And it was. It was also devastating.
Besides testing the limits of local, state, and federal emergency management efforts, Harvey has taken key industrial infrastructure offline, probably for several more days or even weeks (most noticeable at the gas station, where prices have climbed more than 20 cents in some parts of the country).
As reported by Secession.news, in addition to losing Texas’ massive oil and gas refinery capacity, Harvey knocked out other vital industrial capacities:
…Texas is also home to another invaluable commodity in today’s world: chemicals. And Harvey has knocked out much of the state’s chemical manufacturing base as well — and again, for how long, no one knows.
Flooding in Texas continues to this day, and while waters are beginning to recede, lives affected by the storm will not soon be the same again. Many people have lost nearly everything they owned.
Now comes Hurricane Irma, and it promises to be even bigger than Harvey. As CNBC reports, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency says parts of Florida and the East Coast will be “devastated” by Irma:
With Irma set to hit Florida as early as Saturday night, parts of Florida was [sic] expected to lose electricity for days, if not longer, and more than 100,000 people may need shelter, FEMA Administrator Brock Long warned at a news conference.
“Hurricane Irma continues to be a threat that is going to devastate the United States in either Florida or some of the southeastern states,” Long said. (Related: Hurricane Irma headed for “catastrophic” impact… fuel shortages strand Floridians… no escape for many.)
As the storm approached, chaos reigned as millions of people flooded local stores, gas stations, and then highways to escape the storm’s path. Millions of people are expected to be displaced by the storm. Also, Florida Power & Light, a regional electric company, estimated that more than 4.1 million customers (about 9 million people) would lose power and that the grid destruction might be such that outages could last weeks.
Or months.
“We currently have an army, frankly, of 13,500 restoration workers, both FPL crews and outside crews ready to respond as soon as it’s safe to do so,” FPL CEO Eric Silagy said, as reported by CBS Miami. Many of the linemen are coming from across the country including from as far away as California. We have prepositioned equipment and people getting ready to fight the aftermath of Irma.”
However, the company won’t put anyone in jeopardy.
“Unfortunately, there will be a period of time where we will have to hunker down and wait. We have to wait until the winds subside to 40mph to get on the road, 35mph to get buckets in the air,” he said.
As many resources as are heading to Florida, things are not going to get back to normal for a long, long time. And the longer the power is out, the more desperate people will become. Perhaps even dangerously desperate.
Then it won’t be long before politics is introduced into the mix, and everything that has gone wrong will be President Trump’s fault. In fact, he’s already being blamed for the storms by empty-headed Hollywood celebrities and Democrats who are either too stupid to know better or who are intentionally using the disasters to score political points. Either way, divisive politics plus divisive rhetoric mixed with raw emotions and desperation is a social Molotov cocktail waiting to be exploded.
The next few months could pass without much fuss, or they could reign in some of the worst political violence we’ve seen in the Age of Leftism and Trump. We should be ready for the worst.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
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