War in syria will be top of the agenda along with bilateral investments and stabilizing oil markets but those were the headlines the news continues here on aljazeera after the stream thats watching. We understand the differences. And the similarities of cultures across the world so no matter how you take it aljazeera will bring you the news and Current Affairs that. I am find and meaning in your in the stream live on aljazeera and you too the death toll in puerto rico from Hurricane Maria has jumped to thirty four and could rise even higher and as the u. S. Territory continues the recovery effort who is helping out. We are here. Tonight cannot fathom. The thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out the logistics for island of one hundred miles thirty five miles. So maybe. We are. Its been two weeks since the strongest hurricane to hit puerto rico in ninety years made landfall delivering a massive blow to the u. S. Territory Hurricane Maria decimated the islands infrastructure the storm snapped power lines like toothpicks and toppled homes like they were made of playing cards more than thirty people have died and the death toll is expected to rise in the wake of the storm theres been much talk about the territorys relationship with the United States president Trumps Administration has been widely criticized for its slow response and sending much needed aid to the island on tuesday the president made his first trip to puerto rico to see the devastation firsthand puerto rican Officials Say what he saw was little if anything has changed the three point five million residents living on the island continue to struggle to find water petrol and other basic needs so who will help and joining us from san juan to discuss that renee vargas a lawyer and newspaper columnists. She is the managing director of concrete a nonprofit focused on the social and Economic Development in puerto rico and in new york Hector Figaro A Puerto rican activist and president of thirty two b. J. Service employees International Union welcome everyone to the stream we also invited the mayor of san juan on to our show she originally agreed but later declined due to scheduling conflicts so lets start in san juan where our a. J. Plus colleague and occasional cohost on the stream dean was on the ground when the category four storm hit take a look. I just tried to sign on and its very difficult to drive around because fifty percent of the city was flooded and its not water thats preventing you from going from one place to the other its broken power lines trees debris. Is most. People with their doors. Hers. Here my street it was really money for the house over to another neighbor so she lost her house completely. Renee two weeks later what is your area of san juan look like. Hi renee thanks for being here thank you for joining us its two weeks after the hurricane what is your area look like. Hi dan and milliken thank you for the opportunity to be here talking about puerto rico so san juan is slowly i would like to say that were returning to normality but things are getting a bit better gas lines are a big. There is still a big problem with and cash. Eight percent of people in the island have electricity and about fifty percent have Running Water so many some places its it alternates depending on the day. But outside of the metropolitan area is where the real story is where theres a lot of it with a lot of areas are still be communicated there are still people that dont have access to food supermarkets havent been able to get. Good stare theres long lines for gas no do you so. Theres problems for people to get refills permitting. People that are losing their jobs because theres no power i actually i work for a. Nonprofit Financial Institution and most of the people we are helping are asking for extensions because theyve lost their jobs or are asking for permission to take their cars out of puerto rico to get jobs on the mainland so its complex theres a lot to do and even though once again things are Getting Better on the gas side in san juan its all very hard to go to a supermarket and get food without a minor to get cash which is the only thing that is accepted on the streets so when youre talking about what to do we. Actually isabel id like to read this tweet for you that weve got this is from roe in new york he has family and puerto rico and hes hearing from them hes hearing he says that theyre physically fine but going through it like the rest of the islands no water power long line says when i was saying to buy anything isabel can you tell us why two weeks after the hurricane are these there are still these long lines theres long lines there because we dont have power everything has to be cash based not all the supermarkets are open and answer and as said there is. We have someone is better and theres more people with diesel and gasoline but theres a lot of traffic because theres no power and theres no. Lights in the streets. For the traffic. Theres theres still theres only thirty six percent to a. T. M. s are working so we have the rest of the people are there all im reading into the same a. T. M. The only supermarkets that are open. I have to have pulled up this headline here you wrote this on september twenty eighth published in the New York Times washington set puerto rico up for disaster and in it you talk about your father and you say that its been more than a week since ive had any word in new york from my ninety three year old father in puerto rico he lives in a town that was in the path of the worst storm to hit the island since the one nine hundred twenty eight how was your father today and have you made contact. I have made contact with my sibling and my sister and of course in passing by the report from him is that he is physically well but like the other. You know other folks said you know people are without the necessities they have no Running Water they have no electricity is hard to get from where they leave to the downtown of course because they live outside the town the roads have been destroyed and theyre covered by debris so while he is ok for now we are looking you know what our options are Going Forward people are patiently inquire more waiting for aid to come. To and to be substantial enough to provide particularly for seniors and children that assess it is that they need they also have an aunt in a nursing home in the town and the conditions are similar no electricity no Running Water. One thing i like to say that the spirit of puerto rico is in the middle of all these have been incredible the way in which they have been helping each other the way in which they are being cooking together spending evenings together making sure that they can go through these hardship with the level of a sense of community on purpose but time is running out and we need the aid and we need the support of the Government Communications electricity that we reestablished as soon as possible in the remote area hector you mention the speed of a delivery or the slowness rather i want to play a video commenting that rene to respond to every name we got this from abigail who was in puerto rico during Hurricane Maria shes now in new jersey take a listen to what she had to say. We collectively. To. The thing it was a twenty piece i guess including the local police and it got pretty dire. You know we were going into Drinking Water and again there was no one around and never never saw any u. S. Federal help ever when i was there i felt like you know if i was a u. S. Citizen in a foreign country i get i would that help sooner but since i was a u. S. Citizen in puerto rico no one really cared about us and no one was going to give us any information on how to reach our loved ones so when they are with. You felt like nobody cared weve heard a lot about the slowness of delivery from the federal government have you felt in puerto rico that youve been forgotten by the mainland. Oh definitely the. Response by the firm has been really sluggish and it shows people are talking about it theyre comparing it to other hurricanes even here in puerto rico like georges and go where you would see you like put weeks your response and see what they call the blue the blue temporary roofs over house of snow to help people nothing has been their distribution is very slow and people are really not seeing the presence of the poll government industry and i know a lot of people say you know you want the federal government to do everything for you and its not that its a total recall was not ready for weve had massive cuts for the last decade. That have really diminished you cant possibly over our own government to respond to crisis like this and that has been seen cause of our debt crisis so. Its important to note that Puerto Ricans have served in the military since world war one and more than one hundred sixteen thousand americans and certainly u. S. Army so to say that were expecting for things to people to help us i mean Puerto Ricans have served their duty as soon as u. S. Citizens and what ive seen now in terms of people helping each other out is that Civil Society is tired of waiting for whoever is in charge to distribute supplies and they are taking matters into their own hands theyre jumping in cards theyre getting into their their you know their s. U. V. S and now that theres diesel and i dont want it and theyre going out and theyre going to different towns and every day have people come back to the office after theyve given out supplies and theyre doing it this on their own and some help from the place where im working at what i would have thought be aware theres theres a bunch of different nonprofits working from there because we do have electricity and Horror Stories that theyre saying when they call back is that those people havent had to receive anything and its been almost two weeks. Nothing and it is that i hear what youre saying and i heard also what the video commenter said dan abigail said we never saw federal house so pulled up here for response to the federal Emergency Management agency this is an overview of federal efforts to prepare for and respond to Hurricane Maria human was actually already in puerto rico to respond to Hurricane Irma which made landfall before Hurricane Maria was a little bit earlier you can see a time line here so when maria actually hit on september twentieth making landfall there agents were out on the ground they were giving water and they were helping with about response however the criticism is that it wasnt far enough and it wasnt necessarily outside of the capital so it is about you mentioned your organization they pulled up here your own website your solution is an off the grid box an all in one solution equipped with all the hardware needed to produce electricity and clean water and remote areas how does this work and does it. Well right now were we just ordered the first one which is going to be a guess which is an island of a small island part of puerto rico its been isolated we we got expertise from people in silicon valley. Creator of this off the greeks voxs and mit and weve been working with our diaspora to help us in each phase of our fallen and how were going to allocate our funds to so that to make it up in a responsible way so were were racing a fall and committed. And committed to our dot com and the first are yes needs to sesame the second area is power as a source as you mention were going to start with these twelve boxes to marginalise and vulnerable communities they filtrate water and they also can power up a kleenex size of Structure Medical clinic and they also have three hundred portable battery units that people can take to their homes they can charge their cell phones they can also power up some light bulbs and our third focus for the follow on is long term reconstruction efforts so isabel you mentioned you mentioned that the diaspora is involved in this project and i actually want to ask hector about that because hectors in the diaspora in new york we got this video comment from the top hector take a listen. Whether you go has been facing one of the most cancers i think disasters of a century yes been to a way since youre actually my youngest the island and were still trying to get Recovery Efforts there as a puerto rican living in the ass right very devastating to see what is happening yet our puerto rican pride kids are strong in this time to go to to work hard to build puerto rico this is not a time to play political games but a time to unite collaborate and save lives there are Many Organizations and individuals working to support the island some of them are friends of puerto rico comfort but parts of the gulf come from i see those the latino pleasure college and the red cross the National Association of hispanic journalists signed by you all to take action and give back to puerto rico after what is a top priority for Puerto Ricans on the u. S. Mainland in sending things back to puerto rico when i think theyre to pay or it is the priority of sending goods and he says it is you know about that is a purchase where they go in the beginning i think those things are still very very necessary and you know we also need to send foodstuffs and things that people Family Members will need but i actually want to challenge that notion that this is a time for us to leave politics aside i actually seen the opposite ive seen that kind of five four but its now not later we all need to unite to save lives and we need to have an understanding of this cult of these the idea that we also need to be fair and demand for the federal government the kind of respond that is needed and resource it. Estimates of these all calamity to be between forty to eighty five billion dollars being insured losses by air and core logic you know the amount this event has requested from kong is much less than that and hes intended to cover all the unit came the south theres the fires in california so we really really have to. You know maybe the moment an organized today we had demonstrations in thirteen theaters in this day is demanding more aid and also as it is in the economic on the shows in which political found itself before we need the burden to the to the to the leave that and when we want to have a speed of humanity and solidarity we also cannot afford not to make demands politically that our island needs now because were talking about lives were talking about whether or not its going to reach my father my family in cornwall my real appeasing of selinas and did i ask but as relatives and friends and what we need to play with each other we have to recognize that puerto rico has being fundamentally abandoned and the administration has not fully understood and articulated the extent to which puerto rico is in hardship and the spear so i think we have to do both we have to send aid we have to send we leave or we have to demand that the government its part puerto rico going to use far more economically than what it gets every year in federal funds lets have that relationship before the time being reversed in a way that helps put the reason to be back on its feet so i had to mention the administration i pulled up this headline here and call me a Columbus Dispatch are pulling for the New York Times where we can also relationship with the u. S. Its complicated and thats putting it lightly i think nowhere perhaps is this relationship as complicated or as visible then it was with u. S. President francis visit to puerto rico this came two weeks after the hurricane made landfall have a look at what he told people yesterday now i tell you what to recover such a little out of whack because we spent a lot of money in puerto rico and thats fine we saved a lot of lives. If you look at the. Every death is a horror but if you look at a real catastrophe like katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died and you look at what happened here was really a storm that was just totally overpowering nobodys ever seen anything like this and what is your what is your death count as of this moment seven. Sixteen people certified sixteen people versus in the thousands. You could be very proud of the form of your people all of our people working sixty vs literally thousands of people you could be very proud of is about you see that and i wonder what the reception while to president trumps a visit in puerto rico. Well its not a surprise from this president. You know people that are receive it well of course and its not we live in a drought we got we live in an island and we are. Prepared to be safe during the here again we know what to do during hurricanes what is what happens after the here at kings theres a lot that death toll is going to grow right now we have a mosquito problems right now the hospitals are full of school until capacity right now you know i have a Family Member who had a stroke and he had to wait two days and the waiting room until he was. You know until they. Paid attention to him two days he was in coma for two days in the waiting room. That death toll is going to grow and by that its six months or more until we get the energy back. Its going to keep getting worse. Yeah yeah and the people who are intensive unit care you know many of them. Didnt they hear king of the loss of electricity i mean whether or not a number of people we dont know the number of people who have died the number that has been offered by the president by the governor are to certify that there are people in morgues waiting to be identified waiting to be claimed by their relatives i dont want to be other means but and also we cannot judge a tragedy just by ok that you have this many lives and these many lives lost