As Hurricane Ida swept through New Orleans on Sunday leaving destruction in its wake, it knocked out power lines and left the entire city in the dark — in spite of a pledge from a natural gas company to keep the city powered even through severe storms.
As The New York Times reported, Ida showed the weakness of the electrical grid in the area, which is reliant largely on natural gas. Though many power plants were forced to go offline, a new natural gas power plant built by utility company Entergy last year was supposed to have the reliability to keep the city powered through severe heat or storms — or so the company pledged. Entergy sources its energy largely from fossil fuels.
But, as Ida ripped through Louisiana, the storm battered the company’s equipment and brought down all eight Entergy power lines that bring in electricity from out of town. Now, many residents will be left without power for days or weeks while the company works to restore service.
The company blamed the “catastrophic intensity” of the storm for its failure to provide reliable electricity. It has thus far provided no answers for why the entire city — not just some areas — was left in the dark.
Though it’s not true that fossil fuels are as a rule more reliable than clean energy, Entergy has fiercely sold natural gas to lawmakers as a reliable alternative to clean energy sources. In lobbying the city council to allow construction of the company’s new natural gas plant in 2018, a lawyer for Entergy New Orleans said “I’m here to sound the alarm. We are at risk of cascading outages and blackouts.”
Touting its supposed reliability is a common tactic of natural gas producers and the fossil fuel industry. The industry has duped the media and lawmakers with false propaganda about natural gas in efforts to keep fossil fuels’ energy dominance in the U.S.
“Many utilities continue to sell the story that gas is the bridge that we need right now to the clean energy future,” Bill Corcoran, a director of state strategies at the Sierra Club, told The New York Times in 2019. “I think this is about locking in as much as you can now.” New Orleans was embroiled in a fight between natural gas and renewable energy — a fight that fossil fuel companies largely won.
Natural gas has a huge presence in Louisiana, which ranks among the top five states for natural gas production and storage. Though he has since signed a pledge to take the state in a carbon-neutral direction, a natural gas plant built last year had been hailed falsely by Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards as a “clean energy” source — another talking point from the fossil fuel industry.
Natural gas is anything but clean, emitting powerful greenhouse gases from the release and burning of methane, which hugely contributes to the climate crisis. Still, natural gas accounts for about a third of the source for electricity in the U.S., and there are few federal policies looking to reduce the country’s reliance on it and other fossil fuels.
As a grim, cyclic result of our dependence on fossil fuel and natural gas, disasters like Hurricane Ida will only grow more frequent and intense long into the future unless the government takes action on the climate crisis.
Natural gas’s relative unreliability — and the unreliability of the U.S.’s electrical grids in general — was on display during another disaster earlier this year, when millions of residents in Texas lost power during a winter storm.
Though Republican Gov. Greg Abbott had come out early in the crisis parroting a prominent climate denier’s talking points about how the massive power outages were due to failures by the state’s wind and solar power sources. But experts later found that the disaster was likely more the fault of natural gas, upon which the state’s independent power grid is reliant, and the utility company’s failure to properly weatherize before the storm.
As Hurricane Ida is downgraded to a tropical depression, Louisiana’s main utility company Entergy says it could be weeks before it restores electricity to nearly a million people in the storm’s path, including all of New Orleans. We speak with Flozell Daniels Jr., president of the Foundation for Louisiana, who evacuated his home city and is calling for “a just and fair recovery” that addresses preexisting crises, includingCOVID-19 and poverty. “These are disasters that were already happening,” he says. He also describes the power of the oil and gas industry lobbyists he has challenged as a member of Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards’s Climate Initiatives Task Force.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Hurricane Ida has been downgraded to a tropical depression, after it hit the Louisiana coast Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. On Monday, it continued to bring torrential rain and flooding to Louisiana and southern Mississippi, where two people died when a flooded highway collapsed. Louisiana’s main utility company, Entergy, says it could be weeks before it restores electricity to nearly a million people in the storm’s path, including all of New Orleans, as temperatures rise to near 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Meanwhile, the New Orleans Police Department drew criticism for diverting resources from helping vulnerable residents to sending out what it called “anti-looting” officers. Some of this recalled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the media and police spread misinformation that left people stranded without basic necessities as more than 1,800 people died in Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Reverend Lennox Yearwood is president andCEOof the Hip Hop Caucus, a civil and human rights group. He’s originally from Shreveport, Louisiana. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he helped lead protests against racial profiling of survivors and established the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign. He’s also a climate justice activist and Air Force veteran who’s spoken out against the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s joining us from Washington, D.C.
Also with us, Flozell Daniels, president of the Foundation for Louisiana, formerly known as the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, founded just days after Hurricane Katrina. He’s a New Orleans native and lives there. He joins us from Katy, Texas, where he evacuated for Hurricane Ida. He’s also a member of Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards’ Climate Task Force.
We welcome you both toDemocracy Now!Flozell Daniels, if you could describe your decision to relocate — now many who stayed are being told to relocate because of the blackout right now, no power to a million people in the New Orleans area — and what you’re hearing about what’s happening on the ground?
FLOZELLDANIELSJR.:Thanks, Amy. I’m glad to be here with you.
You know, my family and I decided to relocate because we are natives of Louisiana. And what you’re going to find time and time again is that Louisianans know and understand how to take care of themselves. There’s a lot of wisdom on the ground. We understood the science of this storm. We understand that climate is driving the severity of these weather events — and we could talk some more about that. And so we knew it was going to be a dangerous storm. So it made sense for us, and we have the privilege of having the resources and family and friends who could take us in, here in Katy, Texas, so that we could roll up our sleeves and start to get to the business of doing the work to not only do emergency response from the perspective of social justice philanthropy, but also begin to build out a just and fair recovery from Hurricane Ida.
I think what we’re hearing on the ground and what we know for certain is that we had some real struggles with regard to even emergency response. If you think about the layers of disaster we’re already dealing with —COVID, the spikes caused by the Delta variant, the economic calamity that Black and Indigenous and people of color in poor and rural communities, our neighbors who are queer and trans and gender nonconforming — these are disasters that were already happening, Amy, before Hurricane Ida hit the shores as one of the strongest storms in American history, stronger than Hurricane Katrina even. And so, what we saw were people struggling to evacuate, struggling to get the resources to safely shelter in place.
We were fortunate enough, through some of our donors and supporters, to move resources to the mutual aid groups, that have been doing the most incredible work on the ground — people really should support them — to move resources to Indigenous communities, that are historically in coastal communities and they know — but we have trust and expertise and experience — how to get people out of the city safely.
And now, to your point, we’re dealing with this catastrophic failure of the energy grid. We have to talk about infrastructure as a part of this conversation. People are going to have to leave the city. No one can survive for weeks on end without electricity. It’s going to have an impact on whether the water is clean and safe. And it’s going to take resources in one of the poorest communities — Louisiana, at least, is — in the union, in the nation. It’s going to take resources at the federal level. It’s going to take resources from philanthropy. And it’s going to take resources and real love and partnership from our fellow neighbors to help us move through this current disaster.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:And I wanted to ask, Flozell Daniels, if you could talk about the role of the oil and gas industry in Louisiana, because, clearly, because of the power grid failure now, all of the refineries are shut down in that area —
FLOZELLDANIELSJR.:Sure.
JUANGONZÁLEZ:— until power is back up. So, will there be a battle now over who gets the resources first — the industry or the people — to be able to get back on their feet?
FLOZELLDANIELSJR.:Well, I’ll tell you, Juan, if history is any indication, it absolutely will be a battle. What we’ve seen before, and we continue to see this, is that infrastructure and resources, particularly mission-critical resources after a disaster, get prioritized toward industry and not to people. And, you know, folks get upset when you say that, but that’s what the evidence has been.
The good news, Juan, is that what we have now, that we didn’t have as much of 16 years ago, is social infrastructure. And that is people and neighborhoods and organizations that are deeply committed to a social justice perspective. They have experience and talent by way of organizing and policy advocacy and moving a just and fair agenda. And so, there are folks who have been fighting the good fight, who are already mobilizing to make sure that we can fight for what’s right so that we can mobilize power, so that we can push elected and public officials to do the right thing by way of allocating those resources, and push back on the sort of industrial narrative that they have what’s in our best interest at heart, which has just not been the case.
AMYGOODMAN:Very quickly — very quickly, Flozell, if you could talk about being on Governor John Bel Edwards’ Climate Task Force? Speaking of battles, the battles you’re having on that task force as a group of you try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase regulations, and a group is fighting to increase —
FLOZELLDANIELSJR.:That’s right.
AMYGOODMAN:— the greenhouse gas emissions and support the oil and the fossil fuel industry.
FLOZELLDANIELSJR.:Well, there are two important things that we know, Amy. One is, we finally got the inventory on greenhouse gas emissions, and it showed us what we knew all along: Industry is responsible for more than 60% of the emissions. And so, we’re in a battle to limit and stop those emissions and move to a renewable economy that’s actually going to save us in Louisiana and the entire planet.
I think what you’re finding is, both the scientists, the social justice activists, the folks who are in fenceline communities, particularly along the river, around the chemical refineries, are pushing for an agenda that’s going to allow us to not only stop the emissions, but to also limit and stop the poisoning of the people, the land, the air and the water, while we move towards renewable economies that are actually going to close the racial and gender wealth gaps that we see in Louisiana. Industry, of course, is pushing back on both the data and the science, and they’re pushing back on these social justice imperatives. We’re fortunate to have a community of actors that are going to make sure the narrative is out there and we can push for the kind of recommendations and policy that will help us get there.
Hurricane Ida made landfall in Southern Louisiana on Sunday as one of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the U.S. It has knocked out power to the hundreds of thousands of residents of New Orleans and over 1 million in Louisiana and has caused at least one death so far.
Scientists say that the climate crisis has, without a doubt, made Ida more intense as higher water temperatures offshore act as fuel to a hurricane’s fire. Greenhouse gases resulting from human activity have contributed to a rise in average water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico by 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 20th century. The category 4 storm has so far blown entire roofs off buildings, devastated the Louisiana town of Jean Lafitte, and overwhelmed hospitals already filled with COVID patients.
Ida’s storm surge was so strong as it made landfall that the hurricane actually reversed the flow of the Mississippi River, something that experts say is extremely rare. With the threat of levee failure hanging over Louisiana, the hurricane, since downgraded to a tropical storm, is headed into Mississippi.
Though many residents evacuated the region before the storm, many others, unable to evacuate, have been left behind. Some people simply cannot afford the costs associated with seeking shelter out of the storm or may not have reliable access to transportation out of the area, such as a car. Other populations, such as incarcerated people, have no choice either way.
As Ida blasted through Louisiana, the climate crisis intensified blazes across the country. Wildfire Caldor has engulfed hundreds of homes in its wake as it has moved across eastern California in the past two weeks. It now threatens Lake Tahoe, where residents on the California side have been ordered to evacuate.
The Caldor fire has been particularly hard to contain. Firefighters have pushed back their estimated date for containment of the fire to September 8. As the Caldor fire blazes on, the Dixie Fire, just 65 miles to the North, is well into its second month of burning. At nearly 50 percent containment and with over 770,000 acres burned so far, the Dixie Fire is the second-largest fire in California history, beaten only by the August Complex fire from last year.
California’s weather has become drier for longer periods over the past decades as global warming and climate disruption have lengthened the wildfire season and pushed winter rains further and further back in the year. It has wreaked havoc on the state, where six of the seven largest fires in the state, including the Dixie Fire, have occurred over the past year or so.
It’s unclear if all of these disasters were caused directly by the climate crisis, but they were surely fueled by it. As climate scientists warn of dire consequences if the world continues on its current path, the western part of the U.S. has experienced record heat waves, making July 2021 the hottest month in recorded history on Earth.
The converging climate disasters come as officials struggle to contain the pandemic scouring the country and contend with massive unrest in Afghanistan: Two crises that may seem unrelated but have actually been exacerbated by the climate crisis. Climate change helps spread infectious diseases, scientists have warned for years. There’s evidence that air pollution, including that of burning fossil fuels, has worsened COVID outcomes for frontline communities living in areas that bear the brunt of increased air pollution. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Taliban has exploited the economic devastation and serious resource shortages brought on by the twin effects of drought and flooding caused by climate change to successfully overthrow the government that was propped up by the U.S.
Climate unrest has been on full display through this year and the last. But nearly all of these problems exacerbate each other, solidifying the so-called threat multiplier effect of the climate crisis.
California, for instance, cruelly forces incarcerated people to be on the frontline of firefighting when the wildfire season rolls around, paying them such absurdly low rates that it has been likened to slavery. But, with so many prisons ravaged by the pandemic, the state has had fewer incarcerated bodies to help fight the fires, making it harder to contain the blazes as they rage on.
Hurricane Ida has completely knocked out power to the city of New Orleans and reversed the flow of the Mississippi River after it hit southern Louisiana and Mississippi, flooding the area with storm surges. The Category 4 storm hit on the same date Hurricane Katrina devastated the area 16 years earlier. “This is a storm like no other,” says Monique Verdin, a citizen of the United Houma Nation and part of the grassroots collaborative Another Gulf Is Possible. “This is a part of South Louisiana that is losing land at one of the fastest rates,” Verdin notes. She also discusses how the storm hit the area as “Delta has been raging in the Mississippi River Delta.”
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States, roared ashore Sunday in southern Louisiana in an area dominated by the oil industry that’s also home to many Native communities. The storm brought a seven-foot storm surge, 150-mile-per-hour winds and up to two feet of rain to parts of the Gulf Coast. It was so powerful, it completely knocked out power to a million people, including the entire city of New Orleans, and reversed the flow of the Mississippi River. The Category 4 storm hit on the same day Hurricane Katrina devastated the area 16 years ago. It’s been blamed for at least one death, and more are expected.
A system of dikes and levees that protects the New Orleans region from rising waters is reportedly holding, for now, much of it built since Katrina. But still, it is underfunded, and officials say they could be overwhelmed by a forecasted 20 inches of rain.
Louisiana’s Gulf Coast is a major oil and gas hub, with 17 oil refineries, two liquefied natural gas export terminals, a nuclear power plant and many Superfund sites. Hurricane Ida made landfall near Port Fourchon, the oilfield service hub for almost all of the Gulf of Mexico and not far from the city of Houma.
In a minute, we’ll be joined by Monique Verdin, a citizen of the United Houma Nation, who just evacuated — the Houma Nation, one of the largest Native American tribes in North America. First, this is a trailer, though, for a documentary Verdin co-produced in 2012 calledMy Louisiana Love.
MONIQUEVERDIN:Our people have survived the natural cycle of floods and storms for centuries.
NARRATOR:In the bayous and swamps of Southeast Louisiana, filmmaker Monique Verdin explores her Native Houma roots.
MONIQUEVERDIN:I want to keep living on our land, but I’m inheriting a dying delta. Our love ties us to this place and makes us feel responsible to care for it.
NARRATOR:As Monique discovers, they’re battling their deadliest storm yet: the explosive growth of the oil and gas companies in the area.
DELTARESIDENT:You see, the more gas and oil you got underneath your ground, the higher you’re going to sit. The more they’re going to pump, the lower your land is going to go.
CLARICEFRILOUX:We’ve been treated bad throughout the years, but this could destroy our tribe as a whole.
AMYGOODMAN:The trailer for thePBSdocumentaryMy Louisiana Love, co-produced by our guest, Monique Verdin, a citizen of the United Houma Nation. She has evacuated for Hurricane Ida. She’s also part of the collaborative Another Gulf Is Possible, which is now organizing mutual aid efforts to provide essential needs, repairs, supplies to the areas hit by Hurricane Ida.
Monique, thanks so much for joining us. I know this is a very difficult time. Can you explain the extent of the devastation that you’re hearing about, not only in Houma, but all over the area — a million people without power, all of New Orleans in the dark, people reporting they’re up to their chest in water?
MONIQUEVERDIN:Well, Amy, we’re really just starting to hear from folks. I know that many have just completely lost their homes. Many of our fishermen rode out the storm on their boats. We haven’t heard from a number of them. And there’s still — you know, everyone was waiting for the sun to come up, and that’s just happening. So, we’re not really sure, but we do know that there’s extreme flooding happening just to the west of the city. And all of those communities, all of the bayou communities, where the United Houma Nation, but also the Atakapa-Ishak of Grand Bayou and Plaquemines Parish, the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, the Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogee, Bands of Grand Caillou and Dulac, and the Isle de Jean Charles — you know, these are communities that often get left out of the news and have been weathering storms for many years. But this is a storm like no other.
AMYGOODMAN:So, talk about that. And talk about Houma. Talk about your community. And was a complete evacuation done of the Houma Nation?
MONIQUEVERDIN:No. The Houma are not ones to run from a storm. You know, we have boats and lands to take care of. And so, many people usually stay. More people evacuated this time than ever before. And we’ve all been scattered to the wind. Everyone went to whichever direction that they could, if they could. And many just went from the low-lying areas, that are just inside risk reduction levee systems, to higher grounds.
But they, too, you know, have — everyone is exhausted from just riding out the storm and the relentless wind and rains, that I’m hearing has been a very humbling experience. But we know that the disaster is only beginning to unfold. Hurricane Katrina really taught us that. Yes, the storm comes through, but the disaster keeps going for many years to come. And decisions get made in these moments, when people are completely disoriented and just trying to figure out how to get home. And at this moment, and knowing that all of Southeast Louisiana is out of power, when we get home and how we get home is a big question.
AMYGOODMAN:Can you talk about your family members who did not evacuate? Are you able to even be in contact with them? I mean, being in the dark is more than the actual darkness of the night, of course, as, as you said, people cannot communicate. Much of the rescue efforts can’t even start until today in daylight.
MONIQUEVERDIN:Yes. I have not spoken to very many. Social media is spotty, and I’m getting reports that cell service is also very spotty or nonexistent. I did get a text message in the middle of the night from a cousin saying that he didn’t think that he could get out of his home without a chainsaw, and also has — having no communication, so trying to be there for folks. But, you know, this is — everyone’s been kind of in shock. And now no one has power. No one has cell service. So, communication is going to be key.
AMYGOODMAN:Can you talk about the community that your relatives live in, called Big Woods, where there’s a waste pit in the flood areas? What does this mean? And we’re talking about scores of toxic sites that are directly in the hurricane’s path.
MONIQUEVERDIN:Yes. So, in the Yakni Chitto — it’s the “Big Country” between the Atchafalaya and Mississippi Rivers, where the majority of the Houma Nation still reside, at the ends of the bayous — this is a part of South Louisiana that is losing land at one of the fastest rates. And just to say to the audience, Louisiana is losing land at one of the fastest rates on the planet. The statistic is, every 100 minutes, a football field disappears from our shores. Of course, that’s a calculation divided over time, multiplied by disaster. So, you know, this is what we’re up against just in general.
And where these waste pits are, which are taking offshore oil and gas waste and “treating” it in these open-air pits, is just north of some of the fastest-deteriorating land on the planet and just south of what is the Houma Navigation Canal, which is a man-made canal. And this pit — these pits have been there for a very long time. And with every storm, this low-lying area, because of all of the levee infrastructure, too, that has been added since Hurricane Katrina, water goes towards the path of least resistance. And Grand Bois is left out of that levee system in a big way.
So, I haven’t gotten any reports from family in Grand Bois yet. I’m hoping to hear something today. The last photo I saw was a picture of my cousin’s house that was just completely flattened. So, what the water is like there, I’m not sure. Overnight, that’s when, you know, the surge just keeps — it had been pushing up against the levees all day. So —
AMYGOODMAN:And can you talk about climate change crashing intoCOVID? I mean, the reports on the South — Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Florida — you have oxygen running out in hospitals, where the patients who are dying are younger and younger. What does this mean at this time of the hurricane?
MONIQUEVERDIN:Delta has been raging in the Mississippi River Delta. Our hospitals have already been at capacity for weeks now. I read a report that one of the hospitals in Thibodaux actually — their generators, they lost power for a while and were having to manually pump oxygen into people who were inICUand on ventilators that were not hooked up to the electrical system.
And it’s going to get really hot and humid, so wearing a mask is not ideal, and people are with each other and in each other’s homes at this time of evacuation and in the times of the disaster aftermath. You know, community is what gets you through this. And being in a time when we’re supposed to be social distancing and not being in the same space is really hard, especially when you’re going to start needing to rip out your walls and pull out your floors or, yeah, try to salvage what you have left.
I am a simple country surgeon. I take care of children in Louisiana from birth until the hospital tells me they’re too old for our colorful walls and stickers. You will see these children when you stroll along New Orleans’s French Quarter, playing makeshift drums with their bands in Jackson Square or reaching out for beads along the St. Charles Mardi Gras parade route. You may forget about them after each hurricane fades from the news, but they are here, living, thriving and yearning for a normal that seems to fade deeper into their short memories. These children still come in waves through our doors at Children’s Hospital New Orleans after being shot; getting in a car accident; or experiencing a sickle cell crisis, cancer, premature birth, appendicitis or asthma exacerbations … and the pandemic has not spared them.
This has been a hard year and a half for everyone, and it seems like with every wave it gets worse. Five days ago, after a particularly hard weekend on call, I pleaded with friends to reconsider their stances against masking, vaccinations and distancing. I have read the anti-masking and anti-vaccination posts and memes, and I desperately want to convince those with hesitation that COVID is real — and that this Delta wave is different, especially as it pertains to children. I want to emphasize that the vaccine has been tested and is safe for us, and can protect against severe sickness. Masking and distancing can minimize the risks of contracting or transmitting the virus. Catherine O’Neal, chief medical officer at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in Louisiana, has beenpleading for a month that she and her colleagues are having to make decisions that should be unfathomable in the greatest nation in the world.
It’s true that the vaccine is not 100 percent guaranteed against COVID — but what in life is guaranteed, except death? We say, “United we stand, divided we fall,” and yet, I can’t help thinking that we have already fallen.
I wish I could invite those who are resisting anti-COVID measures to spend a day with us at the hospital. The majority of my day seems normal — operations, clinics, rounds — except that none of the operations are for children who require an overnight admission for a problem that is not time-sensitive, because our hospital is back to full capacity. Then I see a car full of kids who’ve been in an accident, and some test positive for COVID. They’re intubated due to other injuries, and I have to tell mom that her youngest child’s respiratory status may decline because of the virus, on top of the bruising to his lungs. Mom also tests positive, and now can only visit her children in the hospital while balancing the need to effectively isolate herself. Meanwhile, the room next door holds an immunocompromised child who does not have the defenses to fight a viral infection.
I walk to the intensivist’s office to discuss our other COVID patients. Is the toddler on a ventilator getting better? How about the baby who has been on the most intense form of life support, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO)? How do we balance the increased risk of blood clotting due to COVID with the fact that he has developed a brain bleed secondary to this life-sustaining therapy? This little guy only weighs a few pounds. He has required so many blood transfusions that it’s putting a strain on our already depleted blood bank. There is another baby who got COVID from a visiting family member because they didn’t want to miss out on snuggling even though they felt sick, and now is further isolated from his family. We have 15 to 20 other COVID-positive children who are currently admitted to the hospital.
I know how to deal with stress. I completed five years of general surgery residency, two years in a research lab, and two years of pediatric surgery fellowship. I have seen death. I have learned from my complications. But this is different than stress. As doctors, we talk about wellness and resilience, moral distress and second victim injury. These are all real – the majority of us entered medicine because it was a calling, because we wanted to be healers. But it turns out we can’t save everyone by ourselves. We need all of your help to prevent the spread of COVID, so these beds, nurses, and resources remain available. Because each ECMO circuit, every ventilator, every bed that is taken up by COVID is going to be away from a baby with heart disease, a cancer patient, a child who needs surgery but can’t get it right now because we have no more staff. If you saw what these nurses saw and how hard they worked for the last year, you would understand why so many are leaving their calling. Morally, how am I supposed to choose between your child and someone else’s baby when we only have one ICU bed left?
What haunts me most are the children I never get to meet. The other night, I had to say no to a transfer because area hospitals are full for ECMO capability, and we were also reaching capacity. It reminded me of the time, as a fellow, I received a frantic call from a nearby hospital of a toddler who had been shot in the abdomen. The desperation from the other ER physician as he described the distended abdomen, most certainly full of blood, in a small body that he was doing his best to pump blood back into. “What can I do?” he asked. I attempted to talk him through a resuscitative thoracotomy. “Cut his chest open. Open the pericardium. Cross clamp the aorta and keep doing compressions. If you get a heartbeat back, send him here as fast as you can.” I never met that child, but I will never forget his parents, frantically looking for their baby boy in our hospital hallways because they were told he was coming to us. They were covered in blood, pleading for any information anyone may have, unsure of where to go to find their baby — and their eyes emptying as I had to tell them that he never made it to us.
If you know me, you know I’m arrogant enough to think I can fix almost anything. However, I can’t fix someone that I never get to meet. Many hospitals are at the point where we have to say “no.” North Texas is out of pediatric ICU beds. University of Mississippi is setting up patient care areas in the parking garage. Patients are getting ICU level care in the ER hallways. In Baton Rouge, Dr. O’Neal has been unable to accept transfers for a month — 20 to 25 “nos” a day. My vascular surgeon colleague at the same hospital in Baton Rouge could not accept a transfer of a patient with a clot in the leg because the hospital was full. I can only imagine that without the time-sensitive intervention required, this person has lost their leg. They never got to meet the doctor who could fix their problem.
I am a simple country surgeon. I am not an expert in public health or infectious disease, but I am pretty good at fixing kids with a scalpel. Help us to keep helping these kids, your kids, by allowing me to do my job to the full capacity I can. Please, vaccinate if you qualify. Continue to wear a mask and wash your hands. Stay home if you’re sick. These are clear ways to save children’s lives — and prevent their lives from being endangered in the first place.
New Orleans — One look at the Louisiana Department of Health’s COVID dashboard is enough to set off alarm bells. On a map of the state, each one of Louisiana’s 64 parishes is colored red because the risk of COVID transmission is considered to be at the highest level.
Driven by the Delta variant and compounded by a chronicallyunderfunded public health system and some of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, the pandemic’s fourth wave is slamming Louisiana just in time for the new school year. Meanwhile, Louisiana’s Democratic governor and Republican attorney general continue to spar over public health restrictions, including a new requirement that students wear masks in school.
K-12 students across southern Louisiana headed back to school for in-person lessons on Monday as COVID cases among children in the state continued to rise faster than in any other state in the nation. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a conservative Democrat who has generally followed the advice of public health experts during the pandemic, said on Friday that more than 6,000 children under the age of 18 tested positive for COVID in Louisiana last week alone.
COVID cases among Louisiana children and teenagers increased by more than 16 percent over the past two weeks, which is about four times the national average, according to the latest report from the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP). Hawaii, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri have also seen cases among young people rise much faster than the national average.
Children have generally been considered to be at low risk of severe COVID, but that logic appears to be shifting with the rise of the Delta variant. Edwards said that 13 children were hospitalized at just one hospital in New Orleans, including six infants under the age of 2.
Ochsner Health, Louisiana’s largest nonprofit health care system, reported that one in four COVID tests performed on children under the age of 18 came back positive last week. That’s a 25 percent positivity rate among young people, up from only 4 percent in late June. .
In Louisiana, vaccination rates among eligible youth (between the ages of 12 and 17) lag far behind much of the nation. Children 12 and under are not yet eligible for vaccines.
Still, schools in the New Orleans area and beyond are prioritizing in-person education after a difficult year of at least partially remote learning. Yellow buses waited outside schools in New Orleans on Monday. At the McDonogh 42 Elementary Charter School in the Seventh Ward, a small group of masked students left class around lunchtime with a supervisor, who instructed them to hold hands and stay together while extending their arms to keep some semblance of distance from each other.
As the Delta variant sweeps through unvaccinated populations in Louisiana, Texas, Florida and other COVID hotspots across the Gulf South, the number of overall cases in the United States has jumped by 112 percent over the past two weeks, according to The New York Times. The daily number of new cases is rising fastest in Louisiana, where at least 2,244 people are hospitalized for COVID, a 124 percent change from two weeks ago.
About 50.7 percent of the population of the U.S. is fully vaccinated compared to 37 percent in Louisiana. In southwestern Louisiana, the vaccination rate dips to 27 percent. Statewide, only 23 percent of children ages 12 through 17 have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to AAP. Nationally, 51 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds have received at least one dose, along with 41 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds.
Just a few weeks ago, people in New Orleans crowded back into bars and restaurants and gathered for parties and events in the street as COVID restrictions were lifted and infections remained low. Stores and businesses stopped requiring customers to wear masks, and many chose to go without one. Tourists also filled the French Quarter, with an untold number of unvaccinated visitors at risk of spreading the virus.
Now, lone bicyclists riding through in the open air on the streets of New Orleans are wearing masks again. The already rescheduled New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, perhaps the Crescent City’s second largest party next to Mardi Gras, was just canceled for a second time.
In Louisiana, the unvaccinated account for at least 91 percent of hospitalizations and 84 percent of deaths, according to the state health department.
Hospitals across the state are already strained and fear they could soon be overwhelmed by the surge if Delta is not brought under control. Louisiana has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country, and as Truthout has reported, years of austerity politics have left the state and its residents unprepared for a pandemic.
New Orleans has reinstated its indoor mask mandate, as has the rest of the state for as long as infection rates remain high. Governor Edwards is also requiring masking in schools for everyone above four years old, with exceptions for people with medical conditions and those engaged in activities such as public speaking. This puts Edwards at odds with the Republican governors of nearby Florida and Texas, who have worked to thwart local mask mandates.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican, pushed back against the mask mandate for schools last week, arguing that the governor does not have authority to require masking in K-12 schools. Instead, Landry said, the decision should be made by state lawmakers and education officials. Landry has routinely attacked Edwards for instituting pandemic restrictions and encouraged parents to seek a philosophical or religious exemption from the mask mandate for their children in school, according to the Associated Press. The governor said his attorney general is “completely wrong” about masking in schools.
After delivering dire public health warnings and imploring his constituents to wear masks indoors and get vaccinated on Friday, Edwards asked Louisianians of all faiths to pray that people would do “everything they can” to slow the spread of the virus.
Energy industry analysts have declared that the massive petrochemical complex proposed by Formosa Plastics in Louisiana’s St. James Parish is “financially unviable” due to market conditions, legal and regulatory uncertainty, and a groundswell of political opposition and accusations of environmental racism that are gaining international attention. Activists are eyeing a rare victory for environmental justice in the industrial corridor along the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley” for its concentration of polluters. However, the fight is not over yet.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a cleaner energy think tank funded by mainstream foundations, urged Formosa in a report this week to abandon its proposal to build a multibillion-dollar petrochemical complex in Cancer Alley. The complex would manufacture chemicals to make plastic products such as throwaway bottles and AstroTurf on the outskirts of Welcome, Louisiana, a small and majority-Black community where local activists have received international recognition for their campaign against the project.
Residents near the proposed site already live with more toxic air pollution than 99 percent of the United States, and if Formosa builds the sprawling petrochemical complex, cancer-causing emissions could double in St. James Parish and triple near Welcome.
The proposed complex “would cause Formosa to make the wrong products, at the wrong time, at the wrong price, in the wrong place, and with the wrong financial calculus,” said Tom Sanzillo, IEEFA director of financial analysis and co-author of the report, in a statement.
Formosa was lured to Louisiana by lucrative tax breaks and pro-industry politicians as the petrochemical industry rushed to build new plastics manufacturing plants and soak up a glut of fossil fuels created by the fracking boom. However, the company faces rising costs and stiff opposition from residents who have organized protests and worked with environmental groups to challenge Formosa’s permits in court.
Activists have drawn international attention to Cancer Alley, where industry has a long history of polluting and displacing low-income and Black communities. Sharon Lavigne, a Welcome resident and co-founder of RISE St. James, a faith-based environmental justice group opposing Formosa, has testified before Congress and most recently the United Nations. Burial sites have been found on the former plantation grounds Formosa bought to build the complex, and members of community believe their ancestors were buried there after working the plantation fields as slaves. Lavigne says the community wants a memorial erected to their ancestors, not a massive petrochemical plant nearby.
Last week, Democratic lawmakers in the House urged the Biden administration to revoke key permits for the Formosa project, and President Biden recently mentioned Cancer Alley by name when issuing executive orders on climate change and pollution. At the United Nations, a panel of experts recently declared that environmental racism in Cancer Alley must come to an end.
“Formosa is goliath, RISE St. James is David,” Lavigne said on Facebook Live after testifying before a UN environmental justice panel on Thursday. “David is going to win this fight.”
Meanwhile, the market for Formosa’s products looks much smaller than it did when the company first arrived in St. James a few years ago, according to IEEF. The petrochemical industry is rapidly expanding its capacity to manufacture plastics from fossil fuels, especially in China, which could diminish demand for exports from the U.S. Globally, economies may not recover fast enough from the COVID-19 pandemic to create enough demand for the basic chemicals to make plastics that would be manufactured by Formosa in Louisiana. Long-term demand for “virgin plastics” is also expected to drop as recycling and bans on single-use plastics become more widespread.
The cost of building the complex is also growing, putting a dent in any future profits for Formosa. The estimated cost of construction has jumped by about 24 percent from $9.7 billion to $12 billion and could rise even higher with prices for raw materials like copper and steel, according to the report. Meanwhile, IEEFA estimates the complex’s annual revenues would be roughly $2.5 billion, about 20 percent lower than predicted by the company’s consultants in 2018.
Formosa says construction of the project — dubbed the Sunshine Project for its proximity to the Sunshine Bridge — has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has made it difficult for the company to evaluate construction costs before moving forward. The legal challenges have also contributed to the delay, according to a statement emailed to Truthout by FG LA, the division of Formosa Plastics operating in Louisiana.
Thanks to activists’ efforts, key permits for the project are held up in court, creating further uncertainty around the project. Last year, a state judge ordered state regulators back to the drawing board and the Army Corps of Engineers suspended a crucial permit after environmental attorneys argued the agencies failed to fully consider how pollution from the complex would impact an already overburdened majority-Black community. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is coming under increasing pressure to address environmental racism and curb production of throwaway plastics that choke oceans and pile up in landfills and communities.
Formosa is on the rocks in St. James Parish, but the company has not pulled out yet. The company says it has “deferred major construction” until after the pandemic subsides or when vaccines become readily available. At this time last year, RISE St. James reported that the company had begun construction in violation of Louisiana’s COVID stay-at-home order, and construction quickly came to a halt, according to Lavigne. Despite the poor financial outlook published by IEEFA, a Formosa spokeswoman told Truthout that the company remains “committed to the project and continues to monitor all relevant factors closely.”
“We are watching them, every which way, and we will not allow them to come into St. James and destroy our lives and upset our way of living and pollute us even more,” Lavigne said.
A pair of lawmakers known for fighting for environmental justice in Congress sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday urging President Joe Biden to deliver on his campaign promises to curb pollution in frontline communities by permanently blocking a large petrochemical complex in an area of Louisiana called “Cancer Alley.”
Residents of St. James Parish, Louisiana and environmental justice advocates nationwide have come out against the Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Group’s plans for a $9.4 billion complex that would release cancer-causing chemicals and, according to one watchdog’s estimate, produce 13.6 million tons of planet-heating emissions per year.
As Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Donald McEachin (D-Va.) — authors of the Environmental Justice for All Act — asserted in their letter (pdf) to the president, “This disastrous project is an affront to environmental justice and contrary to your goals to reduce pollution in frontline communities.”
“Along the 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, communities of color are already overburdened with the cumulative impacts of more than 150 petrochemical facilities,” the congressmen noted, detailing the complex’s anticipated impacts on public health, the local environment, and the climate.
“The residents of St. James Parish — and in fact, all Louisianians — deserve to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in community free [of] toxic pollution,” said McEachin. “It is imperative that we protect people’s health over polluters’ profit, and revoke the Army Corps’ permit for the proposed Formosa Plastics petrochemical complex.”
— Louisiana Bucket Brigade (@labucketbrigade) March 17, 2021
The letter highlighted the company’s troubled history of “disregarding human health and environmental safety,” from facing 98 state or federal civil cases in the United States and failing to correct Clean Air Act violations to discharging plastic pellets into the Gulf of Mexico and leaking cyanide into the South China Sea, “causing massive fish die-offs along Vietnam’s central coast, devastating local fishing communities, and impacting more than 40,000 workers.”
Early last year, the Center for Biological Diversity, Healthy Gulf, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and RISE St. James sued the Trump administration over a federal permit for the project. In mid-November, the Army Corps of Engineers suspended that permit to complete a broader environmental review.
“The facts are clear, and environmental justice leaders, environmental nonprofits, and community members all agree that this project must be terminated,” wrote Grijalva and McEachin, warning Biden that “ultimately, the Formosa Plastics project is a leap backwards from your vision to build back better.”
“We are on the precipice of achieving racial justice and creating a sustainable and green economy,” they added. “Allowing the Formosa Plastics complex to continue would cause irreparable harm to the Black community members of St. James Parish, destroy the environment, and set back your goals of achieving an equitable and just transition. Mr. President, the time to end this project is now.”
The lawmakers’ demand was echoed by local organizers including RISE St. James founder Sharon Lavigne, who said that “when President Biden was elected I had hope that he would change things, that he would save the lives of people in St. James Parish and stop the Formosa project.”
“It lies in his hands,” Lavigne continued. “He can stop it. Our governor wants it, our politicians want it, but they are not listening to the citizens. We are asking President Biden to save our lives.”
Anne Rolfes, director of Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said that “Formosa Plastics is an opportunity for President Biden to take bold action on environmental justice and climate change, two issues that are important to him and important to us.”
“There has been so much wrong on these issues, not just in the last four years but in the last 50,” Rolfes added. “Now is the moment to change things. President Biden can create a lasting legacy and stand up for the values of equality that we know he believes in.”
Grijalva, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, expressed optimism about the president’s potential permitting decision.
“If we’re truly going to build a better economy and a healthier, more livable world, we have to stop treating large chunks of the country as sacrifice zones,” he said. “Millions of Americans today are expected to breathe polluted air, drink polluted water, and live on polluted land as the price of other people’s prosperity. President Biden knows that we can’t keep living like that, and I know he’ll do the right thing here.”
On February 13, men being held in one of the solitary confinement wards at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola were discussing how to get out from under their miserably austere physical conditions. These included broken lights in their cells, no underwear, a single blanket and inadequate heating in record cold temperatures for northern Louisiana. The men also experienced brutal psychological conditions, including no time outside in the yard at all and only limited time out in the hall where they may or may not be lucky enough to make it into the shower in the 15 minutes allotted to them.
They’d been isolated, under-stimulated, living in semi-darkness. They were at the end of their emotional tether. They rejected the only available official route for individuals to resolve grievances within the Louisiana Department of Corrections (LADOC), the Administrative Remedy Procedure, because while officially it can take up to 90 days for a determination, practically it often takes much longer.
Some of the men had some success in the past in getting the prison administration’s attention by refusing meals and gesturing toward a hunger strike, getting positive results, often on the same day. Officially, a strike is acknowledged as such when nine consecutive meals are refused. By law, after the ninth refused meal, LADOC is compelled to notify the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, and must minister to the men with medical care and hear their grievances and demands.
The men were aware that LADOC solitary practices had been the subject of two major critical reports by the VERA Institute for Justice and the ACLU, both member organizations of the Louisiana Stop Solitary Coalition, and expected that their cries would not be ignored. Reaching consensus, they picked Wednesday, February 17, one day after Mardi Gras, as their start date for a hunger strike, when prison officials would likely be back on the job after the holiday break.
The strike was announced by the @angola_watchdog Twitter account, created by independent activist Michaela (Caeli) Higgins, a former public relations professional and New Orleans native now living in the San Francisco Bay area. Since COVID began, she’s been engaged in a regular correspondence with 15 different men incarcerated in Angola. When the strike was called, they reached out. Her friend, journalist John McDevitt, broke the story on Liberation, including her request for the public to contact the prison — a move that was echoed by the Stop Solitary Coalition in its press release.
“I really love and appreciate the call-in campaign, because it’s let Angola know we’re not standing alone,” said striker Frederick Ross in a message shared with Truthout. “All [prison officials] really respect is outside support and pressure.”
Ross has been locked in solitary confinement since last April and he expected to be transferred to a working cell block by November, which is the next step down on the way back to the general prison population. But he hasn’t had his disciplinary hearing yet, which means that all these months of waiting in segregation will not be credited to his disciplinary sentence when it’s handed down. It’s what’s referred to as “dead time” — another misery in his 50-year prison sentence.
The hunger strike started on February 17 with 15 participants; 12 days later, there were four remaining strikers — Ross, Percy Hawthorne, Donald Hensley and Theoshamond Norman. They’ve held out against various offers from a colonel (a rank that is second-in-command under the warden) because they suspected he was not representing the administration and that his offers were a trick. The offers included promises of immediate transfer out of segregation as well as punishments, including threats of being maced in their cells. Witnesses report that at the beginning of the action, guards were playing cat and mouse with food trays, putting them on the floor in front of the cell, waiting two minutes, and whisking them away, but without documenting the strikers’ refusal, as required by LADOC policy.
Twelve days in, people close to the strikers reported that no “unusual occurrence reports” had been completed. Basic Jail Guidelines III-007 requires “written procedures for significant unusual occurrences or institutional emergencies including but not limited to major disturbances such as riots, hostage situations, escapes, fires, deaths, serious illness or injury and assaults or other acts of violence.” Nor have the strikers been examined medically, which would follow as a consequence of filing the reports. In the physiology of hunger, at around the two-week mark, the human body goes through some rapid changes that can make standing difficult. Strikers can also suffer from severe dizziness, sluggishness, weakness, loss of coordination, low heart rate and chills. On the fifth day, strikers say they requested medical assessment, offering to pay for it themselves. It has not been forthcoming.
The hunger strikers are also facing reprisals.
Ross was moved to another section of the prison called Camp C on February 23. His loved ones told Truthout that the cell he is now in has a leaking toilet and a constantly wet floor. He spends all day and night on the upper bunk, descending only when let out to shower. Though he’s past the point of having bowel movements, if he has to urinate, he perches on the bottom bunk, turns sideways and aims at the toilet.
After being moved, he was not allowed to use the wall phone to make collect calls. When his loved ones called the prison on February 28 to inquire why they hadn’t been hearing from him, they were told that he’d been written up for a violation and his phone privileges were suspended. When asked what violation, they were told it was participating in the hunger strike; after complaints by family members and supporters, his phone access was restored.
On February 27, a report from a man who had come off the strike reached Truthout. He said that security approached strikers’ cells at 11:30 the previous night when they were sleeping, and repeated an ominous request: “Come to the bars, come to the bars, come to the bars.” Those who didn’t act fast enough were “sprayed down” with mace, a form of collective punishment in an enclosed cell block.
The strikers contend that LADOC is violating its own policies. In current practice, when people are removed from the general population for infractions, they’re placed first in administrative segregation, and after the disciplinary hearing, in disciplinary segregation, which is exactly the same thing in terms of conditions and punishments. The length of their punishment is dictated by the agency’s internal “disciplinary sanctions matrix,” a document shrouded in secrecy and unavailable to the public, including journalists and prisoner advocates.
In his piece in The Lens, journalist Nicholas Chrastil reported that while the number of strikers was under dispute by LADOC, the agency did not deny the validity of the strikers’ fundamental grievance. But also, Chrastil noted, “The Department of Corrections declined to provide a copy of its disciplinary policy to The Lens.”
Kiana Calloway is an organizer with Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), a grassroots organization in New Orleans founded by formerly incarcerated people working against the prison-industrial complex and toward a “future of mass liberation for all.” Calloway says that even the advocates who were asked by LADOC for input in rewriting the disciplinary policy have been working with limited information.
“We had a meeting with LADOC right before COVID,” Calloway told Truthout. “We were in the process of actually helping them rewrite that matrix, but we never got to see the matrix they had already in position.”
After learning of the hunger strike, Krystal Imbraguglio wrote to the Louisiana Stop Solitary Coalition asking for help in publicizing her husband’s plight in Angola, despite the possibility of retaliation. Imbraguglio’s husband has been confined in solitary for more than seven years, and with additional punishments being heaped on him, it’s more than they can bear. As Imbraguglio wrote in an email sent to the coalition on February 25:
He recently incurred a contraband charge.… Not only did they take away all privileges, but after the hearing they revoked his visitation and sent out a memo stating he is to be strip searched and cell searched every 12 hours.… On the way to and from the shower he is fully restrained and shackled. They are going out of their way to torture him.… They withhold my letters and tell him I am divorcing him. He has been dealing with this since January 29th.
I don’t know what else to do.
Similarly, Kimberly Carter told Truthout that she almost fears for her brother’s life (name withheld) in Angola, and not just from COVID. She says he’s been there for over a year and in solitary for over 120 days. In that time, he’s been maced by a guard and thrown into a cell with a cellmate known to be violent, who had in fact murdered another incarcerated person and is not supposed to be housed with other prisoners.
“He’s 6’5” and 250 pounds and my brother is younger and very thin,” Carter said. “He attacked my brother, who was really injured. It was an injustice and he started a case against the prison.”
Since then, it’s been one thing after another.
“A few weeks ago, he was handcuffed by a guard, left alone in an open space, and another inmate attacked him with an object. When he was attacked, the prison never contacted us; another inmate called my mother, who called me crying,” says Carter. “It’s a lot.”
Albert Woodfox (left) speaks shortly after the fourth anniversary of his release from Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola at a meeting of Justice and Beyond at the Cafe Istanbul in New Orleans on March 9, 2020.Screenshot: Frances Madeson
In the 2020 Stowe book prize winner, Solitary: My Story of Transformation and Hope, author Albert Woodfox recounted his harrowing 45-day hunger strike in Angola in the late 1970s. The strikers were demanding that slots be cut into the bars so the men’s food trays could be passed through and not slid underneath on the prison floor.
“Forty-five days just to force them not to feed us like animals,” Woodfox told Truthout. “But even when they agreed, it took 18 months to cut the slots.”
Woodfox, who survived solitary confinement for 44 years by refusing to accept his own dehumanization, fully supports the men currently refusing food in Angola. They’re caged in bleak 6-by-9-foot cells for more than 23 hours a day with no TV, radio, no time outside in the yard. It’s supposed to be a disciplinary measure for a prescribed time — days, weeks or sometimes months — but they’re languishing there, seemingly forgotten.
Woodfox says that solitary’s sole purpose is to break human beings.
“To break their spirit, destroy their sense of self-worth. But they’re human beings, birthed of mothers,” Woodfox said. “They didn’t come from another planet. We owe them that — their humanity.”
Before sunrise, a line of passenger vans heads to job sites across Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Cenikor didn’t want to show us where they were sending rehab participants to work. So we followed the vans to find out.
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An accused man faces an impossible choice in New Orleans. Plus, a new district attorney in Philadelphia sets out to undo the work of those who came before him.
From reporters Eve Abrams and Laura Starecheski, and editor Catherine Winter.
This short film was produced by the Glassbreaker Films team at The Center for Investigative Reporting. Glassbreaker Films is an all-female group of filmmakers working to promote gender parity in investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking.
Competing threats to the bayous of Louisiana are leaving some Donald Trump supporters torn between the president’s various policies. The shrimping industry, which accounts for 15,000 jobs in the state, has seen a drastic decline in sales due to international imports. And while Trump’s “America first” promises have given shrimpers hope, he has also made devastating cuts in environmental funding that would drastically damage the fragile bayous. Between 1932 and 2010, southern Louisiana has lost, on average, a football field of land to coastal erosion every hour. And it’s estimated that by 2100, rising sea levels across the country will force 13 million people to move away from their homes on American coasts.
The damage inflicted on the United States by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria will likely make the 2017 hurricane season the costliest in our history. But what is the government doing to prepare for the storms yet to come.
In this hour, Reveal goes to Texas, Louisiana and Puerto Rico to investigate the government policies that let people build in harm’s way, make it difficult to move them to safety and fail to accurately tally the dead.
