One would assume Nagico is just positioning themselves for minimizing their payout, but who can expect anything different? The issue here is the total ineptness of the government - no common sense, no advance contingency planning (gee, what might we do if a hurricane comes???) We all remember that the government was totally absent before, during, and after Irma and Maria - from closing the shelters BEFORE Irma hit to weeks later when Marlin started to be visible again??

I could only think after Irma about the lack of vision, lack of organized recovery efforts, lack of strategic and contingency planning for infrastructure, schools, food, etc, etc. Some of us from the corporate world all remember spending endless time in meetings discussing long term planning, contingency planning, etc, and we all looked at total dismay that there are no skills like this on the island. I got so tired of those meetings with topics like "What happens to us if swine flu breaks out and what do we have in place to deal with it?" "Loss of internet?" "Natural disasters affecting a corporate facility or employees".........but those meetings were all appropriate and necessary. When one of our facilities lost electricity for an extended period due to a flood, we had moving vans in place that night to move equipment from that operation to three other operations and never lost a beat. Why? Because it had all been foreseen and planned for and someone just called up that file and started to lead according to "the plan". Surely there needs to be SOME planning for hurricanes in the islands. Will there be? We all know the answer is no.

Common sense is to get the insurers onsite immediately after an event and work together with them to develop a recovery plan immediately, and to hold each others feet to the fire to ensure everyone does what they were supposed to in a timely manner - though obviously that plan framework should have been in place long before it was necessary. Many of us remember all the posts here and other sites about how nothing was being done at the airport for weeks after Irma to mitigate the damages. Many of us remember the posts about the government officials being all "shock and awe" when they took a tour of the airport building weeks after. With that background in mind, is any of this a surprise?

All of this is just one more example in the long, long list of government failures on the island. How many of us remember the recent posts about the last Dutch-side election results and see how hopeless the situation is for the island going forward. Almost no one votes? They voted Marlin back as a PM? Tiny "radical" and splinter parties with less than 1000 votes dominate the government?

I know I'm being harsh and will feel the backlash, but really, how does one feel sorry about the atrocities experienced by and perped on these people by the government when no one there gets involved, no one believes the government is anything but corruption, etc. They believe that government is hopeless and controlled by the "big-wigs", and so it is. Beliefs like these are self-fulfilling prophesies.

I just wish it were easier to see progress on the island continuing from what it was previously to what it could be, instead of the decline we've experienced "post - independence".

I guess it would be too easy to draw certain parallels to the U.S, but then things would really get crazy here. LOL!