Page 10 - Roads Open News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Emergency crews right now and how do they tackle them? >> search and rescue, which means you have to do the initial search, knock and see if people are in the homes so you can rescue them and in locations where the last known contact was. search and rescue open the roads. you have to do those simultaneously. one enhances the other. because in the areas we don't have flood problems we need to open roads. so getting those roads open, getting the initial search of every house done is job one in the opening day of the search and rescue and it's a large area. you're talking about an area north of n...

They have been at it all day. it will continue for the next couple of days. the problems are extensive. as the folks are clearing out the road, they are making way for power trucks that will come through. this is one of the many neighborhoods that's lost power and it's going to take upwards of 5,000 line men who are going out and fanning throughout the area to get the power restored. in some cases before they can deal with getting the power restored, they have to get the power lines and the power poles back up because they are back and forth all over the place. the authorities are asking peopl...

Companies, the communications backbone that you depend on for your private cell phone is privately owned as well. we are rewriting our response plans to put the private sector in the front, in the front seat to tell us how we can help them. so it is a coordinated effort. you know, you can't just send power crews in right now to fix it. obviously the storm is creating damage. but as it passes it is our job to help local and state governments get the roads open. this is not something where the lights are going to come back on. the lights are going to be off for many days, if not weeks. that's wh...

Road. you got 34% of the roads open. if you look at -- we were up in the air. probably saw 25% to 33% of the island, i would say more than 90% of the roads are clear but just have chokepoints with some of the trees down. lot of the buildings -- most of the buildings are intact. some have been totally devastated but there's a lot of the structure there. here's the main problem, the electrical grid. >> yeah. >> it was weak to begin with, that's why there are so many generators being used to open up hospitals. >> why they were there already. >> the number one priority of the federal government is...

>> melissa: president trump and first lady are en route to puerto rico to look over the storm ravaged island facing a humanitarian crisis. set to make their first stop in san juan. this trip comes amid criticism of the federal government's slow response to the island which was devastated, of course, by hurricane maria. president trump has repeatedly defended the federal response. >> president trump: we're doing really well on puerto rico. tremendous progress being made. we're getting the roads open. getting a lot of things done. really at a record clip. so we're very happy with that. >> meliss...