US Democratic lawmakers pledge to help speed up disaster recovery in Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A group of U.S. Democratic lawmakers promised Puerto Ricans on Friday that they would try to speed up the island’s sluggish recovery from destructive hurricanes and earthquakes, a process that relies heavily on federal funds.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, ranking member of the House Committee of Homeland Security, said he and other legislators met with Puerto Rico mayors as part of a two-day trip to the U.S. territory and heard their concerns including delays in reimbursements and project approvals.

“We’ll move some of those concerns into corrective actions,” he said at a news conference. “The system should work better.”

Pablo José Hernández, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress, said the island’s mayors flagged their concerns after former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem implemented a policy that DHS expenditures over $100,000 be personally approved by that office.

The policy further delayed recovery efforts in Puerto Rico from hurricanes Maria and Fiona, and a series of strong quakes that struck in late 2019 and early 2020.

In April, new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin rescinded the rule, but challenges remain.

Thompson noted that about a third of the workforce of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency “has been done away with.”

He added: “Not a lot of people to answer the phones or look at the paperwork because they’re not there.”

Thompson said Mullin has promised that he’ll bring back employees, but it’s unclear when that might happen.

“FEMA’s role is to be here in a time of need when local resources have been overrun,” Thompson said. “Obviously, hurricanes that you’re dealing with over time have overrun local resources.”

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017 as a powerful Category 4 storm. It shredded the island’s power grid and caused an estimated $90 billion in damage. In the storm’s steamy aftermath, an estimated 2,982 people died.

Hurricane Fiona pummeled Puerto Rico in September 2022 as a Category 1 storm, lashing once more a power grid that hadn’t been rebuilt from Hurricane Maria.

Meanwhile, a series of earthquakes that shook southern Puerto Rico caused an estimated $3 billion in damage.

The island is trying to recover from the disasters, with some 30% of projects still pending.

So far, nearly $43 billion in federal funds have been allocated, nearly $40 billion obligated, and $12.7 billion disbursed, according to Puerto Rico’s Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency. The office receives and awards federal grant funds.

Caguas Mayor William Miranda Torres said that a bottleneck of pending projects is driving up costs, which in turn causes more delays. He said there are many projects pending in his city.

In September 2025, a DHS report found that FEMA “did not ensure the timely rebuilding of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid” after Hurricane Maria and that FEMA officials “missed opportunities to provide more assistance to Puerto Rico."

Meanwhile, a February 2024 audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that Puerto Rico’s government had spent less than 10% of the more than $23 billion in available federal funds at the time.

Challenges included rising costs, a lack of workers, significant reductions in insurance coverage and interruptions in the global supply chain. Many of those issues persist.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

FILE - A house lays in the mud after it was washed away by Hurricane Fiona at Villa Esperanza in Salinas, Puerto Rico, Sept. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A 3.5-meter (11-foot) shark critically injured a woman off a popular Sydney beach on Saturday, and she managed to grab onto a lifeguard’s paddleboard before they made it to shore.

The 35-year-old suffered serious leg and arm injuries in the attack at 11:15 a.m. off Coogee Beach, a police statement said.

“I saw the shark come out of the water and just the size of it shocked me,” lifeguard Charlie Verco told Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. He was in the area on his 5.5-meter (18-foot) paddleboard and was the first rescuer to the scene.

“I kept paddling towards her and the shark took her underwater and I was going, ‘What do I do now?’ A couple of seconds later, she popped up again,” Verco said.

He said the woman was too weak to climb onto the board, but he managed to grab her by an arm and they headed toward the beach. Other bystanders reached the pair and helped them back to shore.

An off-duty hospital doctor Ian Ferguson was spending the morning at the beach with his young family when he said he heard screaming and saw a “big cloud of blood in the water.”

Ferguson and others applied tourniquets to her wounds after she reached the beach. She had a 30-centimeter (12-inch) wide bite on her thigh, the flesh had been removed and bone was exposed, Ferguson told the newspaper. She had a similar wound to her arm, he said.

The victim was taken to a rugby field near the beach, from where she was flown by helicopter to a hospital. Police described her condition as critical.

The woman, who was not identified, was swimming with two friends 30 meters (100 feet) from the beach when she was attacked, ambulance official Michael Corlis said.

She was attacked by a 3.5-meter (11-foot) white shark, lifeguard Tony Waller said.

Three spearfishing divers have been killed by sharks off the Australian coast since May 16, bringing the total of fatalities in the nation this year to four. In January, a 12-year-old boy died in a hospital days after he was mauled by a bull shark in Sydney Harbor.

Australia has averaged between two and three fatal shark attacks a year since 2000, according to the Australian Shark Incident Database, a partnership of the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Flinders University and the New South Wales state government.

Last year, Australia recorded five fatal shark attacks. Attacks in Australia have become more common over the decades as the population has grown and activities such as surfing and scuba diving have gained in popularity.

FILE - A sign is seen at the site of a fatal shark attack at Dee Why Beach in Sydney, Australia, on Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)

People sit on stairs at Coogee beach following a shark attack in Sydney, Saturday, June 13, 2026. (Nadir Kinani/AAP Image via AP)