Feds' Hurricane Maria Failures Should Be Investigated: NY Pols

NEW YORK CITY HALL — One year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, New York officials say there still aren't enough answers about how the federal government left the beleaguered island territory to fend for itself.

Local and federal lawmakers this week called for a independent investigation of the Trump administration's response to the powerful September 2017 storm that killed nearly 3,000 people.

U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Brooklyn) said the American people deserve to know how the government failed 3.5 million of its own citizens after Maria wrecked tens of thousands of homes and caused the largest blackout in the nation's history. She has introduced legislation that would create a 9/11 Commisson-style panel to report on the lackluster federal response.

"The response to Puerto Rico has to be seen for not only the failure it was, but for the racist failure it was," Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a City Hall news confernece.

Some 41 City Council members backed Velazquez's bill in a Wednesday letter to President Donald Trump. They cited the disparate responses to the destruction caused by Maria and Hurricane Harvey, which lashed Republican-leaning Texas last year.

"With hurricane season upon us, the residents of Puerto Rico – our fellow Americans – are still fighting to get their lives back to normal, and they need more than staged photo-ops, tweets, and paper towels," the letter reads.

Maria first made landfall in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 20, 2017. The destructive storm reportedly damaged thousands of homes and ravaged the territory's power grid, leaving more than 3 million people without electricity.

The federal response lagged — it took three weeks for the government to deploy the same number of helicopters that were sent to Texas in just six days after Hurricane Harvey, the Council's letter says. Some 1.6 million meals were distributed in Puerto Rico in the nine days after the storm, according to the letter, compared with 5.1 million in Texas.

Trump, meanwhile, tossed paper towels to a crowd on an early October visit to survey the damage. Just last week he took to Twitter to dispute the assertion that nearly 3,000 people actually died because of the storm, as a George Washington University study found. The Puerto Rican government's initial death toll was just 64.

"Make no mistake: These deaths are attributed to Maria and even worse, to this administration’s woeful response," Velazquez, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico, said Thursday. "This incompetence, this indifference and this refusal to accept the dire reality starts at the top."

An independent, bipartisan commission could help determine how to prevent such failures from happening in the future, the Council members contend.

Velazquez's bill would give such a panel subpoena power to examine the Trump administration's response to the storm, their letter notes.

"Now is the time to course-correct and use our investigatory powers, political will and resources to renew our focus on rebuilding efforts," Councilwoman Carlina Rivera (D-Manhattan) said in a statement.

New York City has a strong connection to Puerto Rico, de Blasio said, as almost one in 10 New Yorkers has Puerto Rican heritage.

The city and state governments sent delegations of workers to aid recovery efforts there. New York will continue to support the territory as it rebuilds, the Democratic mayor said.

"Maybe we’ll get to the day when there’s actually justice for the Puerto Rican people," de Blasio said. "I can tell you the City of New York will never stop fighting to make sure we get to that day soon."

(Lead image: Tilted light poles are seen in Luquillo, Puerto Rico on Sept. 19, 2018. Photo by Angel Valentin/Getty Images)