Mapp Alters Curfew (Now 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m) For Baseball’s World Series; Hospitals To Layoff Employees

ST. CROIX — During his Monday evening press briefing, Governor Kenneth Mapp altered the territory-wide curfew to the hours of 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., meaning residents now have between the hours of 5:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. to conduct their affairs. The governor said the change was to make allowance for residents eager to watch the World Series, many of whom would predictably watch the games at restaurants with big screens. Mr. Mapp’s decision to change the curfew comes five days following the last change, when the governor and Police Commissioner Delroy Richards said the roads were too dark to allow additional time.

Following the end of the World Series on November 1, the curfew will be altered to an earlier time on November 3. During the World Series games, police officers will saturate the roadways at nights to ensure that residents are traveling safe, Mr. Mapp said.

Mr. Mapp along with a USVI delegation that he will organize, will visit the nation’s capital on November 7 and 8. While there, the governor will make his pitch to Congress on why the territory needs all the assistance it can get. The delegation will also meet with congressional leaders and members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet.

“It’s not about getting a handout, it’s about getting help and it’s about showing who we are” as U.S. Virgin Islanders, Mr. Mapp said. The governor has requested $5.5 billion in federal funds to help the territory rebuild after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, a number he said on Monday could change as the assessment of the storms’ impact on the USVI continues.

Noting that the territory’s hospitals were badly damaged by the hurricanes, a comment the governor has made multiple times, Mr. Mapp said he recently held a work session with the CEOs of the Schneider Regional Medical Center and the Juan F. Luis Hospital and Medical Center, out of which a decision was made to evacuate the remaining patients in need of critical care to off-island medical institutions. Mr. Mapp said the local hospitals could no longer provide adequate medical care. And he advised the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of the work session and the decision to remove the remaining critically ill patients from those facilities.

“They cannot stay there,” Mr. Mapp added. He said there were 73 patients at the hospitals as of Monday.

The decision to evacuate the remaining patients will impact the hospitals’ operations. The governor said employees will have to be laid off because of the removal of patients and hence the diminishing of funds.

As a supplement until the hospitals are either repaired or rebuilt, the U.S. Department of Defense, through FEMA, has been installing mobile medical units at both hospitals that Mr. Mapp said will be in the territory as long as they’re needed. “Three, four, five years,” he said.

But the mobile units will not be ready until Dec. 10, and Mr. Mapp did not say whether the hospitals would remain open before then.

Other important details from the meeting:

1. Mr. Mapp, who had announced the closure of the Canegata Ballpark center as a shelter, stating that the territory was getting back to normalcy, was forced to reopen the shelter to house hurricane survivors who were at the St. Croix Educational Complex. The latter facility is needed to educate students as schools reopen, but the governor’s decision to close the Canegata Ballpark shelter when there were still a number of persons displaced on St. Croix was viewed by many as a misstep.
2. Over 1,000 unemployment checks have been issued. Mr. Mapp thanked Dept. of Labor (D.O.L.) Commissioner Catherine Hendry, who flew over to St. Croix staff from the St. Thomas-St. John District to speed up the process. The department’s systems in St. Thomas were compromised by Hurricane Irma, and so a lot of the essential work has been performed from St. Croix.
3. With over 2,000 jobs available through D.O.L., a host of Virgin Islanders have been applying for work.
4. The governor changed his reasoning for the DSNAP delay as he struggles to tell the truth about what really caused it. Full story here. 
5. FEMA continues to make progress with debris removal, housing for the displaced and powering critical infrastructure with generators, among them schools, government facilities and communication sites. Over 500 FEMA employees are in the USVI working to assist hurricane survivors.