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Flooding
message 51:
by
Clare
(new)
Sep 15, 2017 01:37AM
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While everyone's lives have gone from the what if this happens mode to the how to respond mode, our behavior is still stuck in the what if mode.Because of the global population density and the way we have structured our accomplishments, there are immediate consequences for decisions that involve people's well being.
The insulation that governments used to push the consequences of everyone's decisions into the future where we couldn't feel them is melting away faster than than the non polar glaciers are melting away into nothingness.
The Polar regions have already melted, they just haven't finished melting yet. We are as clueless as the Inuits who claim they need their shores lined with a thick ice shelf so they can pull the whales they catch onto a shore where their buildings are sinking into an ocean of mud that used to be a rock solid permafrost foundation to build on.
Having survived a weakened hurricane celebrated for its reverse storm surge, the Tampa Bay waterfront is rebuilding and Bill Gates is there, investing in building new kinds of schools and businesses designed to address real problems that we are all facing. Even though the new buildings are being built to withstand future storms, the whole concept of reconstructing the shore lands in our image might be nothing more than castles made of sand as the sea levels continue to rise.
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The blurb for this book seems to sum it all up.The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
by Amitav Ghosh
Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
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I have to feel so sorry for the wreckage of people's lives. Suppose this does happen again every year, or the fruit and tourism industries can't recover?
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-my...
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However, India is going to be the world's most populous nation by 2050. I don't see them having room.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_...
A back up power system of solar cells is a good idea but where to place it might be a problem. There was a lot of damage to roofs which is where the solar cells are usually mounted. If they were centralized in each neighbor hood in a protected enclosure with a simple underground cable going to each house, the people would at least have some kind of power during a prolonged power outage. As time went on the size of the centralized solar cell units could be increased to provide power on a regular basis.
Maria did severe damage to multiple Caribbean islands over the past 36 hours, including Dominica, Guadeloupe and the Virgin Islands. All of Puerto Rico is without power.https://www.yahoo.com/gma/hurricane-m...
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It is still raining in Puerto Rico.Puerto Rico's power grid is state owned, 9 billion in debt, delivering poor quality power at twice the normal stateside rates. Now it is delivering nothing. It is estimated that it could take 6 months to rebuild it. There is no mention of where the money is coming from. For years the US Congress has been steadfastly denying the island any funds to bail itself out.
The health care system has been badly hit by the economic downturns the island has suffered after corporations pulled out year after year looking for cheaper production costs. Some hospitals are partially flooded, with no online services that everyone has become dependent on.
95 percent of the cell phone service which uses no wires is down which shows for all it's technological advances, it is still firmly rooted in the 20th century and is not the technological wonder the advertising world has brain washed us into believing it is. It is a luxury item, not a reliable emergency device.
Still thinking our grandchildren are the ones who are going to be having a tough time?
From the NY Times:
"Mr. Ramos said that residents would need to adjust to a new way of life, changing how they cooked and how they cooled off. He said that adjustments would be particularly difficult for a younger generation that had grown up playing with electronic devices and taking power for granted.
“It’s a good time for dads to buy a ball and a glove and change the way you entertain your children,” he said."
Everyone takes power for granted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/us...
The solar industry could step in to get things going but they need what every else needs: They need to be paid. Somewhere along the way we decided that pay to play was the way to do things. There are now couple of million of people in the Gulf of Mexico basin who are now unable to to pay to play. In today's world, the word help is spelled M-O-N-E-Y. Sure it starts out free, but if the money isn't there the bulk of the help soon disappears.
The 2017 season is one of only six years to feature at least two Category 5 hurricanes. The season goes through November. What do the New York weather forecasters say? Fortunate for us the storms keep staying out in the ocean. Jose is eroding the east coast shores as it meanders around in the Atlantic, soon to be joined by Maria as it churns up the east coast. That's probably another record in the making. Except for "fortunate for us", the destruction of the Caribbean could just as easily be happening in the North Eastern US.
Dam failing as scope of Puerto Rico's disaster becomes clearGovernment spokesman Carlos Bermudez said that officials had no communication with 40 of the 78 municipalities on the island more than two days after the Category 5 storm crossed the island, toppling power lines and cell phone towers and sending floodwaters cascading through city streets.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/puerto-ric...
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You need a battery powered CB radio. Old school still works if you have it. Supposedly, at some point, someone is going to hand deliver satellite phones to all the towns not heard from.
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• Quotation of the day.
“Sometimes when there are shortages, the price of plantain goes up from $1 to $1.25. This time, there won’t be any price increase: There won’t be any product.”
— José A. Rivera, a farmer in Puerto Rico who said Hurricane Maria had knocked down almost all of his 14,000 plantain trees and destroyed his other crops.
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The administration’s feeble response to Hurricane Maria rivals Bush’s after Katrina.80 percent of Puerto Rico's crops have been destroyed.
The condition of nursing homes in areas with little or no communication with the rescue efforts is a big question that needs to be answered immediately.
“Being without power is huge,” says Mutter. “Just how quickly they can get it back is still an unknown thing. But it’s extremely important they get it going to suppress the chances of illness following the storm.”
In one town, the only source of clean water is a single fire hydrant.
After almost a week, some communities in the central part of the island have seen journalists but no one from FEMA.
The National Weather Service storm warning radar on the island is out of commission.
Some main roads are still blocked preventing emergency vehicles from getting to all parts of the island.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16...
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-enviro...
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Puerto Rico is now the example for the federal government in how not to do things in an emergency situation.There are 3.5 million people. One week in and the supply chain is apparently capable of adequately supplying far less than that number of people on a daily basis.
The government's standard plan to rely on private donations that are privately trucked in falls short when things like ships, helicopters, and satellite phones are what is desperately needed.
The day after the storm cleared the island and it was known that the power would be out for weeks or longer should have had FEMA immediately scrambling to meet an immediate need that can't wait for business as usual. Instead officials are filling out forms as if the people in need can put their very lives on some kind of magical hold and wait for assistance that is life saving in too many situations.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/storm-rava...
3,000 shipping containers filled with all kinds of supplies are sitting on the docks of Puerto Rico and have been there since Saturday.There are no trucks or drivers to drive them. The local trucks on the island are blocked in by wreckage from the storm, stuck on roads that go no where, wrecked by the storm or out of fuel. The drivers are isolated walking around the wreckage of their homes and towns unable to get anywhere. With 95 percent of the cell phone service still out of service, they are not able to get into touch with the companies they work for.
Besides being blocked by storm debris, fallen trees, fallen power poles, pieces of houses and buildings, some of the streets and roadways are still under water, other parts of the roadways are eroded away in numerous areas. Other roads are surrounded by flood waters that seem to be in no apparent hurry to drain anywhere.
The authorities can wait a few weeks for all the roads to be made passable or they can start using helicopters to deliver to anywhere that is not reachable by army trucks capable of going anywhere. Neither of which is going to happen because there are only a handful of the big go-anywhere-trucks and it cost a lot of money to use helicopters to do everything. Not that they have that many helicopters there in the first place. A navy ship with a fleet of 20 helicopters is moored off the island, but they probably need 200 helicopters to get to everyone by the end of the week.
Supplies are piling up in places across the US but there is no easy way to ship them. To charter a decent size plane cost around $15,000 to $20,000. Water is very expensive to ship because of the weight. FEMA has requested that people buy and send machines to distill large amounts of water to make drinking water, but judging by all the news shots showing the shipping flats piled high with cases of water it doesn't appear that anyone is getting the message. But without the electricity the bottled water is probably still the best bet, if you can get it to Puerto Rico. FEMA probably never thought they would need to distribute water distilling machines to a large number of people.
Meanwhile the New York weather stations are projecting that Hurricanes Maria [it's back up in strength again] and Lee will blow out into the North Atlantic, join into one tropical storm and then head on over in the direction of England.
Puerto Rico pays twice the shipping rate for goods its gets by sea because the Jones Act from 1920 will only legally allow US ships to dock there.The department did waive the Jones Act to aid Houston and parts of Florida that were ravaged by hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
Senator John McCain, who has repeatedly fought to repeal the act, slammed the Department of Homeland Security for failing to extend the same relief efforts to Puerto Rico that it provided to parts of the mainland United States.
"It is unacceptable to force the people of Puerto Rico to pay at least twice as much for food, clean drinking water, supplies and infrastructure due to Jones Act requirements as they work to recover from this disaster," the Republican McCain wrote in a letter to the department on Tuesday. "Now, more than ever, it is time to realize the devastating effect of this policy and implement a full repeal of this archaic and burdensome Act."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-tru...
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Back to the mule trains I think.
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If you read down through the comments you will see that this Act gives provision for blue-collar workers to sue their ship-and oil rig- owning bosses in American court if injured.
Yes, I would agree that there is no point in having ships full of goods sitting off the coast if the docks are not in working order. The long term effects of this act are another issue.
https://jalopnik.com/heres-why-puerto...
Another comment says that FEMA is running out of funds.
One thing about that article is that the general seems to be clueless about the fact that everything he is talking about happening in the future needs to be already happening.The facts as to why things are not being done also seem to be changing on a daily basis. First the aid relief was going to provide 300 satellite phones, then there were 250 phones. Now at least one Miami company is selling the phones to whoever can afford one at $500 to $1500 a piece. Only the gov't can provide them for free. Until the cell phone towers are restored and powered satellite phones are the only means of communication. Any one working on the island who provides any kind of essential service will need one.
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/09/26/...
Trump waives U.S. shipping restrictions for Puerto Rico.
Yesterday there were plenty of reasons why it couldn't be done. Now it can. The shipping toll that Puerto Rico is subject to is on the level with predatory lending. That is how the world works, the less capital you have, the more it costs.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/puerto-ric...
Change might be coming to the hurricane lashed islands.It looks good on paper, but can it actually be done?
Are the Caribbean Islands the modern equivalent of canaries in a mine type warning system? Easy to replace but capable of indicating very bad things to come.
Calls for building better buildings is going to cost money. Judging by how severe the land was lashed by the winds and rain, what exactly does a hurricane resistant house look like? How much does it cost when housing in these areas is normally built to provide only basic shelter in a warm climate.
Built low in the ground to withstand the wind might make it vulnerable to flooding. Moving communities to the higher elevations puts it on property that some one else already owns.
Building better shelters in areas that don't flood that have storage facilities so people can start going back to their normal lives after a storm is a good idea but who pays for that.
The island populations have people who can afford to live anywhere and a lot of people who can only afford to live there. There is talk about creating a regional emergency insurance fund. The modern insurance industry is far more interested in making profits than it is in helping people. Perhaps a different kind of insurance needs to be created that actually helps everyone caught up in the destruction of a disastrous storm.
Perhaps flood plains are going to be areas where we can't build or rebuild. Otherwise the destruction will continue. People are still debating what is causing the weather to change, and some will still say it hasn't changed, but gradually more and more people are realizing something has to be done to change the way we respond to these events. Are we able to privately donate supplies to disaster ravaged areas 52 weeks a year or do world governments have to start reexamining how the world responds to disasters of any kind, including famine?
In the Caribbean, people are now talking about reforesting the areas that were stripped of trees before the storms and areas that were stripped of vegetation after the storms with palm tree oil plantations because the palm oil trees are supposedly better able to withstand storms and are a high profit crop at the same time.
There is also talk about providing everyone on the islands with cell phones so they can be warned about storms and told how to prepare for them. Current cell phone technology is a luxury item, not an emergency device. It would probably be better to create communication systems that are storm proof, but those would be more expensive. Machines that can provide emergency services with their own power sources are a good idea but are expensive to buy.
What happens next will probably be somewhere between changing the way we do things and waiting to see if the current string of disasters are simply just a run of bad luck that will take a turn for the better without us having to do anything.
http://floodlist.com/america/hurrican...
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Sorry if I've mentioned this book before, but Haiti and PR seem to have a lot in common.
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Batteries and solar panels are being sent to PR and some have already arrived.
https://www.ecowatch.com/tesla-batter...
Actually, this is the world in action. We're all in the same boat. And everyone is going to be experiencing the same things. Bigger and bigger storms. For people in warmer areas, they won't need to worry about staying warm, but just about everything else is going to be a big problem. The planet is still heating up and fresh water is pouring out of the glacier zones at ever increasing rates. As the weather continues to change due to the new parameters [warmer and wetter] , people will continue to pick and choose which science facts they want to believe and which facts they believe they can disregard.
We are all in the same line walking on the same gangplank. It's called information rich, knowledge poor. It is nice people are sending desperately needed items, but they should have been sent a week ago. And the question still remains, who is going to get the equipment to where it needs to be, who is going to install it, and who is going to pay for it. There was an interesting interview with the general who brought the Katrina response back to reality. He said it is the time to break the rules in Puerto Rico, not to be following check off lists that are for future actions that should have been done yesterday.
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017...
The same general said the governments hurricane responses were not realistic Aug 30. Nothing has changed, only the number of people affected keeps growing.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administr...
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This was broadcast on the main evening news and is printed in the main newspapers.
Public statements put into the public view raise awareness.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/...
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Great to see that some nations have the wisdom to lead us in the right direction. Wish the U.S. was among them... :-(
People in Puerto Rico are helping themselves but there is only so much they can do in the highly industrialized society we all use without thinking of the consequences of being dependent on it.Ordinary people can't make generators out of thin air. They can't make clean water run through the pipes. They can't make the pharmacies that are open and within reach accept all insurance cards instead of telling people told they can't get their prescription filled. They can't rebuild the inside of a hospital so people don't have to be treat in a tent in a parking lot. They can't make real money which is being spent and not being put back into circulation but is still needed to buy things. When the stores have no power or no internet connection they won't process credit cards.
Sanitation is not talked about.
Getting minimal supplies distributed without a fleet of trucks and instant communication changes activities which used to take a few hours to accomplish into days. And if an item needs refrigeration the task becomes that much harder.
It turns out that we need more that just materialistic goods to instantly recover in the event of a wide spread disaster. It takes people to make the system work. It only takes a few hours for our modern society to become incapable of operating in the typical business as usual mode when the affected area is cut off from unlimited private donations trucked in by private citizens and citizens from neighboring areas are unable to travel to the affected area to offer immediate assistance.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/...
Here are some examples of what Hi Tech can offer disaster areas.https://finance.yahoo.com/m/97c521d9-...
Flooding in Vietnam from a tropical depression has left 43 people dead from flooding, one of the highest death tolls from flooding since they have been recording this information. They also had to open the over flow gates on the largest hydroelectric plant in the country, the second time in less than 3 months. The last time the floodgates were opened was 21 years ago. Some areas got 10 inches of rain, followed by another 2 inches the following day. The agricultural damage has not been this bad since 10 years ago.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-12...
Severe flooding has been happening in many parts of Asia since July. Heavy monsoon rains in South Asia this year triggered the worst floods in a decade in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, killing hundreds of people and affecting tens of millions.
http://floodlist.com/asia
In India, during the Bihar flooding, they had a micro grid already installed which allowed rescue efforts to run much better than if they were relying on conventional power sources that weren't working.
http://floodlist.com/asia/india-green...
They are also planning on relocating 15 villages that are in flood prone areas.
http://floodlist.com/asia/india-to-mo...
In Indonesia, they are planning on building a 40 billion dollar massive seawall to will close off Jakarta Bay, to block out the rising ocean water. The land has sunk 13 feet in 40 years on the north side of the city, some other areas are sinking at the rate of almost 8 inches a year.
http://floodlist.com/asia/indonesia-j...
China is trying to design cities that will absorb more of the storm water runoff. They are hoping to absorb and reuse 70 percent of the rainfall in urban areas by 2020.
http://floodlist.com/asia/chinas-spon...
http://floodlist.com/ is a comprehensive website with current information about flooding anywhere in the world.
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Thanks, but easier said than done of course...
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http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/...
We have never before been hit full on by a Cat 3 hurricane, and Ophelia is predicted to be storm force 12 winds, a size of storm which has not been seen here since 1962, so not in my lifetime.
I have lived through Hurricane Charlie in 1986 and another in 1987 but those were the tail ends of dying hurricanes.
All schools, colleges and crèches are closed by order. Boats have been lifted from southerly harbours and heavy flooding is expected.
This is related to the aftermath of storms and flooding. It's being said that it is cheaper to invest in climate change fight than to rebuild after a disaster.https://www.upi.com/Energy-News/2017/...
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http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/...-..."
So sorry to hear this, Clare. Take refuge, stay warm & dry, and be safe!
Nearly a month after the hurricane made landfall, Puerto Rico is only beginning to come to grips with a massive environmental emergency that has no clear end in sight.http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStor...
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https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/lo...
Might scatter back some sunlight, but breathing difficulties will arise.
Here we know three people were killed by the storm.
Significant damage and power losses. However, no great reports of flooding except from sea swell, mainly in south and west where the storm hit hardest. Over in my house on the east coast we did not get a lot of rain.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/...
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wor...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...
Apparently everyone has built right up to the edge of the old high water marks which worked okay with only the occasional flooding. Perhaps we are coming to a point where everything comes to a halt when heavy rains are expected.Looks like the first thing that should be on the rebuilding agenda would be redesigning urban areas where water run offs are continually causing flooding. It will be interesting to see how this is done. I can't see people putting city buildings on stilts and the increasing size of run offs makes enlarging the city drains a lost cause.
In New York City the lay out of the city can direct run off water on to highways and roads which can become dangerously flooded. If everything goes really wrong the subways can also become flooded.
The folks on the sea shore and out in the country will probably be left to their own devices. They can stay until the get tired of being washed away.
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This is small scale, but it's possible that councils are now looking at overall square metreage and thinking up ways to soften some of the ground.
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https://www.independent.ie/irish-news...
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news...
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