Aug 27 2008
Cross posted from The Dream Antilles
Its name is Gustav. And nobody is entirely sure where it’s going. But the 5 day forecast map from Weatherunderground.com makes an alarming prediction:
And that prediction is that this storm could grow in intensity and travel to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Join me in the City that Care Forgot.
May 14 2008
As if the devastation from Cyclone Nargis on May 3 was not enough. As if the inability of the government to help the victims or allow international aid organizations to feed and shelter the millions in need was not enough. As if the people of Myanmar had not suffered enough death, disease, hunger, thirst, cold, and fear. An estimated 2 million survivors of the storm are still in need of emergency aid. To date, U.N. agencies and other groups have been able to reach only 270,000 people.
Bottlenecks, poor logistics, limited infrastructure and the military government’s refusal to allow foreign aid workers have left most of the delta’s survivors living in miserable conditions without food or clean water. The government’s efforts have been criticized as woefully slow.
The situation is about to get much, much worse. Forecasters are now tracking another tropical low that is expected to become another cyclone and track into the already devastated Irriwaddy delta.
Nov 23 2007
Corruption, in addition to climate change, may have been responsible for the devastation caused by the Tabasco floods. You’ll remember that floods in Tabasco last month, caused by up to 30 inches of rain, ruined all of the crops, stopped oil production, and caused one million people, about half the state’s population to be displaced. About 70,000 people were in shelters in Villahermosa and another 20,000 were living on their roofs. Indigenous people in the interior found themselves stuck on islands in the flood water. And recently, it was reported that the entire state was being sprayed with insecticides to prevent an outbreak of dengue, a mosquito born disease similar to malaria. 280 people are still unaccounted for.
Today the AP, comparing the situation in Tabasco to Katrina, reported:
The government knew Mexico’s Gulf coast was a disaster in waiting long before three rivers surged out of their banks, flooding nearly every inch of the low-lying state of Tabasco and leaving more than 1 million homes under water.
But officials admit they never finished a $190 million levee project that was supposed to have been done by 2006 and would have held back much of the rising waters that flooded Tabasco at the end of October.
The tragedy was reminiscent of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, when levees failed and swamped much of New Orleans, forcing people to flee by wading through dirty waters. In Tabasco, days of relentless rain – not a hurricane – were to blame.