have power, 8% of residents in st. croix have power, 31% of cell coverage is operating territory wide. there s a boil water order in effect. the virgin islands are often ignored by politicians. this is the quote. they re not really on the radar, sally jewel said. when she would try to get members of congress to make note of issues in the virgin islands, she would be met with incred incredulity. everyone in the united states was talking about chip and support. there was language in there for puerto rico. they had completely forget lly
we saw some additional aircraft arrive on the island this week. navy s hospital ship is right off san juan. the situation on the ground is still pretty bad. as of yesterday, only 5% of residents on the island have power. 12% of the island had cell coverage. defense department is working. bringing in mobile cell towers to improve that. helping to distribute fuel and food and water with other fema representati representatives. it s still a long road until it s back to normal. live for us in washington, d.c. thank you. president trump and secary of state rex tillerson revealing the heightened tension between the two men. tillerson weighed possible resignation and made an insulting comment about the president. secretary of state rex tillerson coming out to respond to an nbc news report about friction with the president and
took. she got in a blackhawk, and she was looking down upon puerto rico, and we got a sense from the sky i don t know if we can pull that video up again of her trip. but it did not look good, she said, from many stops. she went to a couple of islands that are off the main island, but also said they re getting some help now. and just to read some of the shipments hitting the ground right now, millions of meals, millions of bottles of water. do you think maybe now, as we lead up to the tuesday trip from president trump, things will be getting better as they trickle in more help? well, i hope they are. they ve been sending troops. we now know that they ve realized they had a distribution problem and they ve been trying to address it. but when you have a three-star general appointed to oversee this effort says this is the worst devastation and saying he doesn t have enough resources, it s no wonder that we re still hearing stories of communities that have not gotten the help they n
and i think they are breaking the log jam, truck drivers are showing up. let s face it, the truck drivers couldn t communicate with the emergency centers because the cell towers were down. very little cell coverage on the island except for near san juan and the center of the island. paul: if you compare to texas, a lot is essential poverty of the island, the island is much more vulnerable, electrical grid is more vulnerable and cell towers weren t as reinforced as they were on the mainland. yeah, i think when you have a political class like you do in puerto rico that has not managed , has not done its job basically, provide basic services and to protect people against these kinds of vulnerabilities. when you have a cat 4 hurricane hit, all of that is going to be exposed and that s what we are seeing right now. paul: what can the united states to help puerto rico so in 15 years from now it won t be like this? well, i m not so sure.
for chile were able to have some cell coverage and be able to communicate amongst ourselves. our larger concerns remains with st. thomas and st. john s along the northern coast of puerto rico. geography down here, there is the varied systems that are used to move a lot of the preparation around in one of our focus areas is ensuring that we can get that operation to move first responder personnel between all the islands to support the population. heather: i have some friends down there and st. thomas that i ve been trying to reach today and there s no phone service. i spoke with them before irma hit and a lot of the people definitely stayed behind on this island, so i hope they re okay. what equipment do you have? the coast guard at this