folks have been saying on the ground, this is a life-threatening situation and the government still feels that there s work to be done and we spoke with many officials on the plane from several different departments in the government and that was the message we heard that there s always more to do, but they feel that they are proud of the whole of government response coming together at this point. did secretary duke say she regrets the wording she used? she didn t say she had regrets but acknowledged that she felt the need to clarify what she had said and that she didn t intend for it to come across as saying that right now, everything is good news. so she did feel the need to point to, she said, the end of the statements she made yesterday but wanted to reiterate and were working to get that video to you as soon as possible that while she s proud she acknowledges there s work that needs to be done for sure. absolutely. important clarification. we ll see if san juan s mayor
news story. this is not a good story. this is a life or death story. there s a truckload of stuff that cannot be taken to people s story. you can hear the emotion and the frustration many the voice of the mayor of san juan this morning. reacting to those comments you heard from the acting homeland security elaine duke who characterized the unified federal response as good news. we ll have more on that in a second, but we want to catch you up on the latest in the crisis in puerto rico. secretary duke and other officials are visiting the island for an update on recovery efforts. within the next hour, we know the navy is dispatching the uss comfort, the hospital ship to help out with the emergency medical response on the island. the american tourists are finally able to leave the island. royal caribbean s adventure of the seas evacuated more than 2,000 tourists and people who live in puerto rico last night. i want to take you now to the latest on the efforts to loosen up the log-jam at
the island has no drinking water and virtually all of it is without power. let s go to tom bossert who is joining us right now. tom, thanks very much for joining us. and i quickly want to get your reaction because it s caused such a stir. the acting homeland security secretary elaine duke, she said the response to the puerto rico catastrophe in her words was a good news story. i want you to hear this and i want you to explain. i am very satisfied. i know it s a hard storm to recover from but the amount of progress that s been made and i really would appreciate any support that we get. i know it is really a good news story in terms of our ability to reach people and the limited number of deaths that have taken place in such a devastating hurricane. do you share her optimistic take on this process? i think secretary duke there is so proud of all of the men
administrator myself and secretary duke and took the step of doing a 100% federal cost share adjustment to pay for all this. debris premoval, pushing, power restoration, army corps of engineers and all emergency protective measures, police, fire, ems, truck drivers, all those sorts of things. 180 days. six months for virgin islands and puerto rico and until we can get our hands around this. all of those functions, missions i just described 100% federal cost share. we don t want anybody worried about paper. we want them worried about people. take two more questions. sir i wanted to follow that a little and ask, starting to envision down the road if any sort of bailout might be part of this sort of broader recovery package that you look for as supplemental and on that supplemental the first cracks at it will be relatively soon. on capitol hill, suggesting the first week in october. is that the timeline you re
there are some water production on the island and we are in a boil water state for a little over half the island which is expected with the size of this hurricane. there is a conversation about whether the military should send a hospital ship and officials say no, we want to get the on island up and running as opposed to having a ship come in. the governor asked that and wants to focus on getting the hospitals and make sure they have the generators and the fuel they need. it s a logistical problem trying to move from the many hospitals across puerto rico to a hospital ship wom ship. we do have many vessels, 16 or more and we have what we need for ships in the area. secretary duke, do you have the money? fema has about $5 billion because of the emergency response of congress.