time said he was “exhausted.”
Rosselló on Friday extended “our gratitude to Abner Gomez for his availability and work over the past months at the helm of these important agencies,” he said in a statement. “I wish him the greatest of success in his future endeavors."
Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico when it slammed the island in September.
Nearly two months later, the island is still a long way from full strength. As of Friday morning, according to government statistics, less than 41 percent of the power has been resorted to the island and only 78 percent of people have clean drinking water.
The progress officials have made is tenuous: A power line there briefly failed on Thursday, leaving many cities, including the capital, without power.
Rosselló and officials from the state-run electric utility and federal oversight board are due to testify before a Senate committee next week.
The guy was on a two week vacation....gimme a break...
“...the director of the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency, left the post on Friday amid the country’s lagging response efforts following Hurricane Maria...”
Com’on Devin Henry, get it together! Straight out the gate you screw up your shot at credibility by terming Puerto Rico a country. Following the 1898 Spanish-American War PR became a Commonwealth of the United States. Twenty years later, Puerto Ricanos born after the war were declared U.S. citizens by Act of Congress.
But their t shirt printers were clearly online the entire time.
If the leadership chain of command is so weak that having the big boss take a few days off after months of overtime work, the agency has major problems over and above the physical damage done to Puerto Rico.
Check his offshore bank accounts.
Maybe they should have kept Whitefish Energy.
I worked overtime for years. And I was the boss. You do what ya gotta do...
They said that losing Whitefish would delay the electrical fix by at least 6 months. My guess....this is all about Unions.
btt
They may not realize it, but they are actually making huge progress. It took over 6 months to get electricity to our old neighborhood in NOLA after Katrina and it took 10 months before electricity was restored to our downtown office complex. I forget how long it took before potable water service was restored, but it was several months. There are still swatches of property in NOLA that are still unrestored over 12 years out.
If it wasn’t for the alternative media like the Internet, Twitter, etc., the truth about how President Trump bent over backwards to help PR would never have seen the light of day. And how the mayor of PR had the nerve to try to blame him.
Too bad GWB didn’t have the guts to reveal the truth about Katrina. He payed a heavy price for allowing the msm to paint him as an incompetent ninny, when it was the NO authorities who were to blame.
I wish he were right and it was its own country. We should cut Puerto Rico loose.
Not to mention writing “only” 78% having clean drinking water vs. saying 22% of population remains without drinking water.
What is the current status of Whitefish Power in Puerto Rico?
Did they get fired? Did they leave on their own?
I still don’t understand who was going to pay them for all their work. Puerto Rico is BILLIONS in debt & is defaulting on those loans.
Does that mean 22% are dying of thirst?
Hey...it’s Puerto Rico.
So either you had a very small business with minimal additional human resources, or you were a poor manager (that last statement is NOT intended as a personal insult). Good managers can afford to take time off, as they have trained their people to be able to handle things, even tough things, at least temporarily.
FEMA is certainly not short of human resources. Suppose the guy dropped dead of heart attack or stroke?? I suspect that would be worse....
The whole Whitefish story was interesting. Although Whitefish, a very small company relative to the problem in PR, got the contract, it was far from the “ no-bid” accusations tossed out by the media. It turned out Whitefish was the only company willing to take the job without some upfront payment from the bankrupt PR power company. The media dropped their breathless accusations of cronyism and corruption after that, and it’s been weeks since Whitefish has been in the news. The media didn’t want to have to report about the incredibly corrupt and bankrupt PR government.
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