Protesters in Puerto Rico called for Gov. Wanda Vazquez to resign Monday — blaming her for squandered emergency supplies found locked up in a warehouse over the weekend.
Dozens in the earthquake-rattled island gathered outside La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion, banging on frying pans and holding signs with messages like “Government, Absent, Criminal, Negligent.”
“I have never come out to protest but this caused me so much anger and indignation,” protester Rubi Oliveras told El Vocero newspaper.
“How is it possible that you say you care about the country and yet you let so many people die while hiding these supplies?”
The protest intensified throughout the day, with the angry mob marching to the steps of the island’s capitol building in San Juan.
At 4 p.m. Vazquez called back three squadrons of “shock force” police that had been dispatched to the scene in order to keep the demonstration from getting out of control, El Nuevo Diario reported.
“I respect the constitutional right of citizens to demonstrate and I trust that my Puerto Rican brothers will do so in order,” the governor wrote on Twitter.
“There is no need for the use of the shock force at this time, so I have requested that regular security be withdrawn and maintained.”
News of the unused emergency supplies spread on social media Saturday when a local blogger posted a video of the facility, which housed water, cots and other relief supplies dating back to Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Ponce Mayor Maria Melendez said she was outraged by the discovery.
“I spent several days requesting cots and water,” said Melendez. “They sent me to Cabo Rojo for the cots and to San Juan for the water. If I had known that those supplies were there I would have demanded that they be taken out immediately.”
Vazquez claimed she was also in the dark about the stash of supplies and fired three top government officials over the weekend — the director of emergency management and the commissioners of the housing and family departments.
The newspaper El Nuevo Dia reported that a second warehouse in Guaynabo is also stocked with supplies that have not been tapped.
Last week’s 6.4-magnitude earthquake killed at least one person and caused an estimated $200 million in damage, sending more than 7,000 people to emergency shelters.
The island is also still not fully recovered from Maria, a Category 5 hurricane that hit the island in September 2017, killing more than 3,000 people and leaving much of the island in ruins.