Hawaii has one of the most sophisticated tsunami warning systems in the world, fine-tuned over the course of almost 80 years, ever since 1946, when a 55-foot wave hit the island chain, killing 159 people.
For decades, tsunami evacuation maps have appeared in every Hawaiian telephone directory. Signs have alerted beachgoers of the hazard zones; others identified escape routes. The state now has an emergency alert system for all disasters that not only relies on sirens, which get tested on the first working day of every month everywhere in Hawaii, but also on radio and TV broadcasts. It is a system designed to save lives when disaster is about to strike.… Seguir leyendo »
La catástrofe que arrasó la semana pasada la querida población de Lahaina, al oeste de Maui, trae consigo el amargo sabor del desconcierto.
El incendio de la maleza se mezcló con unos vientos fuertes azotados por un huracán lejano y, de la noche a la mañana, la histórica ciudad había desaparecido, convertida en humo y cenizas. Un exuberante paisaje acuarelado está ahora redibujado en blanco y negro. Al menos 99 personas han muerto, y muchas más están desaparecidas.
Un huracán quemó una ciudad. Es todo muy extraño y terrible.
Vivir en Hawái el tiempo suficiente te familiariza con las catástrofes repentinas, del tipo que pueden arrasar una comunidad en una semana, un día o un instante.… Seguir leyendo »
This week, Americans are understandably focused on the hurricane-related flooding in Florida, which is causing tragedy for thousands. Yet there is little attention in the United States to the fact that Pakistan has been flooded since mid-June, a catastrophe that is still causing unspeakable suffering for tens of millions.
Both of these crises owe much to the same phenomenon — climate change. But aside from some limited aid, there’s scant U.S.-Pakistan cooperation on long-term solutions. That has to change, according to Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who was in the United States this week pitching his proposal for a “Green Marshall Plan”.… Seguir leyendo »
La primera vez que vi a la famosa Fabienne Jean, venía cojeando hacia mí lentamente, pero con la elegancia inconfundible de la bailarina que era. Dos años habían pasado desde que los donadores y los medios de Estados Unidos habían convertido a Fabienne en un símbolo de recuperación del devastador terremoto que sacudió a Haití en 2010. Quienes le deseaban lo mejor le habían prometido de todo, desde una nueva casa y una visa estadounidense hasta su propia academia de baile. En aquel momento, ella mantenía las esperanzas. Sin embargo, nada de eso sucedería.
La última vez que vi a la famosa Fabienne Jean estaba sentada sin hacer nada en su apartamento en un sótano de Puerto Príncipe, sin poder trabajar ni bailar, aún nostálgica por su breve encuentro con la generosidad estadounidense.… Seguir leyendo »
The wind and rain began lashing New Orleans in the early hours of Aug. 29, 2005, while President George W. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Texas. As the levees buckled and water poured into the city, the federal government tarried. Later, Hurricane Katrina’s long pall — the more than 1,800 related deaths, the devastation and the slow federal response — would come to haunt Mr. Bush’s presidency, cratering his approval rating.
President Trump, who has overseen his own hurricane crisis after last year’s storms in Texas and Puerto Rico, has largely escaped the presidency-defining censure that dogged Mr.… Seguir leyendo »
Desolado por la destrucción y sumido en la espera de ayuda para atender una crisis humanitaria inédita en su historia, Puerto Rico enfrenta un panorama incierto tras el paso del huracán María. El cuadro general de los daños es todavía preliminar debido al derrumbe de las telecomunicaciones, pero las pérdidas aseguradas se estiman en más de 70.000 millones de dólares, cifra solamente comparable con el daño que dejó en 2005 el huracán Katrina. La isla recibió en apenas 24 horas el total de lluvia que recibió Houston por el huracán Harvey en tres días. Sin embargo, a doce días del evento atmosférico, la mitad de la isla sigue sin servicio de agua y las imágenes de las inundaciones en los litorales costeros desnudan una historia compleja de desposesión y explotación colonial que requiere una solución inmediata.… Seguir leyendo »
El huracán Harvey ha dejado en su estela vidas agobiadas y enormes daños materiales, estimados en unos 150 a 180 miles de millones de dólares. Sin embargo, la tormenta que azotó la costa de Texas durante casi una semana completa, también plantea preguntas profundas sobre el sistema económico y las políticas de Estados Unidos.
Es irónico, sin lugar a dudas, que un evento relacionado con el cambio climático haya ocurrido en un Estado que es el hogar de tantos que niegan la existencia del mismo – y donde la economía depende tan fuertemente de los combustibles fósiles que impulsan el calentamiento global.… Seguir leyendo »
Les images sont si familières. Les rampes d’accès aux autoroutes émergeant à peine des eaux et, juste en dessous d’un panneau publicitaire arraché par le vent, une famille patauge jusqu’à la taille sous la pluie toujours battante. Des dizaines de héros ordinaires flottent sur leurs kayaks au hasard des rues inondées, pendant que l’écheveau des responsabilités techniques et politiques de la crise s’embrouille un peu plus au hasard des reportages et des posts sur les médias sociaux. Bingo des mots-clés pour un désastre dont personne, étrangement, n’insiste sur le caractère « naturel » : « expansion urbaine incontrôlée », « catastrophe technique », « changement climatique causé par l’homme ».… Seguir leyendo »
New York, New Jersey and the Northeastern seaboard owe a debt of gratitude to Hurricane Katrina.
The lesson of the Gulf Coast disaster was the failure of government at every level — federal, state and local — and across party lines. Towns were unprepared; Louisiana’s Democratic governor was slow to mobilize troops; the Republican president oversaw a Federal Emergency Management Agency response that was an almost complete fiasco. Evacuation orders were either not issued or not followed, and many who wanted to get out couldn’t, because public trains and buses weren’t made available. The legacy of Hurricane Katrina was as simple as the Boy Scout motto: “Be prepared.”… Seguir leyendo »
As superstorm Sandy bore down on the East Coast, three nuclear power plants were shut down and an alert was issued for the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey. This is an important reminder that the United States has several low-lying nuclear plants on the Eastern seaboard, with minimal protection against inundation. Particularly with climate change increasing the likelihood of extreme weather, this hidden threat to public safety should be remedied.
The disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant on March 11, 2011, revealed how much damage a tsunami can inflict on a nuclear power facility. To assess the vulnerability of such plants around the world, we collected information on plant height, sea wall height and the location of emergency power generators for 89 nuclear plants that lie next to water.… Seguir leyendo »
It's a disaster. I am in small-town Massachusetts, listening to tropical storm Irene chattering on the loft windows, there's no milk for tea, and it's my fault. For the last 48 hours frantically excited radio and television anchors have spared no effort in producing high-level panic on an interminable loop. Even the generally measured tones of National Public Radio turned breathless with dystopian anticipation. By the time we turned up at the supermarket the evening before Irene made landfall, all milk, food, water, batteries and toilet paper had vanished. The bottled water shelves gleamed with an eerie emptiness: no post-apocalyptic looting could have been more thorough.… Seguir leyendo »
As many of us watched the coverage of the Sendai earthquake and tsunami in Japan on Friday, we were staggered and horrified by the images of death and destruction. The magnitude 8.9 quake is the largest to hit Japan in more than 150 years and the seventh largest in recorded history. The tsunami produced even greater damage and loss of life. The final figures won't be known for many days, yet it seems clear that hundreds and possibly thousands of people are dead, injured or missing, and the economic toll will be in the millions. The quake will have a severe effect on the Japanese economy, the third largest in the world, and it is already having a global effect.… Seguir leyendo »
Exactamente igual que el huracán Katrina propinó un golpe fatal a la credibilidad del presidente George W. Bush en el segundo año de su segundo mandato, la cuestión más candente hoy día es si el vertido de petróleo de BP acarreará una suerte parecida al Gobierno del presidente Barack Obama en el segundo año de su primer -y potencialmente único- mandato.
Como en el caso del Katrina, esta crisis se ceba en el litoral norteamericano del Golfo de México. Las autoridades federales, estatales y locales están superadas. Aunque el ritmo al que evoluciona actualmente la catástrofe se ha vuelto más lento, sus consecuencias van a ser más graves.… Seguir leyendo »
Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, made an astounding admission before Congress last week: after nearly two months of failure, the company and the Coast Guard have no further plans to plug the Macondo oil well leaking into the Gulf. Instead, the goal is merely to contain the leak until a relief well comes online, a process that could take months.
With tens of thousands of barrels of oil leaking from the well each day, this absence of a backup plan highlights a lack of leadership, resources and expertise on the part of the Coast Guard, which from the beginning was compelled to give BP complete control over the leaking wellhead.… Seguir leyendo »
Se nota mucho que el tema nos viene grande. El petróleo lo conocemos envasado. Sufrimos el Prestige y acabó como el rosario de la aurora. Una vez tuvimos el sueño del petróleo y aún hoy es el día que uno no se puede reír porque ofendería el llamado sentir popular. ¡Petróleo en Burgos! Aquel momento estelar de nuestra historia cuando todos los periódicos, sin excepción, anunciaron que Dios había recompensado a Franco con la aparición de varios pozos petrolíferos en los secarrales de la Lora, vecinos a Ayoluengo, provincia de Burgos; allí donde los pueblos son feos y pobres, y los nombres largos y rotundos: Susinos del Páramo, Melgosa de Villadiego, Prádanos del Tozo...… Seguir leyendo »
When the president calls your top executive "ridiculous" from the rose garden of the White House, it's a low point. When late-night TV hosts make demeaning jokes about your company, it's a bad day. When your industry distances itself, you are lonely. When the facts are awful (11 deaths, a lost rig, an open well flowing into the sea), it's a very bad time.
Having sat in the US chair for Shell and knowing what America thinks of foreign-owned companies operating in its critical industries, here's my view. BP is, for now, Uncle Remus' Br'er Rabbit fighting the tar baby in the briar patch.… Seguir leyendo »
Over the weekend BP learned that its latest effort at stanching the Deepwater Horizon oil spill — placing a huge metal dome over the leak — had failed. With the oil slick now washing up on the Louisiana shore, the Op-Ed editors asked five experts for their thoughts on what should be done now — and how we can avoid future catastrophes.
Avoid Dispersants. By Riki Ott, marine toxicologist and author of Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.
One of the oil industry’s favorite tools in fighting oil spills is chemical dispersants — indeed, over 300,000 gallons have been used so far in the Gulf.… Seguir leyendo »
The United States has brought millions of dollars and many tons of aid to Haiti, but one thing we brought is not welcome: the American flag. For awhile, it flew over the compound where the Joint Task Force Haiti was operating, but no more. Apparently, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive thought it implied a U.S. occupation, and so, in a pitiful example of political correctness, it was lowered. This is even more ironic given that the French contingent proudly flies its flag and France held Haiti as a colony until a bloody revolution.
If the Haitian prime minister is unhappy with having the U.S.… Seguir leyendo »
As the one-month anniversary of Haiti’s earthquake passes, one inspiring memory of the rescue effort stands out: after a Los Angeles search and rescue team pulled another survivor from the rubble, bystanders in Port-au-Prince chanted, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” President Obama recounted the scene in his State of the Union address, and now policymakers should make sure that such successes can be repeated, more frequently, in future disasters by expanding our urban search and rescue capacity.
Consider what we were able to do in Haiti. The heroic work of just six American teams there — a small fraction of the 43 international search and rescue teams deployed — was responsible for a third of the lives saved.… Seguir leyendo »
The United States should create a service corps of doctors, nurses and medical technicians to deploy to humanitarian disasters like the one that struck Haiti last month.
Members of this corps would also be available to countries where violence, neglect and poverty are breeding extremism. History has shown that there is a significant correlation between adequate health care and a country’s stability and security. It is no coincidence that terrorism often thrives in places that lack basic services like education, clean water and rudimentary medical care.
The program would be modeled on the Peace Corps, with the added incentives of loan forgiveness and scholarships in exchange for a committed period of service.… Seguir leyendo »
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