* National Assessment Finds Climate Change “Has Moved Firmly into the Present” The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States. . . . If greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane continue to escalate at a rapid...
Weather/Emergency Preparedness
John Kerry: Climate Change Is ‘World’s Most Fearsome’ Weapon of Mass Destruction
* “When 97 percent of scientists agree on anything, we need to listen, and we need to respond. . . . And the results of our human activity are clear. If you ranked all the years in recorded history by average temperature, . . . you’d see that all 10 of the hottest...
Elvin R. Heiberg III, General Who Took Blame for Hurricane Katrina Failures, Dies at 81
Former Head of Army Corps of Engineers Regretted Not Fighting for Storm-Surge Gates As Tropical Storm Karen approaches the Gulf Coast, and FEMA employees, furloughed by the latest GOP Government Shutdown, are called back to work without pay, The New York Times reports the death of Lt. Gen. Elvin R. Heiberg III, “who rose to the top […]
Ask Not “Why Live There?”—Ask “How Can I Help?”
[ cross-posted at Daily Kos ] Please Give to Red Cross We just made a donation to the American Red Cross. We’re asking all our readers to please make a donation if you can. Click here or phone 1-800-HELPNOW or text “RedCross” to 90999. Even $5 or $10 can help buy...
When Seawater Occupies Wall Street
* A security guard walks through a flooded street in the financial district of Manhattan early on Tuesday, Oct. 29. Photo by Adrees Latif/Reuters. * Knee-deep thought of the day: When seawater occupies Wall Street, perhaps Nature itself is telling Big Business and...
Gov. Cuomo cites “dramatic change in weather patterns”
Sees Evidence of Climate Change, Need for Upgraded Infrastructure In his 11:30 a.m. briefing the day after Hurricane Sandy, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made a clear reference to climate change, or global warming, about 30 minutes into his remarks: “Anyone who thinks...
Hurricane Watch in New York City
Extreme Weather Coming Soon to an Eastern Seaboard Near You * “We have a tropical hurricane merging, or folding in, with a mid-latitude weather system, one of those low pressure systems that track across the country. The two systems’ dynamics are very different and...
Hurricane Isaac and Tampa’s Blizzard of Lies
What Would Romney-Ryan Mean for FEMA and Infrastructure? [ cross-posted at DailyKos ] * “One of the themes of the Tampa convention will be the failure of government, and the prosperity that will result if it is cut to ribbons. But in a different corner of the...
Isaac Aims at Mouth of Mississippi, Greater New Orleans
* On exactly the seven-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (Aug. 29), Tropical Storm Isaac is heading toward the mouth of the Mississippi River, likely to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane, and possibly as a Category 2, with wind speeds up to about 100 m.p.h....
IEA Sees “Irreversible Climate Change in Five Years”
“I don’t know who and where the climate leadership in the administration is. It doesn’t exist. There is no resolve in the Obama administration to do anything.” —Tim Wirth, U.N. Foundation president “What do you get for pretending the danger’s not real?” —Pink Floyd,...
Wrath of God? : Global Warming and Extreme Weather
In response to our recent post about Christian fundamentalists’ unconcern with the present danger of global warming, our good friend David in Berkeley, a former editor at Sierra Club Books, had this to say: I’ve been wanting to tell the rapturists et al.: Maybe the...
World Survives to Be Raptured by CO2 Poisoning and Believers’ Negligence
“Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to...
New Orleans Is Most Likely Safe from River Flooding
* There’s a certain trepidation in writing that headline, but . . . Despite over $2 billion in damages, possibly to reach $4 billion from the Mississippi River Flood of 2011, including dramatic flooding upriver around Cairo, Memphis, and Vicksburg—and despite scary...
Celebrity Sighting: Levees Not War Meets FEMA’s Fugate
Tomorrow we’ll post some comments on President Obama’s remarks at Xavier University on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. But first, allow us to babble excitedly about the public-safety-and-disaster geek’s idea of a celebrity sighting: After all the...
“Something Called ‘Volcano Monitoring’ ”
[cross-posted at Daily Kos] “[The Democrats’ stimulus] legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes . . . $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of...
America’s—and New Orleans’s—Debt to Haiti
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A2q60qg0WA&feature=player_embedded In reply to Pat Robertson’s comments about Haiti’s alleged “pact to the devil” (aptly described by Gawker as “galactically vile”), Mr. Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the U.S., says: “I...
Help for Haiti
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake has rocked and toppled much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the most powerful quake to strike there in 200 years. The quake lasted a full minute; the Loma Prieta earthquake that shook the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989, also 7.0 on the Richter...
Fugate for FEMA: “Semper Gumby”—In an Emergency, “The Calmest Man in the Room”
Some of our readers are too young to remember a time when the much-derided FEMA actually functioned well. That would be 1993 to 2001: Under President Clinton, former Arkansas emergency services director James Lee Witt directed FEMA with direct, cabinet-level access to the president and earned wide, bipartisan respect for his competence and flexibility.
Happy days—or at least competent days—are soon to be here again. President Obama has nominated W. Craig Fugate, director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, to be the next head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This is good news indeed.
Further Thoughts on Obama and New Orleans
A few days ago, prompted by an article by Naomi Klein in The Nation (“New Orleans: The City That Won’t Be Ignored”), we were asking, “Where was Obama while McCain was exploiting Gustav?” On further reflection, we should acknowledge that as the hurricane was approaching and two million were evacuating, fearing Katrina II, Obama said he did not want to get in the way of the emergency preparations. Also, it was easier for McCain to join his fellow Republicans, governors Barbour and Jindal, and with help from President Bush, all of whom had an interest in the GOP’s being seen as handling the emergency effectively.
Lessons Learned: FEMA Staff Ask the Questions at FEMA “Press Briefing”
Deputy administrator Vice Admiral Harvey E. Johnson praised his “very smoothly, very efficiently performing team.” (For the sake of the Californians, we hope he’s right.) “And so I think what you’re seeing here is the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership and the benefit of good partnership, none of which were present in Katrina.” (Thanks for reminding us.)