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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   31820 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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I'm reposting a top level comment that got posted yesterday, because I don't think it got enough discussion.

Historic flooding in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Whole towns washed away. People retreating to their attics as water levels rise. People losing everything.

Tragic. Horrific. But this is the Culture War thread so I am going to ask the insensitive question, what does this mean for the election in <40 days?

My first thought is that there is a certain irony that these states are among those that just limited the forms of ID allowed at a voting booth. Someone who has lost their house is less likely to have all their documentation, and getting new copies will take longer than the time before the election.

Rural areas that were wiped out will have a harder time finding their polling location under the mud and timber. Mail-in voting will be difficult without a mailbox.

People are going to watch the Biden-Harris's administration to see how they respond.

Do these factors make it more likely for these swing states to turn Blue or Red? Buncombe County, one of the hardest hit, went 60% for Biden in 2020.

I want to add, as I commented, I am beyond frustrated by the federal response. Biden just put out a press release today, over 5 days after it happened, and he just sounds so tired and apparently has a cold. That being said, he says a lot of the right things even if the delivery is bad.

But why has it taken so long to get things out there? As another commenter said, why aren't planes and helicopters air dropping supplies and Starlink in?

And if there has been a major relief effort, where is the news on it? The left controls pretty much the entire mainstream media, so where are the videos of airlifted supplies? I know internet is out, but people on X have shared plenty of videos of waters washing away homes etc.

I'm just shocked at how poor the response has been, though I guess I shouldn't be. Also man, those videos really are something to watch. Reminds us how fragile things really are if Nature decides to make us face her wrath.

For scale:

1,400 people died in Katrina. 300 some died in Sandy.

As of now the death toll from Helene sits around 100. Is anyone familiar with the rhythm of these, what multiple should we apply to it?

ETA: She's already top 10 since 1950 and probably ends up Top 5, or even with the silver medal.

I'm kinda lost on all these social media comments about where is the news, where is the response. It's front page in all three newspapers I read since it happened, including reporting on federal level responses. The idea that the government isn't doing enough seems based in a combination of there being no news in reporting things that are done every time this happens post-Katrina, and an expectation that somehow Mommy Government will clean everything up so fast you'll never even notice anything went wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I highly doubt that Biden is contributing much of anything to this process, but I also don't think that any president should be interfering in the disaster relief process for what is ultimately fairly routine levels of disruption. If we're counting on some superhero president to be needed to get things going every time we get hit with a hurricane, well, George Washington ain't walkin' through that door. We should be focusing on building institutions that respond to routine disasters on a routine basis. Like FEMA, when it isn't putting everyone in camps or whatever.

Is there an estimate for how many of die within the first few hours of the hurricane ?

If most people die on impact, then there isn't much point to organizing an extraordinary response 2 days later. It'll make lives less miserable, but those who were going to die have already died.

I mean there's definitely not an estimate for how many would die without ordinary emergency response efforts. We're talking about basic food-clean water-medicine issues for a very large group of people, there will be many deaths if responses are too delayed among the elderly or otherwise frail.

At the risk of sounding insensitive, it seems easy to avoid death from hurricanes. If the broad path of the hurricane is known, then the city should be able to evacuate within a couple of days.

Dunno if this one is an exception, but I believe hurricanes are routine occurrences in this region. Neighboring cities should be able to preemptively provide shelter to the fleeing populace. 5-10 stadiums can hold ~200-500k people. The west coast deals with wildfires, and routinely evacuates entire cities with no reported deaths.

The economic damage is another story. But loss of human life should be avoidable.

NHC had predicted the Karina would make landfall near New Orleans, about three days in advance of its actual landfall on August 29. Sandy's exact landfall (in New Jersey on October 29) and the storm surge threat were solidly predicted about four to five days in advance.

In either case, broad predictions were made a full week in advance and precise impact zones were predicted with 3 days to go.

What am I missing here? Surely the death toll should have been a lot lower ?

In the case of Helene, it got all the way into parts of western North Carolina that haven't had flooding of this magnitude since 1916 and absolutely do not routinely experience this type of disaster. I believe they have a lot more experience with snowstorms.

If we were talking about the eastern half of the state this would be very different.

That's rare!

I can see why the locals might not have evacuated in time.

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