Above photo: Volunteers encounter devastation in North Carolina. PSL.
Then Skipped Town Early Due To The Storm.
Volunteers in the US South contend with the massive devastation and inadequate relief efforts, as climate change ensures that the worst is yet to come.
The US South is contending with the trail of destruction left by Hurricane Helene, which devastated the region over the past few days, including the states of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, across the Central Gulf Coast and reaching into the southern Appalachian region. The extent of damage is only beginning to be revealed as the death toll climbs to at least 130 people, with hundreds more still missing.
Some of the most impoverished areas of the US are now having to contend with what could amount to between USD 145 billion and USD 160 billion in damages and economic loss according to AccuWeather. Over one million people are still without power.
Devastating stories have emerged from across the impacted region. In Tennessee, a company Impact Plastics reported that multiple workers were either missing or dead, seemingly after being improperly evacuated from the factory. Impact Plastics claimed that “at no time were employees told that they would be fired if they left the facility,” but that “while most employees left immediately, some remained on or near the premises for unknown reasons.”
No Money For Relief
Despite the unprecedented level of devastation, the federal money to deal with disaster relief appears to have run out.
Thanks to the efforts of conservative lawmakers, the recently passed funding bill excluded disaster aid, even for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) depleted funds because for the second year in a row, FEMA has run out of money before the peak of hurricane season.
This is despite the fact that members of Congress left Washington two days earlier than planned precisely because of the hurricane. This includes conservative lawmakers from Florida Senator Rick Scott and Representative Matt Gaetz, who both opposed FEMA funding or skipped the vote to be in Florida ahead of the hurricane.
Congress is now in recess, but there is a possibility that lawmakers will cut their breaks short in order to provide special funding for disaster relief.
North Carolina’s Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder said that despite asking FEMA for water supplies before the hurricane, her office only received the necessary supplies three days after the storm, resulting in a scarcity of clean drinking water in the region.
Biden in a viral video clip, Biden told reporters that “we’ve given everything that we have,” for disaster relief. “We’re on the ground ahead of time, so we’re working hard,” he claimed. A reporter then asks “Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving [disaster victims]?”
“No.” Biden bluntly said. “We’ve actually given them a significant amount even though they didn’t ask for it yet.”
Only The People Can Save The People
Peoples Dispatch spoke to Sarah Brummet, an organizer based out of Pensacola, Florida, who has been coordinating volunteer disaster relief efforts throughout the South. According to Brummet, “the every-man-for-himself sort of attitude that the US government takes towards natural disasters in advance of a hurricane is really insufficient.”
Brummet has coordinated relief efforts through the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has been deploying volunteers throughout Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. These teams have been bringing in water, cleaning supplies, baby formula, diapers and anything else that can fit in their vehicles. “We expect that, especially in the southern Appalachia region, that the need will be really great for a long time and that it will be a long term struggle around the conditions there,” Brummet said.
“In the case of southern Appalachia in particular, people were not we’re not expecting this. This is really historic and they weren’t given notice at all. Really, by the time that they were made aware, it was too late to leave,” Brummet said.
Water needs are particularly dire due to delays in FEMA’s emergency water aid, Brummet said. “There are people collecting dirty, contaminated flood water from the creeks because they have no other way of getting water.”
“FEMA also did not open the applications for emergency relief until 24 hours after the flooding. So even for those folks who maybe were able to access the Internet, access, power, whatever the case may be, they weren’t able to start getting an application,” Brummet described.
Brummet contrasts the US government’s response to the hurricane relief efforts in places like Cuba, in particular, which although is often in the direct path of hurricanes, it historically has had very few hurricane related deaths.
The day before Hurricane Ian hit Cuba in 2022, 50,000 people were evacuated and taken to 55 shelters. By October 1, less than five days after Hurricane Ian’s landfall, 82% of the residents of Havana had their power restored. In contrast, over 100 people died in Florida as a result of the same hurricane, with many blaming delayed evacuation efforts.
Cuba has “drastically lower rates of deaths from hurricanes than we do here in Florida,” says Brummet. “And then when the storm has passed, it’s a priority for the government that everyone’s home is given attention, is repaired.”
In the US, “this is not even imaginable,” Brummet claims. “People are often permanently displaced because their homes are destroyed and they aren’t given the resources to repair them. With all the wealth that we have in the United States, we could prioritize making sure that our communities are safe from storms, that people are evacuated, and that where a storm does hit, that people’s needs are met and they can have their homes rebuilt and their lives can continue.”
Climate Change
The role of climate change and the burning of fossil fuels cannot be overstated, emphasized climate scientist Peter Kalmus in a recent interview with Democracy Now.
“Every day we continue burning fossil fuels and allowing this industry to continue spreading disinformation and blocking action, the planet gets hotter. Hotter ocean fuels these storms, causes them to intensify more rapidly, causes them to get much more powerful,” Kalmus described.
“These storms, heat waves, floods, crop failures, migrants—all of this destabilization is going to get worse,” he continued. “We have everything we need to stop this problem… But there’s just confusion out there. The Republican Party is still deeply in denial. The Democratic Party is still deeply in denial. And it’s just a human tragedy unfolding in real time.”