Latest
is that the administration has caved in and is sending a hospital
ship to Puerto Rico after sitting on their hands for five days.
Cold
Comfort: Trump's refusal to send hospital ship tips his plan to
abandon Puerto Rico (UPDATED!)
27
September, 2017
"A
ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
-
U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
Eight
hundred and ninety-four feet long, 106 feet wide, and weighing 69,360
tons, USNS Comfort is a complete ocean-going medical facility with
1,000 patient beds including 80 for intensive care patients. Along
with 12 operating rooms she boasts a complete dental clinic,
optometry lab and pharmacy, X-ray machines, CT scanners, oxygen and
fresh water production plants, capacity to store 5,000 units of
blood, laundry operations, and a morgue.
She’s
the size of a 20th century supertanker. Indeed, she was a supertanker
— the SS Rose City — until purchased by the Navy in 1987 and
converted to serve her current lifesaving mission. She and her sister
ship in the Pacific, USNS Mercy, are among the rare few assets of the
obscenely wealthy US military devoted exclusively to saving, rather
than to taking, lives.
But
today, as Puerto Rico and its 3.4 million American citizens slowly
die with the island’s hospitals without power and in ruins, Comfort
remains snugly berthed in her home port of Norfolk, Virginia.
Why?
Because, according to a Pentagon spokesperson, it just won’t fit.
Thomas
LaCrosse, the Pentagon’s director of defense support to civil
authorities, said U.S. officials discussed deploying the USNS Comfort
to Puerto Rico over the weekend but decided that it should stay in
Norfolk because it could not get close enough to any port to avoid
using helicopter support to get patients to and from the hip.
True
enough, the behemoth ship’s deep draft of 30+ feet bars it from San
Juan harbor’s 32 to 35 foot channels even at the best of times (and
these are far from San Juan’s best times). But, unmentioned in the
WaPo article quoted above, that’s nothing new for the Comfort,
which routinely anchors a mile or two offshore to serve disaster
sites, as it did following Haiti’s devastating earthquake or,
again, as it fearlessly did in 2007 in the teeth of a “storm of a
decade” off Corinto, Nicaragua, where it anchored 1.5 miles
offshore to receive patients. It is such a common fact in the life of
this ship of mercy that militaryfactory.com notes as a mere aside
that
Comfort
has a deep draft and, in many ports, she has to stand offshore at
least a mile. To receive wounded, Comfort has a large day-and-night
helo pad.
Puerto
Ricans, like all other American citizens, should be deeply chilled by
the Trump administration’s stubborn refusal to deploy the Comfort,
buttressed by such a transparently flimsy excuse. Because if they’re
lying about the reason for their decision, then we must ask what the
real reason is...and the answer is terrifying.
It
can only be this: Trump intends to abandon Puerto Rico at the first
opportunity, leaving its 3.4 million American citizens in their
current Stone Age hell forever.
Yes,
the U.S. military is currently mounting an impressive (if still
woefully inadequate) “air bridge” between the mainland and San
Juan using National Guard C-130 Hercules cargo planes from around the
U.S. But the convenient thing about even such gigantic cargo planes
is that they can disappear quietly once the government loses its
commitment to their mission. They’re constantly flying in and out
of San Juan right now — who but the helpless and voiceless will
notice on the day that 10 fly out, but only 9 return with more
supplies? And then 8. And then 6. And, finally, none. In contrast, a
gigantic snow-white ship of mercy weighing anchor and steaming off
over the horizon, never to return, is damn hard for anyone to miss.
Trump
is leaving the Comfort safe in Norfolk’s harbor because he does not
intend to devote the years of effort, and the hundreds of billions of
dollars, it will require to lift Puerto Rico back out of the Stone
Age. And he doesn’t want to make that too obvious when the quiet
pull-out soon begins.
Adiós,
Puerto Rico. Vaya con Dios.
This
is #TrumpsKatrina.
Wednesday,
Sep 27, 2017 · 8:56:13 AM NZDT · DocDawg
UPDATED:
As of 3:30 PM Eastern, NBC is now quoting FEMA administrator Brock
Long announcing, in a reversal of last night’s DOD comments, that
USNS Comfort has just been ordered to sail for Puerto Rico. For those
who are wondering, Comfort is normally required to be able to sail
within 5 days after receiving the order, although it has occasionally
done so within 3 days (there are about one thousand mostly civilian
medical personnel + merchant seamen to mobilize, plus enormous stores
of perishable medical supplies to load, plus all the usual ship’s
stores to support a full complement of 2,000 souls). Comfort’s top
speed is about 20 MPH, and it is (very roughly) about 1,200 miles
from Norfolk to San Juan. So we’re looking at another 6-8 days
before it arrives in Puerto Rican waters.
JUST
IN: USNS Comfort hospital ship is being dispatched to Puerto Rico
disaster, FEMA Admin. Long says at the White House.
pic.twitter.com/9UzGdTBfHx
— NBC
Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) September 26, 2017
JUST IN: USNS Comfort hospital ship is being dispatched to Puerto Rico disaster, FEMA Admin. Long says at the White House.
8:43 AM - 27 Sep 2017
May
God richly bless, watch over, and guide the nearly 1,000 souls who
are now being feverishly mobilized to sail and staff this angel of
mercy.
We
did it, folks. We shamed the shitgibbon into action. Thank you all.
Just
don’t stop. There’s so much more to do. Keep the pressure on.
¡Viva
Puerto Rico! ¡Viva!
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