LETTER: From the river to the sea | Opinion

Amidst the terror of COVID, in August 2020, after decades of government mismanagement and corruption, the entire seaport and more than half of the city of Beirut were destroyed in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

More than 200 people were needlessly killed when a huge stockpile of chemicals that had been insecurely stored in a Lebanese port exploded. Four years later, many Lebanese remain angry that no one has been held accountable for the disaster and blame the political elite for systemic corruption, government gridlock and economic collapse.

There is overwhelming evidence that several Lebanese politicians have been held responsible for the crimes of presumptive murder and/or manslaughter under local law. It is almost certain that the actions and inactions of Lebanese government agents created an unreasonable risk to life due to their incompetent management of the dangerous conditions in the port of Beirut.

In a global perspective, under international human rights law, a government’s failure to prevent foreseeable risks to life is a violation of the basic human right to life.

The same goes for Guam’s politicians and their continued health care failures.

Amidst the horror of COVID in August 2020, the people of Guam came upon the horrifying discovery that the island’s health care system was extremely mismanaged by GovGuam officials. Local villages were subsequently devastated with over 400 deaths from the pandemic and thousands of people who fell ill and were hospitalized with serious illnesses.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, when the deadly virus broke out from China, Guam became known as one of the hardest-hit American communities as the US federal government recognized the failure of the island’s weak and poorly managed health care system.

While local politicians incompetently tried to reopen Guam to international tourism in May 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a severe level 4 warning that all “travelers should avoid all travel to Guam.”

Four years later, many Guamanians remain angry that no one has been held accountable for Guam’s COVID-19 pandemic, and they blame the island’s political elite for systemic corruption, government gridlock and economic crimes.

Amidst the terror of COVID, in August 2020 the GovGuam Emergency Transportation System received millions of federal dollars to purchase and operate more than 15 ambulances for Guam’s civilian population.

From Yigo to Humotak to the rivers in between, the 150,000 non-military non-military civilians living on this island thought they had 10 or at least eight reliable ambulances to help them escape the COVID- 19 or anything else that tried to kill them.

But the people of Guam were wrong. There were not enough ambulances. And now many people have died.

In fact, at the height of the COVID pandemic in the fall of 2021, more than 62% of patients arriving by ambulance at Guam Memorial Hospital died on arrival. In plain English, the ambulances arrived too late to save their lives.

There were not 15 functional ambulances to serve the 19 beautiful villages of Guam. There were not even 10 functional blocks. No boys and girls, even as recently as this Halloween, in all of Guam’s green 212 square miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Philippine Sea, the non-belligerent people of Guam are lucky enough to have even four ambulances plying our bumpy island roads.

Meanwhile, behind the fences of Naval Station and Andersen Air Force Base, Guam’s roughly 15,000 war-torn residents have six functional ambulances and possibly a couple more. Guam’s military does not appear to be defeated by the same administrative, logistical, and procurement problems that GovGuam seems to have.

I wonder how many military personnel died on arrival in our latest COVID fiasco?

The Guam Legislature recently held an emergency session to address the critical ambulance shortage affecting Guam’s civilian population. A bipartisan majority of senators, doctors, and EMS mechanics supported legislative efforts to accelerate funding and purchases of reliable ambulances in light of the already challenging Christmas season that is fast approaching.

Sensibly, the thinking among the rational and politically agnostic in attendance was that Guam was living in dangerous times, and the usual violence and carnage during New Year’s celebrations on the island would likely call for more ambulances in Guam’s villages.

The only two people who disagreed were Acting Fire Chief and Senator Will Parkinson. Apparently, the fire chief believed that Guam didn’t need more than four or five ambulances right now, and no one complained to him about the delay in emergency transport.

According to the fire chief, the current situation with the ambulance was unpleasant and he would contact everyone if there was a problem.

Senator Will Parkinson took a much darker view. He believed that four of Guam’s 15 operating ambulances in the past nine months was not an “emergency” but rather a political game in which he accused his colleagues of ulterior motives.

Senator Parkinson said no to helping Guam get more ambulances this Christmas. He said no to GFD and he said no to Guam.

Senator Will Parkinson just earned himself a new nickname: The Grinch.