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Stories tagged with “Hurricane Irene”

Economy

Republican Revolt: Virginia’s GOP Governor Splits With Cantor, Rejects Conditioning Disaster Aid On Budget Cuts

By Pat Garofalo on Aug 31, 2011 at 10:40 am

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA)

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), along with some of his House GOP colleagues, have been saying that disaster aid for the areas affected by Hurricane Irene must be offset by, in Cantor’s words, “savings elsewhere.” Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) said yesterday on Bloomberg News that budget cuts must be a prerequisite for disaster aid in order to reassure “the business markets.” Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) added that the days when disaster relief could be funded without offsetting budget cuts “are gone.”

However, not everyone in the GOP agrees that disaster funding should play second fiddle to the GOP’s budget-slashing agenda. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) yesterday broke with Cantor, saying that “I don’t think it’s the time to get into that [deficit] debate“:

Virginia GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell, breaking with Cantor, on Tuesday suggested that deficit-spending concerns should not be a factor as Congress and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) respond to the hurricane.

“My concern is that we help people in need,” McDonnell said during his monthly radio show. “For the FEMA money that’s going to flow, it’s up to them on how they get it. I don’t think it’s the time to get into that [deficit] debate.”

The Hill noted that “before Irene hit, McDonnell had requested emergency help from FEMA in 10 districts, including Cantor’s. All the requests were granted.”

The offsets that Cantor has said would be acceptable to him include cuts to first responders, which prompted Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) to ask, “Does it really make sense to pay for response and reconstruction costs from past disasters by reducing our capacity to prepare for future disasters?” But Cantor hasn’t always believed that disaster aid should be contingent on budget cuts. In fact, in 2004, he requested federal aid following Tropical Storm Gaston, saying that “the magnitude of the damage suffered by the Richmond area is beyond what the Commonwealth can handle,” without a word about offsetting cuts being necessary.

Climate Progress

Dangerous Floodwaters After Hurricane Irene Leave Behind Harmful Chemicals In Northeast

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Aug 30, 2011 at 3:17 pm

Flooding in Vermont caused by Hurricane Irene

The remnants of Hurricane Irene have passed over the East Coast, but rivers swollen by the storm’s extreme rain continue to endanger homes and lives from New Jersey to Vermont with the worst flooding in decades (and after the region had seen the wettest August on record even before Irene). Washed-out bridges and roads from the torrential rains cut off access to 11 towns in Vermont, leading FEMA officials to use helicopters to deliver supplies.

But once the floodwaters recede, the damage will go beyond rebuilding homes, bridges, and roads destroyed by extreme rains. Residents in the flood-soaked areas will have to worry about sewage, pesticides, and other contaminants that were left behind by the flood or that were swept into East Coast waterways. One New York apartment building has already been evacuated because oil carried by the floodwaters contaminated several apartments. The U.S. Geological Survey sent crews to follow the storm and test for bacteria and chemicals in rivers, according to the New York Times:

“What typically happens is that you get a significant amount of rainfall that leads to a significant amount of runoff,” said Charles Crawford, sampling coordinator for the agency.

That runoff, he said, carries pesticides from farmland, gardens and lawns like those used for termites around the foundation of homes. [...] Excessive amounts of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, Mr. Crawford said, could cause algae blooms that can threaten aquatic life and fisheries. And sewage in the high flows from the hurricane can lead to higher concentrations of E. Coli in areas that use surface water for drinking, he said.

Contaminated water is frequently a problem following flooding from heavy rains or storm surge from a massive hurricane. After Hurricane Katrina, tests found extremely high levels of sewage bacteria in water samples. When thunderstorms deluged Nashville in May 2010, health officials warned residents to treat all floodwater as if it had sewage in it because of reports about overflowing sewage systems. Floodwaters from the Mississippi River in May swept pesticides and fertilizer down the river and into the Gulf of Mexico, and this highly polluted water swamped 3 million acres of farmland along the way.

Global warming continues to make hurricanes more intense and dangerous and fuels more “500-year” floods along the Mississippi River. “Once in a lifetime” storms are no longer a rarity, and handling the dangerous chemicals dispursed by these floodwaters and heavy rains will continue to potentially endanger people’s health and harm aquatic life in waterways as weather patterns continue to grow more extreme.

Economy

GOP Rep. Calls For Offsetting Hurricane Aid In Order To Reassure ‘The Business Markets’

By Pat Garofalo on Aug 30, 2011 at 1:05 pm

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ)

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is sticking by his call that any disaster relief funding to areas affected by Hurricane Irene be offset by budget cuts elsewhere (with his preferred offsets including cuts to first responders). Disgraced Hurricane Katrina-era FEMA Administrator Mike “heckuva job” Brown agreed with Cantor today that deficit concerns should be placed over the needs of Americans affected by the hurricane.

During an interview with Bloomberg News, GOP Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) jumped on board this effort, saying that it’s necessary to offset disaster aid in order to “tell the world and the business markets that we’re trying to turn off the spigot of debt”:

SCHWEIKERT: Leader Cantor made it very clear. We will step up and help our brothers and sisters out there in need. In a three-plus trillion dollar federal budget, I promise you, we’ll find some offsets and we’ll find them fairly simply. The political culture of the left is let’s just borrow the money and, one day in the future, we’ll have an honest discussion about that borrowing. We’re trying to tell the world and the business markets that we’re trying to turn off the spigot of debt and this will be a good symbol. We’ll get the money to help our disaster victims, and yet, it will be, I actually believe, somewhat easy to find some offsets out there that hopefully we can all embrace.

Watch it:

Schweikert doesn’t only think that disaster aid needs to be offset in order to prove something to the “market.” He has also said Congress should pass the House Republicans’ Medicare-ending budget because “you don’t create jobs, you don’t have investment until the markets, and those that hold the capital to do those investments, have some sense that we’re going to bend this debt curve.” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney criticized the GOP’s position today, saying “I cant help but say that I wish that commitment to looking for offsets had been held…during the previous administration.”

Economy

House Republican Bill Cuts Hurricane Monitoring Funds That Help Save Millions Of Dollars

By Pat Garofalo on Aug 30, 2011 at 11:50 am

In the wake of Hurricane Irene, which caused billions of dollars in damages up and down the U.S.’s eastern seaboard, House Republicans are callously claiming that any aid to victims of the disaster needs to be offset by budget cuts elsewhere. The savings favored by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) would come from cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and first responders.

However, if House Republicans get their way, not only will recovering from the effects of Hurricane Irene be more difficult, but so will monitoring incoming hurricanes in general. As the Associated Press noted, the House Appropriations Committee has approved cuts to funding for “hurricane hunters” — military planes that fly into hurricanes in order to measure and track them:

Hurricane hunters – which are flying into Irene’s eye to feed forecasters vital information about the storm – could face big funding cuts under a budget proposal moving through the U.S. House.

Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat from Florida, wrote House Speaker John Boehner on Friday asking for a reversal of proposed cuts to the program under a bill that passed the Appropriations Committee. She said if the cuts go through, it would amount to a 40 percent drop in funding for hurricane hunter flights out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. [...]

Hurricane hunter planes fly directly into the storm to measure wind speed, barometric pressure and other data that the National Hurricane Center then uses to formulate its forecasts.

The cuts passed by the Appropriations Committee would take funding for these flights down from $29 million to $17 million, despite the fact that the flights help save a substantial amount of money.

Due to data from the hurricane monitoring flights, forecasts are 30 percent more accurate. Since it costs $1 million per coastal mile for evacuation and preparation when a storm approaches, every mile that is not evacuated yields substantial savings for taxpayers. Estimates put the savings due to monitoring flights at $100-$150 million per storm, far outstripping the $29 million budget dedicated to the hurricane hunters.

“[The] hurricane hunter program is worth its weight in gold,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). “They have gotten such accuracy in prediction, not only the strength of a hurricane but exactly its track. You cut back on those kinds of expenses, and that is really cutting off your nose to spite your face.” “These are very significant cuts. It would be a harmful step backward, just when hurricane predictions are improving,” added Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), who has pledged to propose an amendment restoring the cut funds when the GOP’s appropriations bill comes to the House floor.

NEWS FLASH

Disgraced FEMA Administrator Mike ‘Hekuva Job’ Brown Endorses Cantor’s FEMA Plan | House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) insistence that no new money be authorized for disaster relief without equal or greater spending cuts elsewhere picked up a big endorsement this morning from Hurricane Katrina-era FEMA Administrator Mike Brown. It’s hard to think of anyone in America whose opinion on government responses to natural disasters has been more discredited than Brown’s. His catalog of failures would be almost comical if it weren’t tragic. But on Fox News, Brown said Cantor was right to place concerns about the deficit over the need to provide help to Americans struggling in the wake of Hurricane Irene:

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Aug 30, 2011 at 11:07 am

Politics

Eric Cantor Won’t Support Any Hurricane Disaster Funding Without Massive Cuts To First Responders

By Judd Legum on Aug 30, 2011 at 10:25 am

Flooding in Vermont caused by Hurricane Irene

In the wake of Hurricane Irene, FEMA is quickly running out of money. Specifically, FEMA’s crucial “disaster-relief fund, used to reimburse local governments and individuals for the costs of cleanup and repairs, is running dangerously low.” Already payments for some projects are being delayed. Early estimates suggest that damage from Irene could exceed $10 billion.

Eric Cantor and the House GOP leadership appear to agree that more funds are needed, but won’t help until President Obama and the Senate agree to more budget cuts. Yesterday on Fox News, Cantor made clear that he would not support any additional funding unless matched with “savings elsewhere.”

What cuts, specifically, does Eric Cantor want in exchange for disaster relief funds? On Fox, Cantor said he supported $1 billion in disaster relief funding as part of the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, which contains massive cuts to FEMA and first responders.

In July, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) detailed the problems with the legislation championed by Cantor:

The House bill slashes funding for grants to equip and train first responders by 40 percent. This is on top of the 19 percent cut in FY 2011. The House defense appropriations bill provides $12.8 billion to train and equip troops and police in Afghanistan — yet the House provides only $2 billion for first responders here at home.

Their proposal also slashes the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s operations by 6 percent at a time when the agency has never been busier. Does it really make sense to pay for response and reconstruction costs from past disasters by reducing our capacity to prepare for future disasters?

Cantor’s insistence on budget cuts to off-set any expenditures is a recent phenomenon. During the Bush administration, Cantor supported the Bush tax cuts, the Iraq war, and raising the debt limit (five times) without a penny in spending cuts.

Update

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney weighs in on Cantor: “I cant help but say that I wish that commitment to looking for offsets had been held… during the previous administration“

Climate Progress

Irene’s 1-in-100 Year Rains Trigger Deadly Flooding

By Joe Romm on Aug 29, 2011 at 9:41 pm

Some folks in the media and denier-sphere have tried to downplay the severity of Hurricane Irene.  That’s probably because they don’t live in my home town of Middletown, New York, one of the many Hudson Valley & Catskills towns devastated by Irene.  Where I grew up, this was the storm of the century.

Above is a screen capture from the website of the Middletown Times Herald Record, the paper my father ran for some 3 decades starting in the late 1950s.  The paper now does video reporting, and I’ll repost their amazing coverage of the super-storm below.  That story notes that “emergency personnel”  in the area have labeled Irene, “the most devastating weather event ever to hit the region.”

First, though, meteorologist and hurricane hunter Dr. Jeff Masters has the big picture in his post, “Irene’s 1-in-100 Year Rains Trigger Deadly Flooding“:

Hurricane Irene is gone, but the huge hurricane’s torrential rains have unleashed one of the Northeast’s greatest flood disasters. Videos of rampaging rivers in Vermont, New York State, New Jersey, and surrounding states attest to the extreme nature of the great deluge Hurricane Irene brought. Numerous rivers and creeks throughout the Northeast crested above their highest flood stages on record over the past 24 hours. The previous records were mostly set during some of the great hurricanes of 50 – 60 years ago–Hazel of 1954, Connie and Diane of 1955, and Donna of 1960. Vermont, where 3 – 7 inches of rain fell in just twelve hours, was particularly hard-hit. Otter Creek in Rutland, Vermont crested at 17.21 feet, 3.81′ above its previous record, and more than 9 feet above flood stage. In northern New Jersey and Southeast New York, where soils were already saturated from the region’s wettest August on record even before Irene arrived, record flooding was the norm. According to imagery from metstat.com, Irene’s rains were a 1-in-100 year event for portions of six states.

Here’s the video from my home town newspaper:

Read more

Politics

Cantor: No Disaster Relief Funding For Hurricane Irene Without Budget Cuts

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Aug 29, 2011 at 11:23 am

Despite the devastation caused by Hurricane Irene this weekend, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) today stood by his call that no more money be allocated for disaster relief unless it is offset by spending cuts elsewhere. The Washington Post reported this morning that FEMA will need more money than it currently has to deal with the storm’s aftermath and is already diverting funds from other recent disasters to deal with the hurricane, but Cantor’s comments suggest Republicans won’t authorize more funds without a fight.

Cantor took the position following the tornadoes that devastated Joplin, Missouri and elsewhere in the spring and summer, and after last week’s earthquake, the epicenter for which was in his district, but the hurricane’s level of destruction is far beyond that of those disasters. Still, Cantor told Fox News that while “we’re going to find the money,” “we’re just going to need to make sure that there are savings elsewhere to do so.”

Watch it:

Cantor referred a bill the Republican-controlled House passed that approves $1 billion in disaster relief, which was financed by a $1.5 billion cut from loan program to encourage the production of fuel-efficient vehicles. But the need in the wake of the hurricane will likely greatly surpass $1 billion, and that spending package was supposed to be used for tornado recovery efforts, for which several hundred million dollars has already been outlayed.

Climate Progress

Bachmann: Hurricane Was A Message From God To Washington About Spending (Updated)

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Aug 29, 2011 at 9:42 am

Joining such distinguished public policy thinkers as Pat Robertson and birther evangelist Joseph Farah in seeing divine political interference in natural disasters, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said yesterday that Hurricane Irene was a message from God. Speaking Sarasota, Florida, Bachmann suggested God used the hurricane and last week’s earthquake to tell politicians to cut spending, the St. Petersburg Times reports:

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

It’s ironic that God would use a hurricane to send a memo about cutting government spending, considering that the damage it causes it likely going to increase government spending. Meanwhile, religious leaders from disparate faith organizations have come out against further spending cuts on services for the poor.

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck also saw a prophetic communiqué in the back-to-back disasters, even calling the hurricane — which has killed at least 25 people and likely caused tens of billions in damage — a “blessing” because it will remind people to store more food:

How many warnings do you think you’re going to get, and how many warnings do you deserve? This hurricane that is coming thorough the East Coast, for anyone who’s in the East Coast and has been listening to me say ‘Food storage!’ ‘Be prepared!’ […] If you’ve waited, this hurricane is a blessing. It is a blessing. It is God reminding you — as was the earthquake last week — it’s God reminding you you’re not in control.

The Washington Post’s Elizabeth Tenety points out that Beck’s fascination with storing canned goods may stem from his religion. “Beck, one of Mormonism’s most famous converts, is actually touting one of the unique aspects of the Latter-day Saint faith: food storage,” she notes, citing Section 78 of the Doctrine and Covenants revelation which includes the commandment to “organize and establish a storehouse.”

Update

Bachmann’s presidential campaign is already walking back her comments, telling TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro, “Obviously she was saying it in jest.”

Update

After the event, a reporter asked Bachmann about the comments. She said: “Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of the victims. This isn’t something that we take lightly. My comments were not meant to be ones that were taken lightly. What I was saying in a humorous vein is there are things happening that politicians need to pay attention to. It isn’t everyday we have an earthquake in the United States.”

NEWS FLASH

Irene Dumps Extreme Rain On East Coast | Irene, downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm as it worked its way along the New Jersey coast, has deposited extreme amounts of rainfall along the East Coast. The storm’s rain, fueled by greenhouse pollution that has warmed the oceans and increased atmospheric water vapor, is landing on regions already soaked by the wettest August on record. Parts of North Carolina and Virginia were flooded by 14 to 16 inches of rain.

48-hour precipitation totals from Hurricane Irene. National Weather Service

By Brad Johnson on Aug 28, 2011 at 1:25 pm

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