EXTREME FLOODING
The East Coast is buried under historic floods. New York and New Jersey have declared states of emergency. Commentary flies fast and furious: Record-breaking rain. Flash flooding. 8.41 inches of rain. Considered a one in a thousand-year event. The city is in shutdown.
Subways submerged. Cars floating away. 21 people have died. All businesses and travel are suspended until assessments have been determined. From 7 PM to midnight, an estimated 35 billion gallons of water fell on NYC alone.
HURRICANE IDA
The Gulf Coast is devastated & parts of the region are without power from hurricane Ida.
Hurricane Ida went from a tropical depression to a category 4 storm in four days thanks to the extreme heating from the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm landed with a powerful storm surge and a storm that remained a category four with winds in excess of 150 miles for 6 hours, twice as long as Katrina did. 70 million citizens have been affected by flooding caused by the travel path of hurricane Ida.
A cost to repair the damage cannot even be estimated as over 900,000 are still without power or reliable water sources.
Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, and Irma (selected hurricanes) caused costly damages and challenges for some populations in affected communities.
In these communities, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated the cost of damages to be approximately $170 billion for Katrina, $74 billion for Sandy, $131 billion for Harvey, and $52 billion for Irma.
These estimates include the value of damages to residential, commercial, and government or municipal buildings; material assets within the buildings; business interruption; vehicles and boats; offshore energy platforms; public infrastructure; and agricultural assets.
These hurricanes were also costly to the federal government. For example, in 2016, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that federal spending exceeded $110 billion in response to Katrina and $53 billion in response to Sandy.
WILDFIRES
The West Coast is burning in wildfires so massive they produce their own systems. Wildfires have already burned nearly 1.8 million acres in California this year, according to Cal Fire.
Those blazes have destroyed nearly 3,000 structures.
The largest of these fires is the Dixie fire which is currently 55% contained and has destroyed 895,457 acres.
The Caldor fire entered the Lake Tahoe Basin on Monday and caused 55,000 people to be evacuated from South Lake Tahoe.
Federal officials said the fire grew to 186,586 acres Monday night, with containment at 15%.
THE CORONAVIRUS
The ravages of the coronavirus continue to fill hospitals and ICUs making emergency events that much more problematic since normal hospital operations have been suspended.
Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee remain focal points for the coronavirus as their governors refuse to lift anti-masking mandates even as children return to schools.
As of August 26, nearly 4.8 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. About 204,000 cases were added the past week, marking the second week with child cases at the level of the winter surge of 2020-21.
After declining in early summer, child cases have increased exponentially, with over a five-fold increase the past month, rising from about 38,000 cases the week ending July 22nd to nearly 204,000 the past week.
• Have we finally reached the point where people are prepared to start talking?
• How do we deal with the Band-Aid mentality associated with climate disasters?
• Has our response to the coronavirus revealed our Achilles Heel? (Our refusal to spend money, proactively…)
• Can the problematic infrastructure budget even begin to address the challenges we need to consider in the months ahead or is it too little, too late?
• We are one of the wealthiest nations on Earth and yet we seem completely unprepared for climate change. Why?
A discussion over the next three weeks on:
Climate Change By the Elements (Now with Coronavirus)
A live-audio cast with The Good Men Project & Lisa Hickey
With show hosts: Thaddeus Howze and Carol Bluestein
Thursday, August 19, 2021 5:00 pm PDT – 8:00 pm EDT
Use your phone to Dial: 1-701-801-1220
Log In: 934-317-242 then press (#)
Or your computer using: https://www.startmeeting.com/wall/934317242
Direct Link: https://fb.me/e/1Hfolsmfa
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Stock photo ID: 2034219815