French President Emmanuel Macron announced he would be travelling to St Martin on Tuesday on an Airbus carrying aid supplies to show that Paris is committed to both helping and rebuilding its far-away territories pummelled by Hurricane Irma.
Some Caribbean officials said Britain was also too slow in responding to destruction on the British Virgin Islands and the Dutch government faced criticism for not acting more quickly to evacuate tourists stranded on St Maarten, the Dutch side of St Martin. The Dutch king is also heading to the region.
The arrival of Hurricane Jose, a Category 4 that passed by yesterday, only delayed recovery efforts across the Leeward Islands.
In St Martin yesterday, authorities were trying to set up the first large distribution points for food and water as the smell of churned-up rotting debris wafted over the island. In the western coastal town of Grand-Case, a 76-year-old man who only gave his first name, Michel, emerged from a grocery store laden with food, explaining that he had nothing else to eat.
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French government spokesman Christophe Castaner, speaking yesterday with Europe1-CNews-Les Echos, said he "perfectly (understood) the anger" of island residents. But he insisted that officials had known of the "extremely high risk" posed by the hurricane days in advance and had mobilised military and health care personnel in nearby Guadeloupe.
Castaner said many islanders were suffering from "emotional shock, an impact that's extremely hard psychologically."
More than 1,000 tons of water and 85 tons of food along with fuel have been shipped to St. Martin and St. Barts, and additional deliveries are expected in upcoming days, government officials in Guadeloupe said. Crews with heavy equipment and chain saws were clearing the roads of debris.
An increase in police and soldiers patrolling the streets has reduced the amount of looting.
Authorities in St. Martin have set up some 1,500 emergency shelters, doctors have treated around 100 people at a makeshift triage area and nearly 250 people have been evacuated, including seven facing medical emergencies, officials in Guadeloupe said.
The French military had positioned two frigates in the area ahead of the storm with helicopters ready to ferry supplies but the sheer violence of Irma seemed to take authorities by surprise.
The families of some island residents have taken to social media to voice similar criticisms.
Macron held emergency meetings Saturday and Sunday about Irma and its successor, Jose, and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe insisted that the government's support for Irma's victims isn't "empty words."
"I am aware of the fear, the exhaustion and the anguish that the current situation is causing families in the Antilles and on the mainland," Philippe said. "We are completely mobilised to rescue, to accompany and to rebuild."
On St Maarten, where the airport was badly damaged by Irma, dozens of Dutch tourists were forced to watch as Canadian and American flights picked up their vacationing citizens. They had to hunker down in whatever shelter they could find Saturday night as a second hurricane, Jose, passed to the north of the island.
"The Netherlands had one major priority ... That is evacuating the patients," Rutte told reporters. "Other countries with tourists - the Canadians, the Americans - don't have that."
Military cargo planes or aid flights were expected to pick up stranded Dutch tourists later yesterday and take them to Curacao, from where they would be able to catch flights home.
Some 500 British soldiers, meanwhile, were sent to the
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