Hurricane Irene: In disasters as in struggles, solidarity helps
By
G. Dunkel
New York
Published Aug 31, 2011 1:20 PM
Hurricane Irene threatened 55 million people as it swept up the U.S. East
Coast, following a rare track for a late-summer storm. Many capitalist
politicians, on national, state and local levels, strove to present an image of
compassionate and effective concern — equally rare sentiments. Before its
winds slowed as it reached the Northeast, Irene struck the Leeward Islands and
the Bahamas full force and dumped major amounts of rain on Puerto Rico, the
Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government has spent tens of billions of dollars
on “homeland security.” This has strengthened the state’s
repressive apparatus. But there is still no coordinated plan for confronting
national disasters that affect millions of people.
The TV weather forecasters’ consistent refrain was that Irene was a
serious storm and people in the U.S. were lucky to have avoided more damage and
destruction. For example, Irene’s “eye” came ashore in New
York City an hour after high tide. The retreating tide countered the water the
hurricane was pushing into the harbor and lower Manhattan escaped major
flooding.
As Irene churned along, various governors, mayors, Federal Emergency Management
Agency administrators and Red Cross officials held press conference after press
conference pushing the same plan: Individuals should put together a
“go” bag, listen to press announcements, and head for higher
grounds and safer shores.
They didn’t explain how to do this without a car; how the elderly,
infirm, home-bound could do it; and when to leave. The threat affected the
whole community. But officials pushed an individual response, lacking any sort
of solidarity.
Outrage over Rikers Island
An extreme example of the politicians’ calculated response was how
billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg abandoned the prisoners at
Rikers Island, the large prison the city runs on an island off the Queens
shore. Rikers has an average population of 14,000, almost all Black or
Latino/a, many youths, many awaiting trial who can’t make bail. Even
though Rikers was surrounded by Zone A areas which were designated to be
evacuated, the city put it in Zone B and stubbornly refused to develop a plan
to move the inmates.
It was encouraging that a section of the progressive movement concerned about
prisoners – on the initiative of Critical Resistance, The Jericho
Movement and some radical attorneys — mobilized to demand an evacuation
plan for Rikers. Enough complaints reached the mayor’s office that
officials were forced to make public statements on the issue and the media
reported it. It was a dress rehearsal for a greater storm.
Socialist Cuba’s disaster responses
Cuba, much smaller than the United States and much poorer than Manhattan, is
frequently hit by major storms. It does cooperate in exchanging information
about hurricanes with U.S. forecasters. (New York Times, Aug. 21, 2009)
But its civil defense against hurricane devastation is much different.
Every household gets an evacuation plan long before the hurricane’s
arrival, and drills are held regularly. As the hurricane approaches, news media
issue warnings and civil-defense officials alert local response teams, which
reach each resident of each block of each town and village.
Schools and other buildings are quickly turned into shelters, and a doctor, and
sometimes a nurse, is assigned to staff them and deliver medicine and medical
care to those who need it. There are stocks of blankets, water and food.
Forty-eight hours before the expected arrival of the hurricane, people prepare
to evacuate.
When the storm is a day away, volunteers go door-to-door to ensure everyone
gets out of harm’s way. Government buses, cars and trucks transport
people to safety. The shelters take in anyone who can’t find another safe
place to stay, though many take shelter with friends or relatives. During
Hurricane Ike in 2008, Cuba evacuated 2.6 of its 11.4 million people to safety.
(AP, Sept. 18, 2008)
In North and South Carolina, where Irene first made landfall in the U.S., and
southern Virginia, most people directly threatened were tourists with their own
vehicles who could flee with only encouragement from the authorities.
As Irene lingered over land and cooler water, its winds lost much of their
punch, but the accompanying rains presented a major danger. This year’s
wet summer left much of the East Coast’s land soft and saturated. More
rain and the remaining wind brought trees down, which blocked roads, brought
down overhead power lines and caused some deaths. Up to a million households
and businesses lost power in Virginia.
Maryland and New Jersey ordered beach resorts evacuated, turning highways into
one-way, out-only byways, especially in New Jersey. There were scattered
reports of local residents forced into shelters not ready for the influx. The
ensuing chaos and confusion took authorities a day or so to straighten
out.
Response in New York City
The authorities in New York City, the financial and media capital of the U.S.,
had reason to believe Irene might hit the city head-on. It was the first such
hurricane in three decades. They also knew that their lack of preparation for
and completely inadequate response to the Dec. 26, 2010, blizzard ground the
city to a halt, in some communities up to several weeks, and led to heavy
complaints.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management had a map defining three areas
at risk of flooding. Roughly, Zone A was likely to flood with a Level 1 storm
or above; Zone B with a Level 2 or above; and Zone C with a Level 3 or 4 storm.
Higher areas were considered safe to stay in. (Full disclosure: I live on the
boundary of Zones A and B and decided to evacuate.)
Mayor Bloomberg issued a mandatory evacuation order for everyone living in Zone
A, and the city began evacuating disabled patients in Zone A hospitals and
nursing homes starting Aug. 25. Some of these evacuations went smoothly. Others
had a lot of problems, with missing medications, incompatible electronic
records and resistance of some business operators to the costs they might
face.
Not evacuating was a misdemeanor, although the mayor promised not to prosecute.
For the affluent residents of Battery Park City in Manhattan, where rents start
at $4,000 for efficiency apartments, spending a few nights in a hotel and using
cabs or a car service were no budget-breakers.
For Lower East Side residents of New York City Housing Authority high rises, it
was a totally different story. While evacuating on the subway at a stop without
an elevator, I met an elderly woman with a disabled daughter who had to be
manually carried down the stairs before boarding a train to Brooklyn, where a
relative would met them.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Aug. 26 that it was
stopping both subways and buses at noon on Aug. 27. Most city residents went
along with shutting down the subway system, the first voluntary shutdown to
protect the subway cars in its 100-year history. There was less support for
shutting down the buses because they were under less threat. However, the
shutdown meant many people couldn’t get to work on the weekend —
which meant they lost wages.
And the shutdown meant that hundreds of NYCHA residents who depend on public
transport had no way to get to the shelters the city had opened. Nevertheless,
the city still forced them out, threatening to turn off elevators.
Local elected politicians started raising a stink, and the city finally
scrounged up some school buses and got fire fighters to drive NYCHA residents
to shelters, particularly those in Coney Island and the Rockaways, which are
barrier islands facing the Atlantic in Brooklyn and Queens.
The city boasted that it had 92 shelters, with space for 70,000 people, though
not enough beds. Though there were 370,000 people in Zone A, only about 9,000
people took advantage of the shelters, according to the media. They slept on
cots that were cheek-to-jowl. As soon as the storm passed on Aug. 28, people
left the shelters
Downgraded to a tropical storm after it hit landfall in New York City, Irene
still dumped much rain, producing flooding and mud slides in Connecticut, New
Jersey and upstate New York and major flooding, power loss, road closings and
vanished bridges in Vermont.
The clean-up and restoration of services have begun, though thousands of people
are newly homeless and many businesses are in ruins. Already Republican
politicians are saying that the multibillion-dollar cost of rebuilding must be
taken out of cuts in the federal budget. That’s not what Cuba would do.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email:
[email protected]
Subscribe
[email protected]
Support independent news
DONATE