Maria

[Rob Lister]

Well fuck.

[Abdul Alhazred]

Jose then Maria.

What happened to K. and L. ?

[Rob Lister]

Maria ate them.

[Anaxagoras]

The K was Katia, a hurricane that hit Mexico. I don't remember hearing about the L storm. Might have just been a run-of-the-mill tropical storm that never caused enough damage anywhere to be newsworthy. Most of these named tropical storms are not huge news.

[Doctor X]

How do you solve a problem. . . .

--J.D.

[Pyrrho]

Jose then Maria.

What happened to K. and L. ?

K? Who wants to know?

L went back to Arcturus.

[Rob Lister]

[Witness]

Arecibo radar telescope battered by Hurricane Maria

Initial reports from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico indicate powerful winds from Hurricane Maria destroyed an antenna and damaged the radio telescope’s huge 300-metre (1,000-foot) dish reflector, but the bulk of the facility remains intact and workers sheltered there were unharmed.

Staff and family members who rode out the storm at the observatory Wednesday are safe, but officials are still trying to contact other employees who sheltered in their homes and other safe places, according to the Universities Space Research Association, or USRA.
[…]
The main dish of the famed telescope, which spans 305 metres (1,000 feet) across, was reported intact. But the dish suffered several punctures when a 29-metre (96-foot) line feed antenna fell from a catenary more than 100 metres above the reflector, officials said.
[…]
A 12-metre (39-foot) dish used as a phase reference for Very Long Baseline Interferometry was also lost, according to USRA.

https://astronomynow.com/2017/09/22/arecibo-radar-telescope-battered-by-hurricane-maria/

[Anaxagoras]

Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club hurt the response to Maria

Granted, these things are not easy, but it seems they took their eye off the ball on this one.

At first, the Trump administration seemed to be doing all the right things to respond to the disaster in Puerto Rico.

As Hurricane Maria made landfall on Wednesday, Sept. 20, there was a frenzy of activity publicly and privately. The next day, President Trump called local officials on the island, issued an emergency declaration and pledged that all federal resources would be directed to help.

But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.

Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.

Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was to discuss his new travel ban, not the hurricane. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.

Administration officials would not say whether the president spoke with any other top officials involved in the storm response while in Bedminster, N.J. He spent much of his time over those four days fixated on his escalating public feuds with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with fellow Republicans in Congress and with the National Football League over protests during the national anthem.

Unlike what they faced after recent storms in Texas and Florida, the federal agencies found themselves partnered with a government completely flattened by the hurricane and operating with almost no information about the status of its citizens. The Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled to find truck drivers to deliver aid from ports to people in need, for example.

“The level of devastation and the impact on the first responders we closely work with was so great that those people were having to take care of their families and homes to an extent we don’t normally see,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want his statement to be interpreted as criticism of authorities in Puerto Rico. “The Department of Defense, FEMA and the federal government are having to step in to fulfill state and municipal functions that we normally just support.”

The administration still fumbled at key moments after stepping up its response. A week after landfall, Trump still had not waived the Jones Act, a law that barred foreign-flagged vessels from delivering aid to Puerto Rico. Such a waiver had been granted for previous hurricanes this year.

Asked why his administration had delayed in issuing the waiver, Trump said Wednesday that “a lot of shippers and . . . a lot of people that work in the shipping industry” didn’t want it lifted.

“If this is supposed to be the ‘drain the swamp’ president, then don’t worry about the lobbyists and do what’s needed and waive the act,” said James Norton, a former deputy assistant homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush who oversaw disaster response for the agency. “We’re talking about people here.”

Trump waived the law Thursday.

Why he waited a week to waive the Jones act because "a lot of shippers and . . . a lot of people that work in the shipping industry" didn’t want it lifted is hard to understand. This is an emergency. At the same time, I do recognize that this is a very challenging situation, but he wasn't paying much attention to it for several days there.

[Witness]

Arecibo radar telescope battered by Hurricane Maria […]

Update:

Arecibo telescope wins reprieve from US government

National Science Foundation will look for partners to provide extra financial support for Puerto Rico facility.

Details: http://www.nature.com/news/arecibo-telescope-wins-reprieve-from-us-government-1.22994