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Helene will probably be a weekly topic until every last American is rescued or buried, so I will start the conversation now with the latest updates I am aware of:
Biden has ordered "500 active-duty troops with advanced technological assets to move into Western North Carolina." I'm not sure what "advanced technological assets" they are deploying, hopefully it's something like helicopters, bridges, and drones.
There are many people asking why did he wait over a week to deploy these troops. This question is somewhat unfair in itself. In the same document Biden reminds the American people that there are already 1,000 troops on the ground (though it's not clear to me if that is across the affected region or specifically in North Carolina. The numbers he gives for National Guard is the number across Florida to Tennessee.)
I think the real complaint is not that the Federal response has been unusually slow, but that it is insufficient for the "Biblical" levels of destruction. Thousands of dead bodies, "4 Reefer Trucks" full in one county, everyone who is asking for donations asks for more body bags because they keep running out. Young kids naked and crying for their parents, ropes still wrapped around their arms from where their parents desperately tied them to trees above water. People without a roof over their heads or potable water, sewers flooded, hornets unhoused, prime matter for disease and misery. Roads and bridges gone, and no easy path to rebuilding them in the same places due to the banks and cliffs they occupied being washed out.
My husband insists that if things were as bad as I think, the US Army could get everyone out of Western North Carolina in a day. He knows more about the military than I do - he never made it past basic training due to being underweight but has two siblings in the military, one of which who has made it pretty far across 20 years of service. My husband has a very high opinion of our military's capabilities, but I wonder if his model is outdated.
In Greenville, SC, FEMA has taken over a runway with 10 helicopters that loitered all Sunday. For the past week, that runway was being utilized by private charities who were sending materials into the disaster area. Yesterday, it was out of commission for no visible or communicated reason.
Meanwhile, a Blackhawk helicopter just wrecked a distribution center in Pine Spruce (Spruce Pine?), North Carolina. Was it intentional? I hope not. But it displays a level of incompetence that boggles the mind.
All the details indicate to me that the Feds think they can just say, "X number of troops, time to deploy" and solve the problem. But there's no real leadership. No one making a plan to actually help people. The Military and National Guard is too slow and cumbersome. Private charities are able to respond quickly in a crisis, because they have a shorter chain of command and fewer rules. This might be a weakness, in that they will make more mistakes, possibly put their own people's lives at risk. But in the face of the disaster, maybe that is what is needed.
Hurricane Helene is about to have company- Milton will strike Florida soon, and it’s a cat 5.
Yeah, but DeSantis appears to have the FL state disaster relief organizations running well, so while the destruction may be significant, I'd bet on the response being significantly faster/more effective than normal as well.
Disaster relief is also significantly easier in Florida than the appalachians. But an additional hurricane will likely stretch resources even further.
Also outside of the coastal areas it is virtually impossible to be caught off guard by a flash flood. The topography of Florida precludes the sort of sudden deluges of water pouring down on unsuspecting towns, rather it would be a slowly rising water level that gives someone time to find elevation.
Like I try not to downplay the power of a hurricane, but Florida is uniquely well-positioned to survive and eventually recover from an event.
Can you help me understand why this is? I would’ve thought Florida, so much of it near the coast, would be more prone to rapid flooding. The water has a much shorter distance to reach wherever it’s flooding after all.
Or is your point just that people somewhere like Florida are accustomed to flooding so would be carefully observing water levels?
Imagine that a bunch of rain falls into the mountains surrounding a valley. It ALL has to flow down to the valley, then flow through the valley as water tries to reach the lowest point.
Enough water collected in the mountains, flowing down a valley, all at once, can be a concentrated force that crushes most things it encounters. Like a GIANT waterslide, the water collects and gains velocity on the way down.
Florida has no mountains. We're flat. All the rain falls on the state and mostly just sits there. We have a lot of rivers, canals, etc, and the big lake in the middle of the state, so there CAN be flooding, but not a huge rush of crushing water.
Thanks to Helene, one of my friends who lives on a river in Florida (just bought this year, sadly enough) had three feet of water in his house. He was there when it started coming in, and when it hit the one foot mark he was able to load up his car and drive out.
Also Florida sits on a bed of limestone, which is porous, so a decent portion of the water will get absorbed down into the Aquifers.
Downside is there's nothing to stop the wind, so a heavy windstorm will flatten whole areas. But if there's a will to do so, building back up isn't too hard.
Ah right, makes complete sense. I was thinking only of flooding caused by the ocean surging and not rain on land.
Mountains also have another possible source of flash fooding: spring melt.
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