Distracting: Blame game will not alleviate suffering in Puerto Rico

With only the media lenses trained solely on the most afflicted portions of Puerto Rico to view the current situation there through, it would be easy to condemn the federal response to Hurricane Maria.

Hospitals are seen without power. Homes and business wrecked buy wind and water lean off their foundations. Streets remain flooded and food and supplies are scant in the most remote areas.

But that doesn't mean nothing is being done.

Granted, perhaps the president could have avoided some of the scrutiny being thrust upon him by not taking a Twitter shot at the mayor of San Juan over the weekend.

Calling into question the leadership of those on the ground in the midst of a crisis from thousands of miles away simply isn't good optics.

But FEMA has been in place for a week now, and federal troops from several branches of the U.S. armed forces are there. Aid continues to pour in, and distributing supplies in an isolated area where debris litters the streets that aren't either flooded or washed out is undoubtedly a daunting task.

As we have seen here in North Carolina over the last year, and more recently in Houston and across Florida, the aftermath of these massive storms takes months and then years to recover from.

We are not there, so we cannot say with any degree of certainty what is or is not being done, whether the flow of aid packages is steady or stalled.

But blame, either locally or levied at Washington, is not among the items desperately needed by those in awaiting relief, nor by those seeking to deliver it.

From Mount Olive to Miami, Brooklyn and the Bronx, to pockets of the country none of us have ever heard of, relief efforts are in full swing, collecting, packaging and shipping care packages and supplies to the  island's ports. And, despite the fact that up until now, it seems many did not know Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory or that its inhabitants are citizens, we are learning every day as a nation what it takes to sustain a country.

The series of storms and wildfires impacting so many have hit between round after round of political infighting, riots and demonstrations depicting all of the fractures in our society as chasms -- canyons too wide to cross, gulfs too massive to navigate.

Healing has to be the blueprint, not the destination.

As we deliver aid to Puerto Rico -- and still to Houston and to Florida and to California where the fires still rage -- we will find out things we didn't know about each other. We are strangers reaching out to strangers, sometimes with the only thing shared between us being that we are Americans.

If we can move faster, let's. If we can be more efficient, let's. But if we can do nothing else, let's try to remember who we are as a people and stop pointing and wagging our fingers at one another.

Otherwise, the world will continue to view us as we are currently looking at Puerto Rico, as a place in disarray with no one coming to help but us. We better figure it out soon.

Published in Editorials on September 30, 2017 10:43 PM