Environmental Exigencies

Memory Taylor, the director of the Agapeland Day Care Center in Moore, Okla., shows the destruction a EF-5 tornado left behind. Twenty-four people died as a result of the twister.

Kareem Elgazzar | WCPO Digital

"Have you noticed the floods and wildfires and droughts and superstorms and tornadoes and blizzards and temperature records? When cyclones tear up Oklahoma, and hurricanes swamp Alabama, and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, for billions of dollars to recover.
"And the damage your polluters and deniers are doing doesn't just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas; it hits Rhode Island with floods and storms, and Oregon with acidified seas, and Montana with dying forests. So like it or not, we're in this together. You drag America with you to your fate."
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat

Senator Whitehouse, completely without affection, thus addresses Republican senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, from Oklahoma. They continue to be re-elected because they are popular in their state. And they are held to be among the leading deniers of climate change in Washington. Between them they are busy helping to block climate change legislation, for as Senator Inhofe states, climate change is a Hollywood screenplay concept.

In the last year alone, atrocious weather conditions have cost the American taxpayer over $100-billion of their federal treasury. There has been a steady rise since the 1950s, according to FEMA, of the total number of severe storm systems hitting the United States, creating environmental disasters of one kind or another. Oklahoma's recent bout with killing tornadoes is not, however, a result of climate change, but one of environmental confluence.

The tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma on Monday represented a top-of-the-scale (enhanced Fujita scale) EF-5, the fiercest type, hitting with a force considered strong enough to destroy a city. And that is what it, in some part, managed to do, collapsing stores, homes, schools, a  hospital, into rubble, burying people and pets and all their belongings and hopes for the future.

This tornado was by no means the only one that has hit this city.

An EF-5 tornado is capable of lifting reinforced buildings off their ground moorings, of tossing cars like flying missiles, and stripping trees of their bark.  In May 1999 another tornado gouged out the same path through Moore and killed 44 people, including three children. The tornado that hit Moore this week was the fourth to visit the city since 1998. Residents are well aware of the damage that results from such forces of nature.

On the morning the tornado hit town, the National Weather Service in Oklahoma gave warning to Moore's residents and the surrounding area. Their region, and their schools were in the projected path of massive tornadoes. People did not react. Children were kept in school. The hospital was not evacuated. In mid-afternoon just as predicted the first of three tornadoes struck the town with a population of 56,000, leaving a pile of rubble in its destructive wake.

The dead numbered 24, including nine children.

Last fall, despite several days of advance warnings before hurricane Sandy hit Long Island, neither Long Island or New Jersey residents took steps to evacuate their homes, not even to park their cars on higher ground. Denial evidently is big both there and in Oklahoma. Simply put, people cannot and will not believe that catastrophic weather can so impact their lives. Perhaps to evade panic, or to cope with circumstances too dreadful to contemplate, everyone simply hopes for the best.

Back to Senators Inhofe and Coburn of Oklahoma. Both are on record as opposing disaster aid to states. They have both blocked increased funding initiatives for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Said, these days, in a spirit of wry humour, to be one of the busiest agencies in the United States.

The latest word has it that Senator Inhofe will not seek to oppose the federal aid that President Obama has announced will be forthcoming for Oklahoma.