Trump: Puerto Rico death toll not like 'real catastrophe' Katrina
The President draws a distinction between the effects of the island's strongest storm since 1928 and the 2005 killer hurricane.
Wednesday 4 October 2017 02:53, UK
Donald Trump has told the people of Hurricane Maria-hit Puerto Rico that the death toll on their island could not be compared with Hurricane Katrina.
He made his comments as he visited the US territory in the Caribbean to witness relief efforts, and personally handed out packs of kitchen roll.
Pledging an all-out effort to help the country, he said Puerto Rico suffered a relatively low death toll from Hurricane Maria compared with Katrina.
The President said that while every death was "a horror," there was a difference between "a real catastrophe like Katrina" and "what happened here" in Puerto Rico.
More than 1,000 people are believed to have died in 2005 when category four Katrina hit Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, including its biggest city New Orleans.
Some 34 people died in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria, with some 44 dying in other parts of the Caribbean and US.
Catastrophe modelling firm AIR Worldwide said last week that the storm caused an estimated $40-85bn worth of damage, mostly in Puerto Rico.
Katrina was estimated to have caused £108bn in damage at the time.
Critics were quick to condemn what he had said. Someone calling themselves Pe Resists4 tweeted: "The official death toll will (sadly) go up. And it'll go up dramatically. Trump patting himself on the back here will seem even more callous."
Another, calling themselves Rosetta Drone, said on Twitter: "People were calling this his "Katrina"; so this whole thing was about making himself look better than Bush. Disgusting."
On his first visit to survey damage from Hurricane Maria, Mr Trump threw at least five packs of kitchen roll into a crowd gathered at Calvary Chapel, Guaynabo.
He shook hands with a crowd who had come to see him and posed for selfies with many of them.
Among those who met him at Muniz Air National Guard Base in Carolina was San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who later took part in a meeting with the President which she described as "productive".
She said she hoped new channels of communication with the White House "put in motion what is needed" to save lives.
But, in an interview with CNN, she was critical of the President, saying he sometimes "spouts" comments "that really hurt the people of Puerto Rico".
And, she added, Mr Trump was sometimes more "miscommunicator in chief" than commander in chief.