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It can be argued that Helene's damage INLAND was unexpected. People in Appalachia generally don't face hurricanes. We should have been prepared, but you can certainly understand why we were not.
But FLORIDA? We KNOW how bad Milton is going to be. We know the storm surge will utterly devastate the coast, the rains will flood the interior, the winds will be catastrophic. There'll be no shelter, power, fresh water, food, medicine, etc.
So there's NO excuse for Congress's lack of action NOW.
If Johnson won't do it, then BIDEN needs to recall Congress and get emergency funding moving for preparation and response, before the storm hits.
We know what's coming.
We know what's needed.
And we absolutely know that Republicans in the House are going to once again be purposedly derelict in their duties solely in order to punish Americans.
They need to be recalled NOW and forced to do their fucking jobs, or demonstrate their malfeasance for all to see.
2/2
Addendum: I want to make it very clear here that I am not badmouthing the folks in Appalachia. When I said "we should have been prepared" I mean we as a nation should have listened to the science long ago. That's not just on the folks affected, that's on us all.
That said, I honestly don't know HOW you would have prepared for what happened to Ashville.
The lesson being that if it could happen to Ashville, it can happen to any city, anywhere, anytime. And we need to face that. //
@stonekettle North Carolina could have accepted restrictions on building on slopes in the mountains and appropriate building standards. But the legislature bends over backwards for the real estate industry.
@paulc @stonekettle but yet.
I have a friend stuck down there that I finally heard from. He went down to visit his mom who’s in assisted living . So he was there before the warnings and stayed to be sure his mom would be OK.
And then, when he was with a group of ordinary people who were pulling other people who were on the wrong side of a flood across with a rope the ground collapsed under them. He’s got three fractured ribs and a broken wrist. 1/
@paulc @stonekettle he couldn’t get medical care for three days and says the whole area smells like dead things.
What I’m trying to say is that regular folks aren’t to blame. Zoning boards and developers might be responsible but who knew how bad that bad was going to get?
Nobody inland expected the new normal. Government said it was OK, builders said it was OK. When they built it was probably OK. Now it isn’t. /2
> What I’m trying to say is that regular folks aren’t to blame. Zoning boards and developers might be responsible but who knew how bad that bad was going to get?
Well the USGS certainly knew decades ago. The map here is almost perfectly accurate
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3070/fs2008-3070.pdf
@CatDragon @stonekettle I believe the problems were more at the state level, but real estate powers are powerful at local levels. No one might have been expecting this hurricane but there were concerns. I am thinking more where NC state pushed to allow development on the coast.
Now that we’ve seen this disaster, will we see improvements in rebuilding or will those in power insist that this will never happen again?
@paulc @stonekettle they’ll deny.
This is an example of why I tell folks do your research, go to town meetings, read your zoning board minutes.
Yeah it’s not exciting stuff but it’s so important.
Everyone gets on about national politics when at the end of the day local politics are what actually impact your day to day life.