Dammit to hell, Hurricane Irma is a thing.

[AlwaysExcited]

One of the biggest mysteries of life for me is how people are STILL denying climate change. And what it will take to convince them otherwise. 

[sawasdee]

I think the only reason any educated person denies climate change is finances. If denying it lets them personally make more money.....then deny it they will, in the face of all evidence.

[GreyhoundFan]

"On tiny Barbuda, a 300-year-old civilization has been ‘extinguished’"

Spoiler

Consider these figures.

Barbuda is barely 60 square miles.

Hurricane Irma, the Category 5 tropical cyclone that 

The ambassador says he and other local officials are working with the U.S. Congress and the Organization of American States to ensure there’s aid, financial and others, so people can begin to repair their homes, their businesses and return.

It's such a sad situation.

[Howl]

That is sad.  People are suffering horribly.   And there are two more babies being born:  Disturbance 1, with a 70% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours, and following right behind is Tropical Depression 14.  It's not over yet. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is scary; "In Irma’s wake, millions of gallons of sewage and wastewater are bubbling up across Florida"

Spoiler

First Hurricane Irma blew through. Then the electricity went out. Then a work crew made an error while working on a pump station in the sewage system. And soon, 2,000 gallons of raw sewage was spilling onto a quiet residential street of ranch houses in Edgewater, a town south of Daytona Beach.

Benirose Demetita, administrator of Regency Elderly Care across the street, watched as city workers scrambled to contain the fetid mixture that spewed along Mango Tree Drive. “These guys from the city worked 24 hours trying to get that under control,” Demetita said.

The spill was one of scores of discharges of poorly treated wastewater and raw sewage into streets, lakes, rivers and neighborhoods, described in pollution filings that poured into the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

In one incident, the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer authority discharged six million gallons of partially treated wastewater — “secondary effluent” — into Biscayne Bay. Bloomberg News said pollution spills reported to the state of Florida totaled 9 million gallons by Tuesday, and that number has continued to grow in recent days.

While runoff from chemical plants and oil refineries dirtied waters along the Texas Gulf Coast, sewage and other wastewater has posed the most immediate problem in Florida, raising the risk of disease, triggering algae blooms that can suffocate fish and other marine creatures, and complicating cleanup days after Hurricane Irma moved north.

“Even without hurricanes, the five U.S. Gulf Coast states are highly vulnerable to disease due to a unique mix of poverty, climate change and heat stress (the highest in North America), aggressive urbanization, and human migrations,” Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said in an email. “We are a global ‘hotspot’ for neglected tropical diseases. Now the hurricanes threaten to further amplify this problem.”

Because of its flat terrain, Florida relies heavily on wastewater lift stations with pumps to move sewage.

Those pumps require electricity. In 2012, the state required that pumping stations be able to withstand 25-year floods, or in some cases 10-year floods. But after Irma, electricity has been in short supply, with millions of customers cut off along with the sewage pump stations.

With the power out, pumps didn’t work in the town of Weeki Wachee, about an hour’s drive north of Tampa, and 2,500 gallons of wastewater was spilled into a wetland area next to a residential street.

Pumps lost power in Clearwater, and 338,000 gallons of partially treated effluent flowed into Stevenson Creek.

In St. Petersburg, after a power failure shut off sewage pumps, two locations each sent more than 3,000 gallons containing raw sewage into the Clam Bayou and Big Bayou.

In Miami-Dade County, an estimated 30,256 gallons of raw sewage poured into a small public park on the edge of Big Bayou for more than four hours before the utility stanched the flow.

In all these cases, the sewage and water utility said it has spread lime on the discharges and pronounced them cleaned up.

Kelly Cox, a staff attorney and program director for the environmental group Miami Waterkeeper, said her inbox was full of email alerts from Florida’s DEP about reports of unauthorized sewage overflows and other spills.

“It’s been unreal to see,” Cox said. “It’s one after the other. … It’s kind of mind blowing at this point.”

Cox said that South Florida, in particular, has faced water challenges for generations, due to its low elevation near the ocean, its aging infrastructure and the porous limestone rock that much of the area sits upon.

In addition, Cox said, nearly a third of residents rely upon septic systems that can become overwhelmed during storms. And the area’s sewage systems also are old, low-lying and unable to handle the flow of water an Irma-like storm brings.

“A lot of our treatment plans have the ability to handle double the normal capacity,” she said. “[But] when a storm the magnitude of Irma hits, you’re way over capacity. … Our systems are overburdened by this storm.”

“Florida’s wastewater system is increasing in age and the condition of installed treatment and conveyance systems is declining,” said a report last year by the American Society of Civil Engineers. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the total needs in Florida’s wastewater infrastructure increased from $12.7 billion in 2004 to $17.1 billion in 2008 to 18.4 billion in 2012. Those costs are likely to continue rising, as municipalities replace pipes, treatment plants and other drinking water systems even as the state’s population continues to grow.

Dee Ann Miller, a spokeswoman for the Florida DEP, said that Florida’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund program provides low-interest loans aimed at planning, designing and constructing water pollution control facilities. The program has awarded more than $4 billion in loans for wastewater and storm water improvement projects since its inception in 1989, she said.

The EPA this week wrote to the head of the Florida DEP, assuring the agency that federal officials would be understanding when it comes to the release of contaminated stormwater discharges happening across the state.

“Hurricane Irma has produced circumstances beyond the reasonable control for some permitters to maintain full compliance with their permit provisions,” an EPA official wrote. “The EPA also recognizes there may be other unforeseen issues that arise as a result of this disaster and we stand ready to work together with our state partners to address these potential issues as they arise. The EPA recognizes the importance of keeping these facilities operating and where necessary getting the facilities back on line as soon as possible.”

As the waters recede, the reports of pollution violations to the Florida DEP have mounted.

In many places, wastewater systems ran backward. In an neighborhood of Orlando, flooding caused a filter system to overflow and about 10,000 gallons of partly treated effluent bubbled up through the manhole covers. A sewer backed up into six homes and the sewage ran into storm water ponds.

Other harmful chemicals have been mixed in with Florida’s wastewater. A fallen tree ruptured a fuel tank line for an irrigation system, spilling 200 gallons of fuel into Lake Reedy in Frostproof.

Ramping up shuttered facilities also has perils. In DeLand, the powering up of a sewage system caused a 1,000-gallon surge of untreated domestic wastewater into a business.

“We learned a lot of lessons after Katrina,” Hotez said. “We learned that prolonged contact with floodwaters on the Gulf leads to terrible skin infections from Staphylococcus, including antibiotic resistant Staph, also a unique Vibrio bacterial infection on the Gulf that can lead to sepsis and death.”

“We learned that floodwaters can have high ‘coliform’ bacterial counts from sewage contamination — meaning intestinal bacterial infections,” Hotez said. “We can anticipate the health impact of both Harvey and Irma will be with us for the next few weeks.”

One more reason I'm glad I'm not in Florida.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is scary; "In Irma’s wake, millions of gallons of sewage and wastewater are bubbling up across Florida"

Don't you worry @GreyhoundFan, our fearful leader has told us Texas will be all clean and fixed in six months.  I'm sure Florida won't be far behind.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

LOL, thanks for the giggle, @onekidanddone! I can't imagine he would care about this unless Mar-a-loco is threatened by sewage. If that happened, no expense would be spared.

[GreyhoundFan]

I saw this and almost injured myself shaking my head and rolling my eyes:

[GrumpyGran]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I saw this and almost injured myself shaking my head and rolling my eyes:

Good god, please quit talking.

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘It’s not the storm — it’s the aftermath’: In Irma’s wake, searching for normal in the Florida Keys"

Spoiler

STOCK ISLAND, Fla. — Lynn Hernandez is a “Conch,” a fourth-generation native of the Florida Keys, and she knows from experience that the hard part isn’t the hurricane; it’s what happens now.

Four days after Irma dumped wrack and wreckage on this tiny island, its residents were deep into the blisteringly hot wait for food, electricity and water.

The wait for normal.

“People are a little crazy now. It’s scary,” Hernandez said, sitting on the porch of her uncle’s semi-ruined frame house two blocks from the boatyard where most of her family make their living as fishermen. It was the same after Wilma, after Georges, after Andrew (she was pregnant for that one), after all seven of the hurricanes she has ridden out here on the Straits of Florida. Because that is what Conchs do.

She had her face in one hand and a warm Bud Light in the other, a little beery and a little teary recalling the post-Irma traumas: the two men she saw get into a knife fight near the marina, the old man they found dead in his apartment down the street, the boy who came around selling jewelry soon after reports of looting from the Zales store across the bridge.

And suddenly, trauma was upon her again. She looked up as the normal background barking of dogs reached a frenzy, then a shattering scream: “No, they’re killing her!” she heard.

Hernandez ran from the porch and saw two big dogs that had been left behind by neighbors who heeded evacuation orders ahead of Irma’s arrival. The dogs had been making a racket since the storm, and now they had gotten loose and were leaping around a young woman and the small white dog she was trying to protect. The little animal’s blood was already staining the front of her Key West High School shirt.

“Oh, no; oh, no,” the girl said after bystanders chased off the attackers. “She’s dying.”

Hernandez looked, saw that the girl was right and hugged her.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “They’re in survival mode.”

Hernandez sat, cradling the fading animal.

“It’s not the storm. It’s the aftermath,” she said, her voice still shaking. “Honestly, I don’t mind the wind.”

The Florida Keys, a bead string of causeway-connected islands dangling 113 miles into the ocean from the tip of the state, took the brunt of Irma’s landfall when its eyewall rolled right over the archipelago. Between Islamorada and Stock Island — which abuts Key West — there are swaths of dramatic wreckage, mostly where the wind and water tossed around trailers, campers and boats.

But the construction codes in place since Hurricane Andrew’s 1992 devastation of the state have hardened Florida’s homes, even here in one of the most vulnerable environments. Most of the affected structures looked damaged but not destroyed. Once the tons of debris are gone, the power grid restrung and hundreds of bent-but-not-broken roofs repaired, the Keys will be up and waiting for the next tropical tempest.

Hernandez’s turquoise block home on Stock Island is one that was bruised but livable; Irma twisted part of her metal roof into ribbons. That’s fine, that’s what she expected. Fixing a roof is better than leaving your home behind and being stuck in the angry line of cars at Mile Marker 74, where officers still won’t let evacuees back in.

“Conchs don’t leave,” said Cassandra Greene, who was out front of her home three blocks away, grilling the last of the pork chops she packed in coolers before the storm.

“The Keys always come through,” said her husband, Jimmy Greene, a water and sewer worker on Key West who grew up here. He was petting the emaciated stray dog that took up with them during the storm. “We stay, and then we help each other out.”

In the wake of Irma, the Keys are like a ship that was nearly swamped by breaking waves, shedding the water, struggling to right itself.

It was getting busier. Hospital staff, utility workers, other “essential” personnel, were being let back in. Supply trucks loaded with generators, portable toilets and telephone poles filled southbound U.S. Route 1. With boats still on some side streets and most of the fallen trees still lying where Irma dropped them, the Lower Keys were crawling with residents, repair crews and relief groups.

One was giving away gasoline at the post office on Big Pine Key. National Guard members handed out emergency rations, water and ice at Sugarloaf Elementary on Sugarloaf Key. A line stretched around the Winn-Dixie, which was letting people in 10 at a time for five minutes of cash-only shopping.

On Stock Island, a uniquely Keys mix of working-class trailers and modest vacation homes, residents were tracking giveaways via the generator-powered FM station, 104.1. Cellphone coverage was limited to the reach of emergency towers; cable TV and Internet service were pre-Irma memories, along with air conditioning and fresh food.

“It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen, but every day it feels a little more like normal,” said Hernandez’s neighbor, Kevin Edwards, 41, a military jet mechanic who was allowed to return Tuesday.

Edwards spent two days in 90-degree heat clearing a ficus tree off the front of his house and a Brazilian pepper tree off the back, going from 234 pounds to 219 in the process. When officials announced a two-hour window to flush toilets and bathe with water that still can’t be consumed, he took a 45-minute shower, until the water backed up in his sink.

“The system’s not there yet,” he said.

A Monroe County sheriff’s car pulled slowly down the street, forcing a rooster to scamper to the side. “If you need food or water, go to the Tom Thumb parking lot,” the officer intoned through a loudspeaker.

“We’ve pretty much run out of food,” Hernandez said when the car passed her house. An empty box labeled “Emergency Ration Meals” sat on a pile of reeking seaweed in her yard. “What I really want is ice, something cold to drink.”

Down on the corner, with the sun starting to set, Ed Harris put a final pile of branches at the curb. At 83, he’d stuck through many a storm, but this was the first he went through without Phyllis. She died in July, just shy of their 60th anniversary.

His house, modern, built to code on eight-foot block piers, was undamaged. He had looked down at the water washing over his yard from the lonely safety of his porch.

“My wife hated all these stairs,” he said softly. “I don’t know. Everything has changed. Everything.”

At that minute, Jimmy Greene walked by, his own dog Roxie on a leash. Harris called hello and thanked Greene for a favor he’d done him earlier in the day: taking his car to get filled up at the one station on the island with gas.

“That line was 60 cars long,” Greene said, shaking his head.

Greene walked down Cross Street, past the fences crushed by the storm surge and the piles of rotting garbage, past the “Looters Will Be Shot” sign painted on the plywood still covering the window of a pink cottage.

“Some of these houses, where they didn’t clear out the fridge before they evacuated,” he said sniffing, “everything’s starting to stink.”

He stopped. “Now look at that.”

It was a trailer with its front end blown off. In the now open-air kitchen stood a woman putting dishes neatly away, as though she had just finished a meal.

She was Jacqueline Rodriguez, a maid at the DoubleTree Hilton on Key West. She and her husband, who took refuge at another motel during the storm, were doing what they could to feel better about the fact that their home was a total loss.

“We’re alive,” she said in Spanish. It was all she could muster.

Across the street, a man came out of his low-slung, branch-covered house the only way he could: removing the warped front door from its hinges, stepping out and then putting it back.

He was Michael Knoles, a removal technician for the Key West mortuary. Without working phones, police had for days been coming to knock on his busted front door when they needed a body collected — from the hospital, from houses, from boats.

The official death toll from Irma has been remarkably low, a combination of people getting out of the way of the storm and a bit of luck as the storm weakened and went inland. But locals say the people dying since the storm could have been affected by the stress.

“A lot of heart attacks,” Greene said. “Folks are running out of their medicine.”

“It’s been busy,” Knoles said.

Greene, who was holding a can of Heineken, looked at Knoles, who was holding a can of Glory Foods collard greens.

“You got a can opener for that?” Greene asked.

“That’s what I’m looking for,” Knoles said.

“Got one at the house,” Greene said, starting down the block in the last rays of the tropical sunset. “Come on.”

I am so glad I'm not there.

[GrumpyGran]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"‘It’s not the storm — it’s the aftermath’: In Irma’s wake, searching for normal in the Florida Keys"

  Reveal hidden contents

STOCK ISLAND, Fla. — Lynn Hernandez is a “Conch,” a fourth-generation native of the Florida Keys, and she knows from experience that the hard part isn’t the hurricane; it’s what happens now.

Four days after Irma dumped wrack and wreckage on this tiny island, its residents were deep into the blisteringly hot wait for food, electricity and water.

The wait for normal.

“People are a little crazy now. It’s scary,” Hernandez said, sitting on the porch of her uncle’s semi-ruined frame house two blocks from the boatyard where most of her family make their living as fishermen. It was the same after Wilma, after Georges, after Andrew (she was pregnant for that one), after all seven of the hurricanes she has ridden out here on the Straits of Florida. Because that is what Conchs do.

She had her face in one hand and a warm Bud Light in the other, a little beery and a little teary recalling the post-Irma traumas: the two men she saw get into a knife fight near the marina, the old man they found dead in his apartment down the street, the boy who came around selling jewelry soon after reports of looting from the Zales store across the bridge.

And suddenly, trauma was upon her again. She looked up as the normal background barking of dogs reached a frenzy, then a shattering scream: “No, they’re killing her!” she heard.

Hernandez ran from the porch and saw two big dogs that had been left behind by neighbors who heeded evacuation orders ahead of Irma’s arrival. The dogs had been making a racket since the storm, and now they had gotten loose and were leaping around a young woman and the small white dog she was trying to protect. The little animal’s blood was already staining the front of her Key West High School shirt.

“Oh, no; oh, no,” the girl said after bystanders chased off the attackers. “She’s dying.”

Hernandez looked, saw that the girl was right and hugged her.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “They’re in survival mode.”

Hernandez sat, cradling the fading animal.

“It’s not the storm. It’s the aftermath,” she said, her voice still shaking. “Honestly, I don’t mind the wind.”

The Florida Keys, a bead string of causeway-connected islands dangling 113 miles into the ocean from the tip of the state, took the brunt of Irma’s landfall when its eyewall rolled right over the archipelago. Between Islamorada and Stock Island — which abuts Key West — there are swaths of dramatic wreckage, mostly where the wind and water tossed around trailers, campers and boats.

But the construction codes in place since Hurricane Andrew’s 1992 devastation of the state have hardened Florida’s homes, even here in one of the most vulnerable environments. Most of the affected structures looked damaged but not destroyed. Once the tons of debris are gone, the power grid restrung and hundreds of bent-but-not-broken roofs repaired, the Keys will be up and waiting for the next tropical tempest.

Hernandez’s turquoise block home on Stock Island is one that was bruised but livable; Irma twisted part of her metal roof into ribbons. That’s fine, that’s what she expected. Fixing a roof is better than leaving your home behind and being stuck in the angry line of cars at Mile Marker 74, where officers still won’t let evacuees back in.

“Conchs don’t leave,” said Cassandra Greene, who was out front of her home three blocks away, grilling the last of the pork chops she packed in coolers before the storm.

“The Keys always come through,” said her husband, Jimmy Greene, a water and sewer worker on Key West who grew up here. He was petting the emaciated stray dog that took up with them during the storm. “We stay, and then we help each other out.”

In the wake of Irma, the Keys are like a ship that was nearly swamped by breaking waves, shedding the water, struggling to right itself.

It was getting busier. Hospital staff, utility workers, other “essential” personnel, were being let back in. Supply trucks loaded with generators, portable toilets and telephone poles filled southbound U.S. Route 1. With boats still on some side streets and most of the fallen trees still lying where Irma dropped them, the Lower Keys were crawling with residents, repair crews and relief groups.

One was giving away gasoline at the post office on Big Pine Key. National Guard members handed out emergency rations, water and ice at Sugarloaf Elementary on Sugarloaf Key. A line stretched around the Winn-Dixie, which was letting people in 10 at a time for five minutes of cash-only shopping.

On Stock Island, a uniquely Keys mix of working-class trailers and modest vacation homes, residents were tracking giveaways via the generator-powered FM station, 104.1. Cellphone coverage was limited to the reach of emergency towers; cable TV and Internet service were pre-Irma memories, along with air conditioning and fresh food.

“It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen, but every day it feels a little more like normal,” said Hernandez’s neighbor, Kevin Edwards, 41, a military jet mechanic who was allowed to return Tuesday.

Edwards spent two days in 90-degree heat clearing a ficus tree off the front of his house and a Brazilian pepper tree off the back, going from 234 pounds to 219 in the process. When officials announced a two-hour window to flush toilets and bathe with water that still can’t be consumed, he took a 45-minute shower, until the water backed up in his sink.

“The system’s not there yet,” he said.

A Monroe County sheriff’s car pulled slowly down the street, forcing a rooster to scamper to the side. “If you need food or water, go to the Tom Thumb parking lot,” the officer intoned through a loudspeaker.

“We’ve pretty much run out of food,” Hernandez said when the car passed her house. An empty box labeled “Emergency Ration Meals” sat on a pile of reeking seaweed in her yard. “What I really want is ice, something cold to drink.”

Down on the corner, with the sun starting to set, Ed Harris put a final pile of branches at the curb. At 83, he’d stuck through many a storm, but this was the first he went through without Phyllis. She died in July, just shy of their 60th anniversary.

His house, modern, built to code on eight-foot block piers, was undamaged. He had looked down at the water washing over his yard from the lonely safety of his porch.

“My wife hated all these stairs,” he said softly. “I don’t know. Everything has changed. Everything.”

At that minute, Jimmy Greene walked by, his own dog Roxie on a leash. Harris called hello and thanked Greene for a favor he’d done him earlier in the day: taking his car to get filled up at the one station on the island with gas.

“That line was 60 cars long,” Greene said, shaking his head.

Greene walked down Cross Street, past the fences crushed by the storm surge and the piles of rotting garbage, past the “Looters Will Be Shot” sign painted on the plywood still covering the window of a pink cottage.

“Some of these houses, where they didn’t clear out the fridge before they evacuated,” he said sniffing, “everything’s starting to stink.”

He stopped. “Now look at that.”

It was a trailer with its front end blown off. In the now open-air kitchen stood a woman putting dishes neatly away, as though she had just finished a meal.

She was Jacqueline Rodriguez, a maid at the DoubleTree Hilton on Key West. She and her husband, who took refuge at another motel during the storm, were doing what they could to feel better about the fact that their home was a total loss.

“We’re alive,” she said in Spanish. It was all she could muster.

Across the street, a man came out of his low-slung, branch-covered house the only way he could: removing the warped front door from its hinges, stepping out and then putting it back.

He was Michael Knoles, a removal technician for the Key West mortuary. Without working phones, police had for days been coming to knock on his busted front door when they needed a body collected — from the hospital, from houses, from boats.

The official death toll from Irma has been remarkably low, a combination of people getting out of the way of the storm and a bit of luck as the storm weakened and went inland. But locals say the people dying since the storm could have been affected by the stress.

“A lot of heart attacks,” Greene said. “Folks are running out of their medicine.”

“It’s been busy,” Knoles said.

Greene, who was holding a can of Heineken, looked at Knoles, who was holding a can of Glory Foods collard greens.

“You got a can opener for that?” Greene asked.

“That’s what I’m looking for,” Knoles said.

“Got one at the house,” Greene said, starting down the block in the last rays of the tropical sunset. “Come on.”

I am so glad I'm not there.

I'm so glad now that Hub and I went to Key West a few years ago. It will never be the same. A big part of the charm was all of the older houses that were used as restaurants, B&Bs and little bars. I imagine many of them were permanently compromised. Makes me so sad, the house we stayed in was about 60 years old. 

[AuntK]

There are photos of people in South Florida wading in BROWN water -- what do they think is in that water? Just read about a man who died in Everglades City, a poor area in South Collier County. Collier County is where Rick Scott lives. He and his wife moved back into their mobile home, filled with sludge, mold, no electricity, and slept there. He was diabetic, sores on legs which turned black, finally went to hospital where he died Sunday. Many of these mobile home parks in S. Florida have out-of-state owners and serious sewer/septic problems which are rarely addressed. The owners want the land, and don't want to spend money on repairs to infrastructure. It is a disgrace and a serious health issue! But these people cannot afford better.

Quite frankly, I do not believe that mobile homes should be permitted at all in the Keys; that may sound harsh, but they cannot be made safe for the extreme weather and they become flying missiles. And, most of them are hooked up to aging and inferior sewer systems which are a constant problem without hurricanes. I used to deal with this in my work.  I cannot imagine what it must be like down there now. It will be decades before it will be back. There has to be recognition by Florida that infrastructure that can withstand hurricane-force winds and floodwaters is not a luxury, it is a necessity! If we are not going to do that, we need to move everyone OUT of the Keys permanently and just make it a preserve.