Hurricane Harvey

By Michael Schreiber - Socialist Action, September 1, 2017

After swamping Houston and the Galveston Bay region, Tropical Storm Harvey wheeled into eastern Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Residents of Tyler County, Texas, were told by authorities, “Get out or die!” Over two feet of water was dumped on cities and towns that were still rebuilding from the legendary Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Tennessee, Arkansas, and Kentucky lie in the storm’s path, and are bracing for heavy rains and flash floods. The area hit by Harvey exceeds that affected by either Katrina or Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Although Houston dodged the full brunt of Harvey when it was at hurricane strength, the nation’s fourth largest city was battered by disastrous flooding. The Houston Chronicle headlined: “Epic flooding shows no mercy,” as the downpour continued for five days. Rain gauges showed that as much as 52 inches had fallen—the heaviest rain total to have fallen in any tropical cyclone in the continental United States since records began in 1950.

As the storm shifted to the east, much of the city was left underwater, with higher sections reduced to soggy islands. Over 40,000 houses were damaged in the region and over 7000 completely destroyed—with much of the damage in poorer and working-class neighborhoods where people lack flood insurance.

The Rev. James Caldwell, a community advocate who lives and grew up in the Black community of the Fifth Ward, spoke to The Texas Tribune: “This is the first time that I’m aware of in years that this area actually flooded into homes. It floods—the streets turn into rivers, and all that — but the homes themselves are generally safe. This time, it hit homes.”

Brian Gage, an advisor for the Houston Housing Authority, told The Texas Tribune that hundreds of families have been displaced from city-owned public housing complexes that were flooded. “Rebuilding will be a long and painful process for people with so few resources.”

At least 32,000 people in the Houston area sought emergency housing in public shelters; 32 people have been confirmed dead, but the casualties are still being tallied.

Government first-responders were supplemented by legions of civilian volunteers who carried thousands of people to safety. Three truck drivers gained media attention for driving 200 miles to the Houston area, where they rescued over 1000 people. Several hundred members of the Cajun Navy (Louisiana “bad asses who save lives,” who first got together because of government inaction following Katrina) and many others used boats, canoes, and hand-to-hand human chains to pull victims out of the oil and sewage-laced floodwaters.

By David Harvey - Red Pepper, August 29, 2017

Here is the Wikipedia entry for Hurricane Mitch, which ravaged Central America in 1998:

‘From October 29 to November 3, Hurricane Mitch dropped historic amounts of rainfall in Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, with unofficial reports of up to 75 inches… Nearly 11,000 people were killed with over 11,000 left missing by the end of 1998. Additionally, roughly 2.7 million were left homeless.’

Hurricane Harvey is likewise turning into a mainly rainfall event for Houston and its environs, but at this time the death toll in the face of extensive and massive flooding and precipitation close to that of Mitch stands at 10. Even if that increases disproportionately, nothing will take it anywhere near the 11,000 death toll from Mitch.

Current estimates (probably low) are that 30,000 will be left homeless by Harvey compared to the 2.7 million by Mitch. (On the other hand, the property damage from Harvey will be far, far greater than that from Mitch. Hope the insurance companies can manage.)

While no two hurricanes are exactly alike, these differences are largely due to economic, political and infrastructural conditions. The wealthier the economy and the more sophisticated the physical and social infrastructures and the information streams, the better protected populations are from traumatic human losses, even when the property damage is far greater.

Natural disasters are social and class events.

By Seth Uzman - Socialist Worker, August 30, 2017

STORMS ARE natural, but what happens in response to them is not. Flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which smashed into the Gulf Coast on August 25, has left at least nine people dead, thousands in need of rescue on rooftops or in boats, hundreds of thousands more without power and tens of thousands in need of shelter.

Yet characterizations of the carnage by the National Weather Service as "historic," "unprecedented" or "beyond anything experienced" should not be conflated with the spurious claim that the devastation wrought by Harvey is "unpreventable" or "unexpected."

The outcry by advocates, experts and activists against the unplanned, for-profit development of cities like Houston has been consistently ignored by city officials, leaving millions--especially the poor and people of color--in the fourth-largest city in the U.S. in a death trap.

"Houston is the fourth-largest city, but it's the only city that does not have zoning," Dr. Robert Bullard, a Houston resident and a professor who studies environmental racism, told Democracy Now! on August 29. "[As a result], communities of color and poor communities have been unofficially zoned as compatible with pollution...We call that environmental injustice and environmental racism. It is that plain, and it's just that simple."

The image of elderly people in a nursing home sitting in waist-deep water is a shocking illustration of how the most vulnerable segments of the population are struggling to deal with the effects of Harvey. Thankfully, all of those people have been rescued and brought to safety.

But, as Dr. Bullard points out, the nightmare for tens of thousands of the city's poorest residents living in close proximity to Houston's vast petrochemical industry is just beginning. They are literally being gassed by and steeped in the toxic materials unleashed by the floodwaters that have damaged the oil refineries and chemical manufacturers that surround their homes and neighborhoods.

The choices facing people in these neighborhoods are gut-wrenching. Should you and your family stay as toxic floodwaters rise all around you? If you decide to go, where do you go?

Dr. Robert Bullard interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan González - Democracy Now, August 29, 2017

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m Juan González. Welcome to all of our listeners and viewers around the country and around the world. The death toll is rising as massive amounts of rain from Hurricane Harvey continue to flood Houston and other parts of Texas and Louisiana. The Houston police and Coast Guard have rescued over 6,000 people from their homes, but many remain stranded. Meteorologists forecast another foot of rain could fall on the region in the coming days. Harvey, which is now a tropical storm, is heading back to the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall again on Wednesday.

AMY GOODMAN: So much rain has already fallen that the National Weather Service has had to add two new colors to its maps to indicate rainfall levels. Parts of Texas are expected to top 50 inches of rain. And the rivers keep rising. Southwest of Houston in Richmond, the Brazos River reached flood stage overnight at 45 feet, and the National Weather Service forecasts it will peak at 59 feet on Friday and remain over 50 feet through Sunday. Houston’s KHOU described the epic amount of rain fall.

KHOU REPORTER: I want to show you what a meteorologist has done. There it is. The meteorologist calculates by the end of Wednesday, Harvey will have saturated all of Southeast Texas with enough water to fill all the NFL and college stadiums, all of those stadiums, more than 100 times. Think about that. More than 100 times. So so far, the meteorologist is saying 15 trillion gallons of rain has fallen on a large area and another 5 trillion or 6 trillion gallons forecast by the end of Wednesday.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The official death toll is 14, but authorities warn it could rise dramatically once the floodwaters recede. Six people from one family died after their van was swept away by floodwaters. Emergency shelters are approaching capacity.

RESIDENT: …crowded. But all they said that we are getting 800 more people. And it’s like, what? Where are they going to put us all? You know, what about us from Corpus? What are we going to do? And FEMA is here right now, but the line is enormous. Yesterday we were in line for three hours and couldn’t even see FEMA. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Buses just keep rolling in. And we need everybody’s help.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Concern is also growing over the environmental impact of the storm. The Houston area is home to more than a dozen oil refineries. The group Air Alliance Houston is warning the shutdown of the petrochemical plants will send more than one million pounds of harmful pollution into the air. Residents of Houston’s industrial communities are already reporting unbearable chemical-like smells coming from the many plants nearby. According to Bryan Parras, an activist at the environmental justice group t.e.j.a.s., "Fenceline communities can’t leave or evacuate, so they are literally getting gassed by these chemicals." The communities closest to these sites in Houston are disproportionately low income and minority.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, a massive fuel storage tank at Kinder Morgan’s Pasadena terminal began spilling after being toppled in the storm. The tank held 6.3 million gallons of gasoline, but it is unclear how much of that leaked. And in the city of La Porte, residents were asked to go to the nearest shelter, close doors and windows after a chemical spill was reported last night.