Nah. I just hope people stay safe and watch out for each other. I even hope for as little damage as possible, but Hurricane Harvey don’t care.
Hey look, someone has a heart:
5:06 p.m.: Feds won’t question families about immigration status at shelters
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a joint statement Friday saying they won’t question the immigration status of families arriving to hurricane shelters in Texas and Louisiana.
The agencies said their “highest priorities are to promote life-saving and life-sustaining activities, the safe evacuation of people who are leaving the impacted area, the maintenance of public order, the prevention of the loss of property to the extent possible, and the speedy recovery of the region.”
Houston proper is actually very liberal. Not as lib as Austin, but pretty darn liberal. And poor. There are some rich parts, and the further out into suburbia you go, the more red it gets. But the bulk of working-class Houston is blue. They are the ones who are going to be hit the hardest by these floods. The poor neighborhoods get less attention from the roads department, and the drainage is poor. And the poorer neighborhoods are typically in low-lying areas, as well.
Houston is trying hard to learn from the Tax Day floods last year. Those floods had inundated underpasses that people were drowning in when they drove into them. Now, my first gut reaction before was, “STUPID!!! Don’t drive into a flooded underpass you dummy!” But then I talked to a firefighter friend and he had a better perspective. He said you don’t know what people are up against. They might feel desperate to help someone, or to get to work so they don’t get fired, or who knows what. People do all kinds of irrational things when they feel their back is up against the wall. So, my friend talked some sense into me. Yes, there are stupid people doing stupid things. But not always. Sometimes people are blinded by desperation.
So, the mayor and head judge who are running emergency operations for this storm said they have already blocked off the underpasses that flooded before so people CAN’T go into them. That is actually a good thing. Inconvenient, for sure, because they are not flooded yet. But overall, will be very good. People might still drown for other reasons, but this was one big thing they could take care of, and did. So kudos to them for that.
We will see what the rest of this storm brings. It’s going to be a long one. We are looking at rain from now until next Thursday. That’s a LOT of sustained, heavy rain.
It comes down so thick you can’t breath without covering your nose and umbrellas collapse from the weight.
Water can’t run off fast enough so it “stacks”. Imagine wading through a foot of standing water on the top of a bare hill because it’s coming down faster than it can pass through the grass to run off.
If you’re in a canoe somebody has to bail constantly.
If you’re lucky enough to be in a pickup on a roadway that’s still traversable the wipers can’t keep up so you have to stick your head out the window where visibility is still measured in feet similar to heavy fog or blizzard conditions, and you open the tailgate or the back end fills up and anything that floats will start falling out.
And no federal state of emergency has been declared. Far more important to destroy lives and kiss the asses of bigots. The American president, ladies and gentlemen.
So I see that bootlicker Abbott has caused mass panic, literally going on TV and pleading for everyone to evacuate en masse even outside the evacuation zone. Good to see the GOP is still #1 in hurricane response.
I hate John Corbyn. John Corbyn did vote for Sandy relief when it went trough, Cruz still did not. Cruz also voted down funds for the flooding last year.
Cruz is the north Texas senator, so Corbyn got no slack for austerity shit. This is the first time Cruz has ever tried to help the Gulf Coast, I suspect he is afraid for his job since everyone is either lukewarm on him or hates him.
Harvey is a bastard. It’s not the hurricane, or even the tropical storm proper, near the eye. It’s the extended part of the storm system causing the damage. It’s the fact that the center of it is parked in one spot and the outer bands are still sucking up the Gulfp of Mexico and disgorging the water onto the land. Places that haven’t flooded in known Houston history are flooding today. And we are only halfway in: more torrential rain tonight, tomorrow and Tuesday, possibly even Wednesday and Thursday. Ben Taub hospital at the medical center is evacuating. Tens of thousands are stranded and displaced. This storm is one of the worst ever.
It’s bad. Probably shaping up to be the worst flood event in US history. Today, reservoirs are being let out, to preserve the integrity of the dams. And it’s still raining. It will rain until Thursday.
An evacuation order last week would have backfired. There was no way to evacuate 6 million people in an orderly manner. More efficient to perform thousands of rescues than have hundreds of thousands if not millions sitting exposed on the backed up highways trying to get out of the city. The mayor made the right call, as grim as it was.
Torrential rain also hit areas more than 150 miles (240 km) away, swelling rivers upstream and causing a surge that was heading toward the Houston area, where numerous rivers and streams already have been breached.
This has been heartbreaking to watch unfold. I’m reminded of the sense of helplessness I had watching Katrina and its aftermath. This just seems to be happening in slow motion. My best wishes to the people the Houston area.
And in the coming days, Congress will be called upon to send billions of federal dollars to help with the state’s recovery and rebuilding efforts.
But because of Trump’s rollback of Obama’s Federal Flood Risk Management Standards, experts across the political spectrum say much of the federal money sent to Texas will likely be wasted on construction that will be insufficiently protected from the next storm.
