Hurricane Sandy – Coast Contact

Events effecting local communities rarely receive national attention. Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina are two that really received massive media coverage. The BP oil spill on the Gulf coast was another attention getter.

The greater concern ought to be government attention when the impacted communities are those of the wealthy versus those of the poor.

In Los Angeles the Southern California Gas Company had a huge natural gas leak, reported to be the largest such leak in American history, near the Porter Ranch neighborhood may cause vomiting, nosebleeds and other short-term symptoms, they say, but they have assured residents that it does not pose long-term health risks. The leak was first reported Oct. 23, 2015. The leak was stopped last week and permanently capped yesterday.

Porter Ranch has a $121,428 median household income (2008 dollars), high for the city of Los Angeles and high for the county according to the Los Angeles Times. Since the leak thousands of residence have been relocated by the gas company at their expense. The area has been blanketed with law firms offering to process suits against the gas company. The real Erin Brokovich visited the area representing a law firm.

Meanwhile the Exide battery factory in Vernon, an industrial community 15 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles has been operating since 1922. That factory has been spilling lead, arsenic, cadmium and other toxic metals on the ground and contaminating homes and yards in surrounding communities as well a ground water in the surrounding area these past 90 years. The people living in the nearby residential communities are all low income residents estimated to total 110,000 people.

Now the Exide company has agreed to close the facility. But where has the government been since 1922? Where was Erin Brokovich all these past years?

Will anyone in Michigan see jail time for the Flint, Michigan contaminated water system? Not only will there be no jail time it is unlikely anyone will lose their job.

Unless there is money to be made no one cares.

Those in the path of Hurricane Sandy should be grateful that Mitt Romney was not elected president. Last year Mr. Romney pledged that if elected he would shrink the deficit by axing FEMA and handing the responsibility of disasters over to the states and local governments.

During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA’s cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?”

“Including disaster relief, though?” debate moderator John King asked Romney.

“We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids,” Romney replied. “It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.”

The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is planning to ask the federal government to pay 90% of the associated costs. Those costs are estimated to be in the billions of dollars. They are already at $20 billion. New York officials have indicated they will seek more than $30 billion in federal aid.

It is unlikely that any state could handle the costs of devastating climatic or geological occurrence. Think Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Northridge Earthquake.

If we are the United States we come together to help those in need. This is just one of the many reasons Americans re-elected Barack Obama.

Tag: Hurricane Sandy

Who Cares?