The US Navy, under mounting public pressure instigated by former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, plans to send the hospital ship USNS Comfort to the hurricane-battered island of Puerto Rico today, the vessel’s first civilian disaster mission in seven years.
The Comfort, equipped to carry as many as 1,000 hospital beds, 12 operating rooms and one of the US’ largest trauma units, is due to arrive in Puerto Rico by the middle of next week, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
The vessel’s departure date was announced a week after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico and three days after Clinton, the former Democratic presidential nominee, urged US President Donald Trump in a Twitter message to deploy the ship.
Photo: Reuters
Trump and US Secretary of Defense James Mattis “should send the Navy, including the USNS Comfort, to Puerto Rico now. These are American citizens,” Clinton tweeted on Sunday.
Some political pundits, as well as frustrated residents of the storm-ravaged US territory, have accused the Trump administration of being slower to mobilize aid to Puerto Rico than it would be if it were addressing a disaster on the US mainland.
Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello has strongly praised Trump for his performance in the storm’s aftermath.
Still, critics of Trump’s Puerto Rico response seized on the Clinton tweet, launching a petition drive via the Web site Change.org that drew about 260,000 supporters for deployment of the hospital ship and igniting a #SendtheComfort social media campaign.
The Pentagon did not explain why the hospital ship was not dispatched sooner or say whether Clinton’s admonition was a factor.
However, a US Department of Defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Comfort was not deployed before because the US Federal Emergency Management Administration, which is overseeing disaster relief on the island, had not requested it.
The hospital ship will depart today from its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, the Pentagon said.
It takes up to four days to load and prepare the vessel.
Asked why the Comfort was not prepositioned in case of a deployment request, the official said weather conditions in the Caribbean just before and after the storm would have made it difficult.
Maria, the most powerful hurricane to strike Puerto Rico in nearly a century, claimed at least 16 lives on the island, knocked out its entire power grid, unleashed severe flooding and caused widespread heavy damage to homes and infrastructure.
Medical facilities were especially hard hit, many hospitals left wind-damaged, flooded, short-staffed and without electricity.
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