Just got off the phone with my brother in Houston and my sister in Beaumont.
My brother lives in the Heights, so his home has thankfully stayed dry (higher ground than many other Houston areas). He's a petrochemical engineer and he told me he's worried about the waste pits at the San Jacinto River, which has been flooded for days now. That site stores (among other dangerous chemicals) highly toxic dioxins, which are known endocrine disruptors and extremely carcinogenic. The caps on the storage containers are vulnerable to erosion during hydrologic events (flooding).
Let us hope those caps hold strong.
After Tuesday night's
over Beaumont, I was worried sick about my older sister. Miraculously, her apartment didn't get flooded and her car is okay! She's been out all day today with her coworker buying & delivering supplies to shelters (having to take numerous detours & alternate routes due to flooded roads). But did she fill her bathtub with water Tuesday night like I advised? Nope - so she's going to stay at her boss's house (with a swimming pool so they can use that water to flush the toilets).
My niece is in Dallas and she said most of the gas stations are out of gasoline.
I was born and raised in Texas, although I haven't lived there since 1986. This is so heartbreaking. No matter where I live, Texas will always be home to me. There's no other place like it anywhere on Earth - I know my fellow Texans will attest to that!
Over this past week, as I've watched so many caring people pitching in to help rescue flood victims, my faith in Humanity has been restored.
#TexasStrong
Re Beaumont
Trust him
Russel L. Honoré
He is very very concerned regarding Beaumont entire power grid.
Just passing this along - but if I heard him saying that about where I lived I would heading out.
Entire grid failure he says is calamity of the biggest degree. People can not live without water - its that simple he said (that what I loved about him in Katrina -- no political BS)
It is starting to get , on the media, a little honey, sugar sweet and low and chocolatey.
Not raining on any parades here , but instead of all this pat on the back stuff we need to be hearing some real hard core, plans.
Like the story that the two carriers are on there way. Awesome.
but leaders need to stop the standing ovation, things have got to start moving,
The media needs to take repsonsiblity herer as well.
They are doing a very bad disservice because they are giving this impression that it is only up from here.
Totally ignoring that as tons and tons and tons of water is moving south - when it does that the same thing over and over is gonna happen.
They need to start to seriously moving stuff into known at this time areas.
In the coming days what we are witnessing is gonna keep repeating over and over- they got to try and get in where it is now cause just like we are seeing now with Beomont, and I am sure tomm will be memphis etcetc
I have no idea what marines are actually doing day to day, but they IMO need to be doing a lot more prepositioning - creating staging areas of all sorts of stuff closer to the region.
They may not know the exact location of the next Beomont, but if people are 150 miles away from the region (as opposed to 4000 miles) it helps in response.
It might be stuff is moving that the media is not reporting because houses up to there roof in water gets more eyes than a bunch of planes being loaded with boxes - but I hope there is a lot more going on in terms of preparedness.
They know what devastation is coming downstream - we all have watched as Harvy has devastated city after city.
Every swimming pool downstream can only handle so much water. They know this.
I just hope that downstream a lot of stuff is is going on that we dont know about
Has anyone heard anything about stuff happening south where all that water is heading?
I have not
The Fema guy seemed neat, no bs, knew his stuff . I looked him up he has long background in this stuff and that was comforting.
I dont know differences between like army navy marines coast guard in terms of training but I have to think they know a lot more than citizens bringing their boats.
I think it was Sandy (not sure) but somewhere did the same thing with the air carriers and IIRC they were really helpful.
i guess what I am saying is if we have 15 more of them that are not doing anything but training they IMO should be heading toward the region.
They are not exactly speedboats.!
Clueless about military stuff but it is comforting when one hears another 4000 or whatever are at least moving closer!
And I remember this cycle with Sandy. They still are not recovered. The reality here is believe it or not recovery is far more difficult than rescue.
Recovery is putting a band aid - recovery is a liver transplant!
I remember ( they are still sitting somewhere) all the FEMA trailers that were poisoned and could not be used.
NEW ORLEANS - The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked a federal judge yesterday for immunity from lawsuits over potentially dangerous fumes in government-issued trailers that have housed tens of thousands of Gulf Coast hurricane victims.
Lawyers for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita accuse FEMA of negligence for sheltering them in trailers with elevated levels of formaldehyde,
http://jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com/2008/05/lifelong-illnesses-feared-for-children.html
I think it was the judge that liked the oil drilling community stuff - sounded amazing !!
