The 2024 hurricane season in the United States and North America has entered the top five worst before it’s even over. Hurricane Milton ranks just behind the 2005 hurricane season which devastated New Orleans and the infamous 1935 ‘Labour Day hurricane’ which killed over 400 on the Florida Keys.
Combined, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have killed hundreds in the last month, carving a destructive path across the continent. Roads have been swept away and millions of homes left without power and water.
The scenes of carnage in western Florida are sadly familiar as that stretch of coastline has now experienced three such storms in the past year, flattening homes and carrying boats inland.
But this hurricane season has also shown that nowhere is now safe from extreme weather made worse and more frequent by climate change, which it is estimated has caused 50% more rainfall this season. North Carolina has also taken a battering, despite being known as a ‘climate haven’. Estate agents promoted the town of Asheville as offering a “reprieve” from “extreme weather”.
One resident said: “I never, ever considered the idea that Asheville would be wiped out”, but it was, cut off by flooding caused by Hurricane Helene, and its population left without basic necessities. A local official called Hurricane Helene “Buncombe County’s own Hurricane Katrina”.
Rural Tennessee was also hit, including workers at a plastic factory where eleven were swept away by flooding and killed after bosses stopped workers from leaving despite official flood warnings.
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) said: “In the past, damage from hurricanes was primarily wind damage, but now we’re seeing so much more water damage and that is a result of the warm waters, which is a result of climate change.”
More heat helps storms spin faster and causes more atmospheric moisture that is then unleashed in torrents upon places such as North Carolina, which got a month’s rain in just a matter of days. It means millions more are now living in areas at risk of extreme weather.
Trump
Hypocritically, Donald Trump has attacked the response of rival presidential candidate Kamala Harris and incumbent president Joe Biden by spreading rumours, but the facts speak for themselves.
Harris bragged about how she has promoted fracking during September’s debate with Trump and that the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognises that we cannot over-rely on foreign oil.”
During Trump’s time as president he allied himself with the fossil fuel industry. Over $107 million was donated towards Trump’s inauguration, with companies like BP and ExxonMobil putting forward six-figure sums.
Joe Biden helpfully told people in Florida to “evacuate now” ahead of the destruction, but what about those who didn’t have the means to do so? Even many of those who did ended up stuck in traffic jams on the way out.
No plans were made for a coordinated mass evacuation. Instead of cancelling services and flights, Amtrak passenger trains could have been commissioned to evacuate thousands. Airlines should have had each of their planes in the area requisitioned for flights, and every bus and coach could have been used.
Capitalism is a system in which wealth and resources are concentrated into the hands of a super-rich few. It is incapable of combating extreme weather, mitigating its destruction, reversing climate change and the billions of dollars’ worth of rebuilding that needs to be done immediately. Only a socialist programme and transformation of society can do so.
