Hurricane Maria: Summary of communication status - and lack of

Sean Donelan sean at donelan.com
Mon Oct 2 17:43:12 UTC 2017


On Sun, 1 Oct 2017, valdis.kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> I haven't seen any reports of a Teamster union refusal. I *have* seen
> reports that only 10-30% of truck drivers are operational, because of
> one or more of:

You're lucky. The bots have been pushing this very hard for several days. 
I don't know the local context or groups involved. There are at least two 
different groups

1. Frente Amplio de Camioneros led by Victor Rodriguez

There are a couple of videos of interviews with Mr. Rodriguez. Like many 
people in Puerto Rico, Mr. Rodriguez is very upset. I don't know him well 
enough to understand if those videos were in the heat of the moment, or 
accurately reflect what's happening.


2. Union de Tronquistas de Puerto Rico local 901 afiliada I.B.T. led by 
Alexis Rodriguez

The AFL-CIO teamsters put out a statement today:
https://teamster.org/news/2017/10/teamsters-denounce-false-reports-work-stoppage-union-drivers-puerto-rico


Some of the re-posts are using a partial quote from Colonel Michael A. 
Valle, responsible for military logistics in Puerto Rico, that only 20% 
of the drivers are showing up for work. What the re-posts omitted is the 
rest of Col. Valle's quote:

“There should be zero blame on the drivers. They can’t get to work, the 
infrastructure is destroyed, they can’t get fuel themselves, and they 
can’t call us for help because there’s no communication. The will of the 
people of Puerto Rico is off the charts. The truck drivers have families 
to take care of, many of them have no food or water. They have to take 
care of their family’s needs before they go off to work, and once they do 
go, they can’t call home.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-military-on-puerto-rico-the-problem-is-distribution_us_59ce5906e4b0f3c468060dee


In a disaster situation, even simple problems become much more 
complicated.  Just as important during a disaster, don't attribute to 
malice what could be a misunderstanding or communication problem. People 
in the disaster zone are under a lot of stress.



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