Now It's The
Turn Of Hurricane Rita
By Joseph Kay
23 September 2005
World
Socialist Web
Hurricane
Rita is the second giant storm in three weeks to threaten the United
States along the Gulf Coast. The same basic features of American society
that so shocked the nation and the world following Hurricane Katrina
are again on display: the enormous social inequality, the decay of public
infrastructure, the indifference, incompetence and lack of preparation
of the American ruling elite.
As of Thursday evening,
the eye of Rita was expected to hit the coast of Texas or western Louisiana
some time late on Friday night or early on Saturday morning. Tropical
force winds extend for a radius of 350 miles, and the hurricane will
likely cause extensive destruction from Corpus Christi, Texas to the
south and west, all the way to New Orleans, Louisiana to the north and
east. In some areas the damage may be catastrophic.
With sustained winds
of 170 miles per hour Thursday morning, Hurricane Rita was a Category
5 storm and the strongest hurricane ever measured in the Gulf of Mexico.
It grew extremely rapidly after passing Florida, feeding off the unusually
warm waters of the Gulf. It has since softened slightly, and is expected
to hit landfall as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane, with winds up to 150
mph.
Hurricane Katrina,
which devastated much of New Orleans and coastal Mississippi, hit land
on August 29 as a Category 4 storm. With heavy rain beginning to fall
on New Orleans as a result of Rita, there is the possibility that the
damaged levee system will give way again. Officials have said that even
three inches of rain could lead to major flooding in the already devastated
city. The death toll from the earlier hurricane has now topped 1,000
and is still rising.
According to a report
in the Washington Post Wednesday, scientists at Louisiana State Universitys
Hurricane Center have concluded that the levees protecting the city
did not fail because the storm surge overtopped the barriers, but rather
because of faulty design and inadequate construction. This inadequate
levee system, which will likely not be rebuilt even to its previous
level until sometime next year, will experience a further blow from
Rita.
One of the cities
facing the gravest threat is Galveston, Texas, which lies on a coastal
island some 40 miles east of Houston. Much of the city is only 8 feet
above sea level, and is protected by a 17-foot high sea wall. This will
be easily overpowered by an expected storm surge of over 20 feet, and
even higher waves.
It will inundate
the entire city, Don Van Nieuwenhuise, a geologist at the University
of Houston, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The whole island
will be under water. The area throughout the Galveston Bayfrom
Galveston through Texas City and up to La Porte, adjacent to Houstoncould
face enormous damage.
Galvestons
protective boundary, constructed after the great hurricane of 1900,
is thoroughly inadequate to handle a storm as massive as Rita. The storm
of that year, the deadliest natural disaster in US history, completely
leveled the city of Galveston, killing 6,000 to 12,000 people.
While most of Galvestons
58,000 residents have been evacuated, a thousand perhaps remain. The
citys mayor announced Thursday that there are no hurricane-protection
shelters available for those who have not left.
Depending on where
the hurricane makes landfall, the greatest damage, in terms of loss
of life and destruction of homes and buildings, may come in Houston,
a city of over 2 million people. The last major hurricane to directly
hit the Houston metropolitan area was Hurricane Alicia in 1983, which
was barely a Category 3 storm when it made landfall. Alicia killed 21
people and produced massive damage, partially as a result of the 23
tornados that came with it.
An article in the
Houston Chronicle from February 20 of this year discussed some of the
consequences of a major hurricane. Citing models of a Category 4 or
5 hurricane hitting the Texas coast around Freeport, just southwest
of Galveston, the newspaper wrote, Within an hour or two, a storm
surge, topping out at 20 feet or more, would flood the homes of 600,000
people in Harris County, which includes Houston. Estimates of
the cost of damage from such a storm range from $40 billion to $50 billion.
Having not been
built to withstand a major hurricane, many homes and buildings in the
downtown and residential areas would be severely damaged. With
sustained winds between 131 mph and 155 mph, the newspaper wrote,
the power of a Category 4 storm exceeds that of most building
codes. Houstons commercial building rules call for structures
to withstand three-second bursts of at least 110 mph, said Dennis Wittry,
managing director of Houston Structural Operations at Walter P. Moore,
an engineering firm.
However, it would
be the less stable homes of working class and poor residents that would
be most severely damaged. Youll definitely see more significant
damage in residential construction, Wittry told the Chronicle.
Lower-end homes, or some homes in older areas, would probably
be completely destroyed. Over 100,000 homes could be wiped out.
Nearly 1.3 million
people in the more vulnerable areas of Texas are under mandatory evacuation
orders; however, it is not clear how many people will be able to get
out, particularly in Houston. The disorganized character of the evacuation
plan was on full display Thursday afternoon, as traffic out of the city
ground to a halt, with backup 100 miles long.
Tens of thousands
of residents were stuck for hours without moving in extremely hot conditions.
Many ran out of gas, as a run on fuel stations created a scarcity of
gasoline throughout the region. Most gas stations were completely out
of gas or had lines of a hundred cars or more. Waits at airport ticket
counters for flights out of the city were hours long, with no evidence
of preparation for the significant surge of passengers.
As in New Orleans
and every other city in the country, a substantial section of Houstons
population is impoverished, without means of transportation. The city
has a poverty rate of about 20 percent. To these hundreds of thousands
of poor people, Houston Mayor Bill White had the same message that New
Orleans mayor Ray Nagin had for the people of his city three-and-a-half
weeks ago: you are on your own. There will not be enough government
vehicles to go and evacuate everybody in every area, he said on
Wednesday. We need neighbor calling for neighbor.
The evacuation of
Houston and the Texas coast is being used as an opportunity to revive
the myth that people who stayed in New Orleans willfully chose not to
follow evacuation orders. Bush said in a press briefing Thursday that
people have learned to evacuate sooner, and that, unlike
in New Orleans, people are heeding the calls of city officials to escape
the path of the storm.
In fact, some 100,000
people were stranded in New Orleans to face Hurricane Katrina because
they did not have the means to leave the city on their own. It was known
beforehand that these residents would be unable to get out, but nothing
was done to help them. Many thousands of these New Orleans residents
have since been transported to Texas, and are now facing yet another
evacuation.
Enormous damage
could also be inflicted upon southern Louisiana, especially if the hurricane
shifts further to the east, as forecasts were indicating late on Thursday.
This region is largely marshland along the coast, but it is still inhabited
by 10,000 to 20,000 people. Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco issued
a call for residents to head north to escape the storm.
If the storm stalls
over eastern Texas, Arkansas or Oklahoma, as is projected, it will cause
severe inland flooding and damage.
The effects of Hurricane
Rita are already being felt by working people across the country. The
Texas coast is home to a quarter of the countrys oil refineries
and is also the source of much of the countrys natural gas. The
prices for both energy sources have jumped this week, and gasoline prices
have already begun to rise again. Price hikes could be extreme in coming
days, depending on the impact that Rita has on the Houston Ship Channel
and the oil refineries in the Gulf.
Even before Rita,
home heating prices were expected to soar 40 to 80 percent this winter,
due to the longer-term surge in natural gas prices. The storm will exacerbate
the economic strains faced by millions of Americans
The broader economic
impact of the two storms is likely to be severe. New jobless claims
are up sharply, as hundreds of thousands lost their jobs after Katrina
hit. The hurricanes could trigger an economic downturn, as consumer
confidence plummets and spending falls across the country.
Hurricane Rita provides
further evidence of a marked increase in the number and intensity of
hurricanes. Rita is the 17th storm this season strong enough to receive
a name. Already, this season is the fourth-busiest hurricane season
since recordkeeping began in 1851. Rita is the earliest 17th storm in
recorded history. With nearly two months to go before the season is
over, the number of named storms will almost certainly top the previous
record of 21, set in 1933.
In addition to being
the most intense storm on record in the Gulf of Mexico, Rita is the
third most intense storm ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean region
as a whole.
Many scientists
believe that the recent increase in hurricane frequency and intensity
is due to global warming, which has raised sea temperatures. Water in
the Gulf of Mexico, for example, is currently about 1 degree Fahrenheit
above average. Worldwide, global temperatures from June through August
were the second highest level for that period on record, continuing
a warming trend that has become particularly noticeable over the past
decade.
In spite of the
growing threat posed by hurricanes, little has been done in any of these
regions to fortify homes, develop evacuation plans and otherwise prepare
the population for a major storm.
Whatever the damage
caused by Hurricane Rita over the coming days, it again underscores
the failure of U.S. society to confront these threats in a rational
way. The conclusions of scientific investigation have been ignored or
undermined by the interests of private profit, as have the social conditions
of millions of Americans and the health of the countrys social
infrastructure.