• Climate Change

Tens of Thousands in LA and TX Devastated — Battling COVID In Record Heat Without Power or Water

• COVID-19
• damage
• evacuate
• heat
• hurricane
• Hurricane Laura
• Louisiana
• storm surge
• Texas
• wind

The COVID pandemic makes much more challenging all the issues surrounding the evacuation, response, and rebuilding of the areas of Louisiana and Texas hit hard by Hurricane Laura.  As National Public Radio explains, many families are now essentially homeless because their houses were ruined by the storm and they lack running water and electricity.

Why This Matters:  67,000 people have already registered for Federal disaster assistance but it will not get better any time soon for those hit hardest by the storm.

• Politics

“The Best” is Yet to Come: Denial, Privatization, Inaction

• climate change
• Hurricane Laura
• NOAA
• NWS
• Trump

by Monica Medina and Miro Korenha, co-founders and publishers, Our Daily Planet   While it’s now become a part of meme infamy, Kimberly Guilfoyle’s 2020 Republican National Convention speech made the argument that in America, through a second term of the Trump presidency, “the best is yet to come.” As the GOP’s convention followed that […]

• Weather

Hurricane Katrina Caused 500 Oil Spills, Could Laura Inflict Similar Damage?

• extreme weather
• hurricane
• Hurricane Laura
• Louisiana
• oil and gas
• petrochemicals
• Texas

In the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, more than 400 pipelines and 100 drilling platforms were damaged by the storms and 540 separate oil spills were reported in Louisiana waters. As NOLA.com reported, Nine days after the storm, oil could still be seen leaking from toppled storage tanks, broken pipelines and sunken boats between […]

• Weather

Hurricane Laura Barreling Toward the Texas/Louisiana Coast

• COVID-19
• evacuate
• hurricane
• Hurricane Laura
• major storm
• National Hurricane Center
• oil and gas
• refinery
• storm surge
• wind

Hurricane Laura is expected to make landfall very late tonight or very early tomorrow as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane that will cause major damage due to both high winds and storm surge.  Twenty million people are in the storm’s path and more than 500,000 people have been told to evacuate low lying areas even as the COVID pandemic makes it difficult to house them safely in crowded temporary group shelters.

Why This Matters:  A category 4 storm is bad enough, but to have to deal with evacuating half a million people, many of them poor, during a pandemic is beyond challenging.