Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane, plowed northward through five additional Southeastern states, running through the heart of Appalachia, a huge storm 400 miles in diameter. The attendant flooding knocked out electricity from the United States’ inadequate electricity grid to 3 million households, destroyed thousands of homes, workplaces, roads, and schools, and caused the deaths of 232 people.
Hurricane Milton is following close upon the heels of Helene in Florida, striking Tampa Bay, possibly as a Category 5 or high Category 4 in the afternoon of Oct. 9. The United States needs to learn the lesson of Hurricane Helene, or it will suffer the same ruin and death in each successive hurricane, just as it has suffered these outcomes, in large part during the past five decades. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated, according to RT Oct. 8, “We’re at almost $300 billion for Ukraine and yet they’re offering people $750 for the worst hurricane that anybody’s seen.” Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s campaign has accused Republicans of blocking funds for infrastructure. Both sides’ claims have merit. But at the same time, they miss, almost obsessively, the larger point: that the U.S. physical economy is collapsing, and operating increasingly below physical breakeven. The U.S. lacks the physical capability, as well as the moral commitment, to address emergencies. City of London and Wall Street disastrous financial policy decisions—emphatically, the decision to take the U.S. off the gold reserve standard on Aug. 15, 1971—and create a deregulated speculative “casino” bubble, have caused the economic collapse.
During Hurricane Helene, there was no pre-positioning of helicopters or emergency supplies; there were grossly insufficient dams, levees, and interbasin flood-control programs, etc. Instead, a sickly Green alternative to infrastructure has taken over.
We look at some features:
During Hurricane Helene, North Carolina’s death toll reached 84 people, the highest of all states. Yet, by the time Helene had reached North Carolina, it was still rated at a Category 1 hurricane, and then a tropical storm. While, there were high winds, the large majority of deaths and destruction were caused by flooding from the heavy rains. Take the case of Asheville, North Carolina, which was devastated. During Hurricane Helene, according to the National Weather Service, Asheville saw 17.31 inches over the course of three days, Sept. 25-27, 2024. It was widely and falsely attributed to “global warming.”
