Ruminations

Indifferent Nature, Terrorized Humans

"The heaviest rainfall events have become heavier and more frequent, and the amount of rain falling on the heaviest rain days has also increased."
"The mechanism driving these changes [is hotter air stemming from] human-caused warming."
National Climate Assessment, U.S.

"I've lost everything. My home has been torn apart. Everything is gone. This is not my first hurricane but it's the worst I've ever experienced."
"The kitchen came apart, then the roof came off, and we had to spend the night outside in the wilderness. We called out but no one heard us. We need to get off this island. Everyone is homeless, we don't have anything to ride out the next storm."
Gloria Cethaf, mother of six, Barbuda

"It was devastating. I was at my parents' house and the back door blew in, so we ran to the community centre, which was a shelter, and it was packed."
"Then the community centre was destroyed so I went to my friend's house but it was completely gone. My business, my bakery, gone. It's too much to handle."
Jacqueline Beazer, Barbuda

"It was like a horror movie. People were running from house to house, and we had cars flying over our heads."
"We had 40-foot containers flying left and right, people were tying themselves to their roofs with ropes to keep them down."
Barbudan woman

A photo taken on September 7, 2017 shows damage in Orient Bay on the French Caribbean island of Saint Martin, after the passage of Hurricane Irma. LIONEL CHAMOISEAU/AFP/Getty Images

And now it is Florida's turn. Evacuation orders have gone out to residents to leave, after many had barricaded their homes with everything they could get to safeguard their property against the coming hurricane with its impossible-to-imagine wind force, the most powerful ever recorded. Imagine an anthill, well established, large and rounded, its inhabitants busy with their life-work and suddenly something plows into it, and the ants in instant reaction hysterically scurry here and there, attempting to escape life-threatening danger; an escape too late for many of them.

All of Savannah, Georgia has been evacuated, awaiting the hurricane's full force, possibly at the 4 level when it hits full-blown, down by one-degree of deadly force from what those in Barbuda experienced. Texas is still attempting to find itself after its relatively more feeble wind force and pounding rain with Hurricane Harvey. The state had no laws in force to control where and how buildings were placed, no municipal building codes. The highways of cement do not absorb excessive water; nor does paved-over arable land converted to homes and businesses.

Nations like the Netherlands, Britain, France and the U.S. with national interests in the Caribbean have sent ships and planes with emergency workers, food, water, troops and medicine. Paltry, but life-affirming. Paltry in the sense that what is being offered barely covers the depth and breadth of need in vulnerable areas destroyed by the prodigious force of nature that assailed them. The Florida Keys and South Florida are exiting the area, along with parts of metropolitan Miami; a lot of people on the move, desperately so.

In the Gulf of Mexico the surface temperature of the water last winter was surprisingly warm. Warm seas result in increased moisture evaporating into the atmosphere and this in turn incites the presence of more ferocious storms, carrying an increased load of moisture; what goes up must come down. Climate change is presenting the world with droughts, famines and deadly heat waves, and enabling the spread of disease carried by vectors with an increasing range.

The threats to international safety and security caused by terrorist groups disables society to a degree where destabilization is balanced by increased vigilance and time-consuming steps to counteract the potential of attacks. Nature's assumptive agency with her various elements which in unleashed fury swiftly destroys far more than human agency can even imagine save for the use of atomic weaponry, is a cause of human terror for in these extreme events there is little-to-nothing that humans can do to protect themselves.

Heavier rain interacts with higher sea levels increasing flooding -- and Houston's lack of foresight in enacting zoning laws permitting building to ensue in vulnerable areas complicates matters enormously. We see Houston's perilous decision-making reflected in areas throughout the world through inattention to vitiating nature's unpredictability in visiting chaos and cataclysmic events on an unprepared public. And we never seem to learn from such experiences.