During the press conference, the Donald congratulated himself as well as Florida governor Rick Scott & "Florida Power & Light" CEO Eric Silagy, for their response to Irma's devastation in Florida.
Even if you understand Trump's (weird) urge to make it seem like he's always "winning", you gotta admit his comments appear ill-timed. Especially given what happened yesterday.
Breakdowns in coordination between authorities always end up affecting those that are most vulnerable. Case in point; eight Senior Citizens died a grim & unnecessary death at a nursing home located just across the parking lot from a hospital in Hollywood, Florida.
The "NYTimes" described the nursing home as an "oven":
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/us/nursing-home-deaths-florida.html
"HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The first evacuee was rushed into the emergency room of Memorial Regional Hospital around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, escaping a nursing home that had lost air-conditioning in the muggy days after Hurricane Irma splintered power lines across the state.
Another arrived at 4 a.m. After a third rescue call, at 5 a.m., hospital staff members were concerned enough to walk down the street to see the facility for themselves.
What they found was an oven.
The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills needed to be evacuated immediately. Fire and rescue units were hurrying the nursing home’s more than 100 residents out. Dozens of hospital workers converged on the area, establishing a command center outside with equipment designed for a multi-casualty episode like a bus crash. Red wristbands went to patients with life-threatening conditions, yellow and green for those in better shape."
CNN has additional information about the deaths:http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/health/florida-nursing-home-irma/index.html
"Authorities are now questioning how the conditions at the nursing home lasted for so long.
(Nursing home administrator) Carballo said the center immediately contacted Florida Power & Light and continued to follow up with them for status updates on when repairs would be made. City and state officials said they were in contact with the nursing home over the past three days and advised them to call 911 if they believed that the health or safety of patients was at risk."
Also from the CNN report; 150 similar facilities are still without power:
"The Florida Health Care Association, which represents 81% of Florida's nursing centers -- but not the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills -- said about 150 facilities out of nearly 700 nursing home facilities in the state do not have full power services restored."
& days after Irma made landfall, power still hasn't been restored to 3.1 million people:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-irma-trump/trump-arrives-in-storm-hit-florida-3-1-million-without-power-idUSKCN1BP1A8
"Some 3.1 million homes and businesses, representing close to one-third of the state’s population, were without power on Thursday in Florida and neighboring states."
In addition, there are editorials from Florida newspapers urging Federal authorites to "help rescue the Florida Keys":
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article172989371.html
'With one road in and one road out, it’s taking some time to discover the full extent of damage in the Florida Keys after Hurricane Irma stormed onto land there. Once police, emergency personnel — and the Miami Herald — were able to survey the situation, the only word that seemed fitting, for the Lower Keys especially, was “devastation” — Gov. Scott’s description.
The Keys are a fragile strand of islands — with an equally fragile environment, exposed to the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay — and least able to withstand an intense hurricane.
But the people who call the Keys home more than make up for that fragility with a staunch sense of community that breaks down the silos of the Upper, Middle, and Lower Keys and Key West. Their mantra? “One human family.”'
& of course, there's the ongoing disaster in the US Virgin Islands:"The US Virgin Islands, devastated by Hurricane Irma, are in serious need of aid"
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/the-us-virgin-islands-devastated-by-hurricane-irma-are-in-serious-need-of-aid.html
"St. Thomas resident Chrystie Payne is now in Puerto Rico after escaping on Monday. She and several friends and family are spearheading an effort to get medical supplies and other relief to the island as quickly as possible, saying "it's incomparable to anything that's ever happened."
"The island was 80 percent destroyed, and the lieutenant governor is reporting 40,000 people are homeless," Payne told CNBC. St. Thomas has a population of around 52,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Tina Comissiong, acting CEO of Schneider Regional Medical Center on St. Thomas, told CNBC her hospital "has been catastrophically damaged due to the storm."
"We successfully evacuated patients and airlifted those in critical condition to St. Croix and partners in Puerto Rico," Comissiong said."
It will take weeks, months, or even years to recover from Irma's devastation. But there's no question the strong response is ongoing. So Trump should just focus on supporting the people of Florida as well as emergency personnel & the military. That way, he'll hopefully refrain from congratulating himself so much (which I know is unlikely to happen).
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