Hurricane Milton, now proceeding across the Gulf of Mexico, with winds up to 175 mph after having grown to a Category 5 storm on Oct. 7, is forecast to hit the Tampa Bay area sometime Oct. 9, Wednesday afternoon or evening, and smash across central Florida, thence—it is hoped—out to the Atlantic Sea. Evacuation orders are in effect for relevant locations in Florida. The Tampa Airport will close as of 9 a.m. Oct. 8. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell went to Florida today to meet with state and local officials on pre-positioning of resources and contingency efforts. Earlier today, she attended the meeting in North Carolina of state, local and U.S. defense officials on dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Northcom Commander Gen. Gregg Guillot attended. FEMA issued an update release on their efforts in Florida and North Carolina.
Florida is still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, as are Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and the severely damaged North Carolina. As of this evening, Helene’s official death count is 230, and expected to rise, as the search for those missing continues, after the epic 500-mile storm event.
The dimensions of the damage from Hurricane Helene—and now Milton on the way—spotlight the breakdown of the U.S. economy.
The vulnerability to natural disasters in all regions of the nation has been needlessly heightened because defensive infrastructure has not been built up. That goes for flood walls in coastal cities, to levees, dams, and diversions in inland river basins. The Army Corps of Engineers plans for flood control for the run-off in the states in the Appalachian Ridge and Valley region were never fully built out. In addition, many existing dams and systems are not maintained. On the opposite end, episodic drought damage in the West would have been vastly reduced had the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) project been built.
That is also the case with disaster relief capacity. Resources have not been lined up, rescue workers trained, and set for pre-positioning on the scale needed. From staff at FEMA, to private aid agencies, to the National Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, and all the state and local workers, volunteers and others, there are heroic and selfless efforts going on under emergency conditions. But the Wall Street paradigm ruling the economy has undergone cuts, downsizing and demoralization at every level.
Increasingly the National Guard in recent years has been used to fill in gaps in the huge network of over 800 U.S. military bases abroad. There is no question that this foreign deployment uses resources, material, and manpower, undercutting the contingency deployments stateside. Foreign National Guard deployments, potentially, can be good for friendship, mutual respect, and economic assistance, and there are examples of that in the past, but these goals no longer apply. For the present listing of foreign National Guard assignments, see the latest updates on National Guard/News/Overseas-Operations/. They include Indiana National Guard soldiers to the Middle East, the September Texas National Guard to Estonia for live fire HIMARS exercises, National Guard soldiers from Georgia—one of the Hurricane Helene states—to Central Europe.
At present, 6,700 National Guardsmen from 17 states are deployed for emergency management duties in various parts of the six Helene storm states. North Carolina has National Guard forces from 10 states.
Lastly, the capacity for rebuilding from disasters like this has been decimated. The scale of physical inputs required for rebuilding—from bridges and roadways, to water systems, to electricity components, to schools, hospitals and other institutions, to construction—is beyond what the current U.S economy has the capacity to produce. Thus, the task is to restore the U.S. economy, and revive the nation.
