Llewellyn King: The agony and heroism of wonderful and awful Florida, in the hurricane expressway
The Florida National Guard cleaning up damage in Keaton Beach, Fla., following Hurricane Helene.
Cry, beloved Florida.
Florida, where the old go to rest — their reward after life’s labors — and the young go to play at its great amusement parks; where the rich live in Palm Beach and shop on Worth Avenue, and the poor harbor west of I-95; where citrus grows; where the Everglades record natural history from a time past; and where, in Key West, writers and artists find their nirvana of social misfits, drunks, addicts and creators, funky and inspiring.
Florida, where Apollo 11 took us to the Moon and where many a person from troubled lands has found refuge.
Florida, where Miami is a jewel in the crown of creativity and for all Spanish-speaking Latin Americans, their El Dorado.
On the night of Oct. 9, a night of horror and fear, Hurricane Milton delivered a cruel and malevolent blow, made the more so by its accompanying and capricious tornadoes. They were be spared nothing, the people and the animals of the Sunshine State, savaged by this terrible storm named, ironically, Milton — a name that invokes the great English poet, who said on going blind, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
We, in our way, far from the storm, stood and waited, glued to our televisions and computers as we watched reality unfold; the threat of death arrived, buildings collapsed, metal flew, trees tumbled and first responders, the ever-ready shock troops of society got to work. Our time to serve is now with our generosity as the broken mend, having lost all they possess.
Yet, where we saw tragedy, we saw heroism.
All those heroes will never be counted to the last person, but they helped get Florida through its night of horror, just as they helped Florida and North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
They, the first responders, are many, from the military to the police, the firefighters, the ambulance staff, the nurses and doctors, down to the assistants and porters.
One should add the electric linemen and women who seek to restore power, de-energize felled lines and start the vital work of saving lives by getting the lights on so that society can begin the journey back to normalcy in everything from bathing to cooking to making contact with those who have worried in silence — those who wonder if loved ones have survived.
This time around, the electrical workers are particularly stressed. Many have been working night and day since Helene swept through. Now they must lift the load again.
It is little known -- so little celebrated -- how the electric utilities are part of an extraordinary network of mutual assistance in which linemen and women board their trucks and drive hundreds even thousands of miles to begin the vital work of making fallen lines safe and restoring power. Sometimes they sleep in their vehicles or share what accommodation can be found.
In Florida and North Carolina, electrical workers will be laboring in dangerous conditions for weeks until the lights come back on and shattered lives again feel the balm of electrical service.
Raise a toast to the men and women who climb the poles in unfamiliar locales, sometimes warding off wild creatures, from snakes to civet cats, which have sought safety from floodwaters up electric poles.
They will be hampered, as will builders and the army of repair people who will be working for a long time because of a supply chain crisis. This will be felt in every aspect of the restoration in the storm-ravaged areas, but maybe most acutely so in the electric sector.
Much heavy electrical equipment, like large transformers and generators, is bespoke, made-to-order, often in China. This has presented an ongoing crisis for some time, which will gain attention as the rebuilding takes place. Even small transformers for poles are in short supply.
Artisans can work around materials shortages with ingenuity, but in the electric power system that is a limited option; it can’t be fixed with a compromise.
While bending knee to first responders, let us not forget the reporters, broadcast and print, who brought us the long night of Milton with disregard for personal safety. We saw the rain-soaked TV reporters bending into the wind lashed by rain, standing knee-deep in rising water, and sharing with us the potential lethality of airborne roofs and tree limbs.
But they weren’t alone. Behind every reporter is a chain of people from producers to camera operators to sound engineers to those who install and operate emergency generators. And don’t forget the writers, unseen, but on the front lines of the destruction.
The main compensation is the camaraderie of those who respond, those who march into tragedy to save lives and restore normalcy, and those from the Fourth Estate who rush there to tell us all about it.
Get well, Florida, and immeasurable thanks to those who were on hand to bind your wounds in your night of need and afterwards.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.co and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Daniel Chang/Lauren Sausser: Coastal hospitals under growing threat from hurricanes
Massachusetts General Hospital, in flood-prone Boston. A study published in GeoHealth of hospitals in 78 urban areas along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts assessed by researchers ranked Boston third most vulnerable — behind Miami and New York — to damage from flooding and other threats from hurricanes.
As rapidly intensifying storms and rising sea levels threaten coastal cities from Texas to the tip of Maine, Hurricane Ian has just demonstrated what researchers have warned: Hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. are not ready for climate change.
Hurricane Ian forced at least 16 hospitals from central to southwestern Florida to evacuate patients after it made landfall near the city of Fort Myers on Sept. 28 as a deadly Category 4 storm.
Some moved their patients before the storm while others ordered full or partial evacuations after the hurricane damaged their buildings or knocked out power and running water, said Mary Mayhew, president of the Florida Hospital Association, which coordinates needs and resources among hospitals statewide during a hurricane.
About 1,000 patients across five Florida counties were evacuated from hospitals for different reasons, Mayhew said, with one hospital moving patients after the storm tore part of its roof and deluged the ground floor. Other hospitals emerged with no structural damage but lost power and running water. Broken bridges, flooded roads, and lack of clean water all added to the challenge for some hospitals, Mayhew said.
And that’s before considering the need to help those injured in the hurricane and its aftermath.
“Climate shocks like hurricanes show us in the most painful way what we need to fix,” said Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, known as C-CHANGE, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
As climate change increases the intensity of hurricanes, coastal cities threatened by rising sea levels from Miami to Charleston, S.C., have considered billion-dollar storm surge protection plans — from elevating homes to creating a network of seawalls, floodgates, and pumps to protect residents and infrastructure against powerful flooding from storms.
Some hospitals are fortifying buildings and elevating campuses. Others are moving inland, as they prepare for a future when even weak storms unleash flooding that can overrun facilities.
“They’re the front lines of climate change, bearing the costs of these increased weather events as well as the increase in injuries and disease that come with them,” said Emily Mediate, U.S. climate and health director for Health Care Without Harm, a nonprofit that works with hospitals to prepare for climate change.
Yet even as hospitals prepare for extreme weather, Bernstein and a team of researchers at Harvard predicted in a recent study that many facilities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts will face a suite of problems, even from milder weather events.
The study analyzed the flood risk to hospitals within 10 miles of the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines. In more than half of the 78 metropolitan areas analyzed, some hospitals are at risk of storm surge flooding from the weakest hurricane, a Category 1. In 25 coastal metro areas, half or more of the hospitals risk flooding from a Category 2 storm, which would have winds of up to 110 mph. Florida is home to six of the 10 most at-risk metropolitan areas identified in the study, with the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach region ranked as having the greatest risk of hurricane impact.
Researchers also considered the risk of flooding for roads within 1 mile of coastal hospitals during a Category 2 hurricane. That’s what happened on Florida’s western coast, where Hurricane Ian’s maximum sustained winds of 150 mph contributed to flooded roads and washed-out bridges.
All three hospitals in Charlotte County were closed during the storm. One reopened its emergency room the following day, and two were operational by Oct. 1.
In neighboring Lee County, the public hospital system was forced to partially evacuate three of its four hospitals, potentially affecting about 1,000 patients, after the facilities lost running water. As of Oct. 6, the county remained in a state of emergency and many roads and bridges were closed due to flooding and damage, according to the Florida Department of Transportation’s traffic information.
Several Florida hospitals on waterfront property have moved their essential electrical systems and other critical operations above ground level, elevated their parking lots and buildings, and erected water barriers around their campuses, including Tampa General Hospital, which has the only trauma center in west-central Florida.
Miami Beach is a barrier island where roads flood on sunny days during extremely high tides. Building to withstand hurricanes and flooding is a priority for institutions, said Gino Santorio, CEO of Mount Sinai Medical Center, which sits at the edge of Biscayne Bay.
Over the past decade, Mount Sinai has completed nearly $62 million in projects to protect against hurricanes and flooding. The projects were part of a countywide strategy funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state and local governments to fortify schools, hospitals, and other institutions.
“It’s really about being the facility of last resort. We’re the only medical center and emergency room on this barrier island,” Santorio said.
But Bernstein said the “Fort Knox model” of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on state-of-the-art hurricane-proof hospital buildings isn’t enough. This strategy doesn’t address flooded roads, transportation for patients ahead of a storm, medically vulnerable people in areas most at risk of flooding, emergency hospital evacuations, or the failure of backup power sources, he said.
Urging hospitals to fortify for more severe hurricanes and rising sea levels can feel overwhelming, especially when many are struggling to recover from pandemic-related financial stress, labor shortages, and fatigue, said Mediate, of the group Health Care Without Harm.
“Lots of things make it hard for them to see this is a problem, of course. But on top of how many other issues?” she said.
As Hurricane Ian approached the South Carolina coastline north of Charleston on Sept. 30, the city’s low-lying hospital district reported about 6 to 12 inches of water. “That’s much less than was expected,” Republican Gov. Henry McMaster said during a news briefing.
Though Hurricane Ian was a relatively minor weather event in South Carolina, it’s not unusual for Charleston’s downtown medical district to flood, making it dangerous and, sometimes, impossible for patients, hospital employees, and city residents to navigate surrounding streets.
In 2017, the Medical University of South Carolina ferried doctors across its large campus on johnboats during severe flooding from Hurricane Irma. One year later, the Charleston-based hospital system bought a military truck to navigate any future floodwaters.
Flooding, even after heavy rain and high tide, is one reason Roper St. Francis Healthcare — one of three systems in Charleston’s downtown medical district — announced plans to eventually move Roper Hospital off the Charleston peninsula after operating there for more than 150 years.
“It can make it very challenging for people to get in and out of here,” said Dr. Jeffrey DiLisi, CEO of Roper St. Francis.
The hospital system sustained light flooding in one of its downtown medical office buildings from Ian, but it could have been much worse, said DiLisi. He also said that the downtown district is no longer the geographic center of Charleston and that many patients say it’s inconvenient to get there.
“The further inland, the less likely you’re going to have some of those problems,” he said.
Unlike Roper St. Francis, most coastal nonprofit and public hospitals have chosen to remain in their locations and reinforce their buildings, said Justin Senior, the president of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida and a former secretary of the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration, which regulates hospitals.
“They’re not going to move,” Senior said. “They’re in a catchment area where they’re trying to catch everyone, not just the affluent but everyone.”
Daniel Change and Lauren Sausser are Kaiser Health News reporters.
Daniel Chang: dchang@kff.org, @dchangmiami
Lauren Sausser: lsausser@kff.org, @laurenmsausser
Jill Richardson: Get ready for unnatural disasters this hurricane season
Hurricane Dorian off George on Sept. 4
From OtherWords.org
Donald Trump discusses immigration as if the benefits of residence in the U.S. are a pie. When immigrants get more, the people who were already here get less.
In general, that’s not true. When immigrants come here, they don’t just take some jobs (often low-wage jobs U.S. citizens don’t want), they also create new jobs. They need housing, transportation, food, and clothes, and they buy all of those things, creating more jobs for other people in this country.
However, in one way, Trump is turning his viewpoint into a self-fulfilling prophecy: He’s using our finite government funds to pay for incarcerating immigrants in detention facilities, which means he’s shifting that money away from other uses that could benefit the American people.
In that sense, it’s not immigrants who are taking from us. It’s Trump
For example, disaster relief. Trump’s using over $100 million in federal disaster aid money to pay for detention centers for immigrants — even as hurricane season gets underway
Does that worry him? Apparently not.
When asked about Hurricane Dorian, which was then a category 5 storm nearing the Atlantic coast, Trump actually said: “I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of a category 5.” He said the same thing last year about Hurricane Michael. And the same thing again the year before, about Hurricane Irma
Hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters are threats that definitely harm Americans. Historically, we as a nation take care of one another by appropriating some of our tax dollars for federal disaster relief
Nobody plans to be the victim of a natural disaster, and we can’t predict which communities will be hit by them. We can prepare for them as a nation so that when they happen, we are as ready as we can be, and we have the resources to deal with the aftermath
While we can’t control whether or not we get hit by hurricanes or tornadoes, we can control whether we invest in being prepared — or whether we waste that money instead on locking up immigrants in taxpayer-funded detention facilities.
We don’t need to do that.
When we take money from disaster relief and use it to imprison people who pose no safety threat to the American people, we are also harming the victims of natural disasters who need aid they won’t receive=
By moving money within the Department of Homeland Security from other areas (the Coast Guard, FEMA, etc.) to pay for beds in detention centers for people who have crossed the border illegally but represent no safety threat to this country, the Trump administration could leave America open to other types of threats instead.
Rather than spending tax dollars needed for actual threats to national security on detaining immigrants, we need comprehensive and humane immigration reform that keeps families together. Then we can use our money on what we actually need, like disaster relief.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is a sociologist.
N.E. hurricane threat bigger than thought
Modeling for hurricanes in the Northeast is outmoded, says an oceanographer. He also warns that the threat to the region from these storms is much greater than previously thought.
Conn. vs. Fla. may be equal contest
By CHRIS POWELL
MANCHESTER, Conn.
With snowstorms seeming to arrive every few days, little room left for stacking
the snow, road-salt supplies nearly exhausted, state and municipal snow-removal
budgets in deficit, and the Connecticut General Assembly reconvening, many people in
Connecticut feel that they have had enough of the state.
It's little consolation to them that Connecticut may have the best snowplowing
operation in the country, with the state's major roads almost always kept
passable throughout even the heaviest snowstorms. For besides the extra snow,
Connecticut's economy and standard of living are still declining, which may be
the cause of most of the surliness here; the snow just makes people feel their
resentments more keenly.
As a result many of them look south enviously, especially to subtropical
Florida, to which many Connecticut residents already have fled, either
permanently or just for the winter. Indeed, when the University of Connecticut's
basketball teams play colleges in Florida, the crowd often seems to favor the
visitors.
But while it may be harder to appreciate Connecticut after shoveling snow or
falling on ice, Florida has its own climate disadvantages. In the late summer
and early fall Florida can be crossed by as many hurricanes as Connecticut suffers
snowstorms in the winter, and the resulting property damage in Florida is far
greater than that inflicted by snowstorms in Connecticut, just as
weather-related electricity outages in Florida can last longer.
Because of bad weather a few weeks ago it took three days and several flight
reschedulings for a recently retired couple from Connecticut to escape the state
by air for their new winter home in South Florida, one of those tightly
regulated condominium complexes that forbid admission to anyone under 55. The
couple had hardly begun breathing the state-income-tax-free air when a line of
thunderstorms stalled overhead for 24 hours and dumped 14 inches of rain on
them, flooding their new neighborhood, closing its roads, and incapacitating
sewer lines and toilets for a couple of days.
It wasn't a snowstorm; it was worse.
Not long after the couple got dried out and settled, some university researchers
reported that alligators, which which infest South Florida, not only swim stealthily
but also climb trees, in part for better surveillance of their prey.
Told of the study, the new arrivals from Connecticut refused to be
concerned. While they had not yet read their condo association's many rules,
they figured that, in addition to excluding people younger than 55, there was
probably one against alligators climbing trees on the property and eating the
residents.
They shouldn't count on it. Annoying as Connecticut's snow has been, at least it
also has gotten in the way of the state's own many predators, both those with
four legs and those with two. There's never much crime in bad weather.
* * *
Two executives of the Metropolitan Transit Authority came to Hartford last week
so Gov Dan Malloy could reprimand them in front of the television cameras about
the MTA's mismanagement of the Metro-North Commuter Railroad, whose many recent
disasters have impaired service from New Haven to Grand Central Station in New
York. The MTA executives duly promised improvements soon.
But while the governor got to look tough, he really didn't increase
Connecticut's leverage with the MTA, a New York state agency paid by Connecticut
to operate the state's rail lines into New York. To gain such leverage
Connecticut needs a plan, just as Metro-North needs a plan to improve rail
service.
Connecticut's plan might include demanding representation on the MTA's board,
the renegotiation of Connecticut's contract with the MTA, and a study of how
Connecticut could take over the management of its rail lines into New York.
Until Connecticut has a rail-service-improvement plan that goes beyond scolding
MTA officials on television, the MTA may assume that it can take its time about
improving service here.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.
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