billion in disaster relief to help with clean up and recovery efforts. after three months, 30% of puerto rico still doesn t have power after hurricane maria. and yesterday a new investigation has been ordered in the number of storm related deaths. the virgin island s water and power authority has a goal of having power restored to 90% of homes by christmas. kaims remains to be seen if they will hit that goal. many of you asked for this update. i m joined by our frequent guest here on the show, the comcongresswoman who represents the virgin islands. thank you for joining us and keeping us up to date. what is the situation in the u.s. virgin islands. thanks so much for your concern for what is happening down there. we are approximately 45% power right now. my own home does not have power on island of st. croix. and people are i m pessimist
i think puerto rico and u.s. virgin islands is near and dear to you. go on your turn now. yeah i think one of the things we re seeing right now and ben and my friend mike can articulate is there s no vision how we re going to rebuild puerto rico or the virgin islands. this is either you help or you don t. you can t compare this to florida or texas because it is a more difficult challenge but he s president of the united states of america. he is president of these islands. and think about this, simone brought up a good point 80% of puerto rico is without power. the island of st. jong if john in the virgin island 41 days 100% of the people are without a doubt power. we harp 100% of the people are without power. they had three hospitalities, all of which are closed, one has
care, there s strong people in the white house that want to do this but the difference is servicing a island nation is harder. didn t have to send uss comfort to the coast of houston, they had shelters and local government there had experience. puerto rico was an island. they sent the comfort ship down there, so not like the government said don t bother, now what they didn t think is how do we identify the right people in the hospitals and get the communications up to get them out to the ships. it s much more complex to help people on an island nation especially when the government is not up to par oh, my, are we going to glam puerto rico. turning it into a political football is doing a disservice to the good people who need more help. until it is fixed there s going to be a political price to pay for this.
here s donald trump speaking about the distribution of aide in puerto rico. we ve delivered tremendous amounts of water and you have to have distribution of the water by the people onto island. so we have massive amounts of water. we have massive amounts of food but they have to distribute the food and they have to do this, they have to distribute the food to the people of the island. so what we ve done is we now actually have military distributing food, something they really shouldn t have to be doing. why is the president trump saying our military shouldn t help americans in need? i think it is a bottom line business and if people are sufferi suffering which they are, the president will pay a political price for it. turning it into bipartisan football is going too far we saw his previous relief of the two hurricanes that hit the country, it s not as though he doesn t
seeing right now. ben can t articulate it, there is no vision for how we re growing build puerto rico or how we re going to rebuild the u.s. virgin islands. this isn t partisan. this is about visionary leadership, either you visit or you don t. yes you can t compare this to florida. you can t compare this to texas because it is a more difficult challenge. but he is president of the united states of america. he is president of these islands. and think about this. simmone brought up a good point. 80% of puerto rico is without power. how about this? the island of st. john in the virgin islands for 41 days, 100% of the people have been without power. if you think about those trio of islands in the u.s. virgin islands, because i know we harp on puerto rico a lot and rightfully so. but we cannot forget about our brothers and sisters, americans in the virgin islands. they had three hospitals all of which have been closed down. one has been condemned by the army corps of engineers. it s an esc