Ike: The Silent Storm

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/03-3

Ike: The Silent Storm

by Teresa Van Deusen

The evacuees from Hurricane Gustav had just returned home September 5th when Hurricane Ike began to head for the Gulf of Mexico. National news covered the track of Ike through the Gulf non-stop in the five days leading up to landfall. More than a million Texans sought shelter away from the coast and countless more piled in with family and friends. The storm came aground on around 1:00 AM on Saturday, September 14th with a category 5 surge of saltwater and category 2 winds of 115 mph.

In the dark of the night 45, 000 homes were destroyed and millions of residents lost electricity, water, and roofs. Then Ike turned north, leaving hundreds of thousands more Americans without power in a 200 mile wide swath from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes.

And then there was silence. No hum of air conditioners. No stereos blasting or people singing off key. No loudspeaker from the football games on Friday night. Just an eerie quiet as people emerged from their hiding places to survey the damage.

snip//

Two weeks after this disaster 1.5 million people still go home to no power but that which they provide for themselves. The blue light of televisions run by generators blares out into the darkness. The sound of the newscasters voices are more frequently replaced by a game or movie. Cable is restored with news that never mentions Hurricane Ike. The remote shelters have all closed. All evacuees have been bussed back to their city of origin, found the rare hotel room, or bunked wherever they could. People in Galveston sleep in tents. FEMA ceased distributing ice and water days ago. Only two regional hospitals are reopened. Warnings about mold, vermin, mosquitoes, and "germs" are issued with reminders that medical care is not readily available. Restoration of power schedules are pushed back for lack of parts. Debris will not be removed until after Thanksgiving, or New Year's if we are lucky. 245, 000 Texans applied for emergency food stamps. Food banks are distributing four times their normal amount in an attempt to meet demand. More than 250,000 households have applied for FEMA assistance. There are no empty hotel rooms for 300 miles. The scurrying of bugs and rustling rodents amid the debris keeps people up at night.

I like to think that if America knew of the suffering in the south that help might be forthcoming. That maybe Galveston residents would not be sleeping in tents and fire stations might have the gas they need to go out on calls. I imagine that children would not be forced to sleep in cars because they can't find a FEMA hotel room. I would like to believe that the nation would protest the thought of waiting to bring in FEMA trailers until next week or the policy of bussing people "closer to home and work" when those places don't even exist anymore. But the rest of the nation doesn't know all these things because more reporters are covering OJ and Caylee than the millions of Americans disrupted by Ike.

It's been three weeks and it will certainly be many more before this is over. The Texas Guard is rolling out. Clean up crews and tow trucks rattle down the streets. Chainsaws replace generators. But still, the silence is deafening. Seriously deafening. As if no one is paying any attention at all.

[knowbody0]

1. just like the revolution

storm aftermath will not be televised. -

[tama]

2. Failed state

in the footsteps of Somalia and Zimbabwe. What else did anyone expect?

Silence of the lambs.

[TXN in WA]

3. I too find this lack of coverage appalling.

Luckily for me, my friends and family live far enough away to not have sustained much damage, and they are all safe. But, I want to be able to hear about updates on cable news - all they seem to be covering is the bailout (and the debates, of course). It's outrageous that so much emphasis is placed on quick passage of the bailout bill, but what about relief for all of the displaced people in TX and LA? Why isn't anybody questioning this???

[babylonsister]

4. Welcome to DU, TXN in WA.

I live in Houston so get nightly updates here, but from watching the m$m, I know what you mean. It's like Ike never happened, despite the conditions on the ground here. I refuse to complain because we fared much better than others, but there is a lot of sadness out there. I have friends who had a tree come trashing down on their trailer home. They're still living there (with the tree that came close to killing one of them), and no one has offered any help whatsoever. I don't know what they'll do when it gets cold, or rains for a week. But there's so much need and not enough help.

[OhioChick]

5. K&R

:kick:

[Kurovski]

6. K&R. (nt)

[Chipper Chat]

7. Indiana suffered too. John Q Public: Huh?

The city of Madison, Indiana suffered a 1-hour devastating windstorm from Ike's winds. Several historic buildings were damaged and many century-old trees were lost. It was the worst damage since the April 1974 Tornado.
And you are correct - not much news coverage. Do we now accept hurricanes on par with thunderstorms? (Except when they occur during republican conventions, of course).

[Igel]

8. Sept. 13, not 14.

And with sustained winds at 110 mph, by most accounts. 111 mph = bottom of category 3, so 115 would be clearly in category 3 territory.

Most people had running water on 9/13. But the pressure sucked. Pressure was mostly restored by that night, but the water was still not considered potable for a few days without boiling.

[eridani]

9. I think that coverage of Katrina was like the coverage of a minor bank failure a couple of weeks ago

That was a story for a whole week, and when WaMu went down, the coverage was less even though it was the biggest bank failure in history.

It's disaster fatigue, I think. Really big ecological and economic disasters are the new normal. The underlying message is "Just get used to it."

[Cresent City Kid]

10. I'm sickened

I was stranded in post-Katrina New Orleans for 10 days before my brother-in-law from San Antonio gave me and my wife a way out. I know the silence you're talking about.

The coverage of Gustav was heavy in anticipation of another Katrina, but when New Orleans was largley spared they moved on from New Orleans, and hurricane coverage in general. Now the Houston area is going through what we went through, and there's barely a mention. Disgusting. The national outpouring of sympathy, and donations after Katrina helped many from my city and took to a small degree the burden off of the government. With Ike this effort was stillborn, people have to be reminded that this story is still going on. This is important because private dollars show up quicker than federal relif.

If our economy really is bad enough to drive this off the front page, then we really are screwed.