On 1/22/18, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Around the foothills of the Olympic Mountains, tall Douglas Firs,
Cedars, Spruce and Hemlock trees reach 100 feet into the air. That
is, if the logging companies don't clear cut the land. Once the trees
have been "Harvested", the logging companies have a period of...I
think it's 3 years to replant the land. But this is a Land of heavy
rains and steep slopes. Without the heavy cover by the Evergreens,
rain saturates the hillsides and huge landslides come roaring down
onto homes, roads and block creeks. The devastation is terrible, and
the cost of cleanup is horrendous. The cost of cleanup falls upon the
taxpayers, the citizens of the state. The logging companies insist
that there is no relationship between the clear cutting of the trees,
and the mud slides that occur before a new protective cover can grow.
P.T. Barnum said that there's a sucker born every minute. Those
logging companies are sure making us look like more of P.T.Barnum's
statistics.
On 1/20/18, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2018/8204/820402.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 82/No. 4 January 29, 2018
(front page)
Social disaster in mudslide is result of capitalist rule
Catastrophe in California product of profit system
Above, Radio Sancti Spíritus; inset, Andy Holzman/SCNG
Above, Sept. 2016, revolutionary government mobilized workers in
Yaguajay, Cuba, to prepare for Hurricane Irma. Inset, Skylar Fahlman
tries to protect her home by herself in Ventura, Calif., surrounded by
Thomas Fire. In revolutionary Cuba, watchword was "no one is left
alone." Under capitalism, it's everyone for themself.
BY SETH GALINSKY
Like other government officials and the big-business news media, Rob
Lewin, head of the Santa Barbara County’s Office of Emergency
Management, blamed residents of Montecito, California, themselves for
the deaths and disaster visited on the town by widespread mudslides and
flooding Jan. 9. He said they simply didn’t heed evacuation orders given
prior to the rain and mudslides, claiming there was “no way anybody who
was watching the news or paying attention didn’t get it.”
He also said the rain was beyond anything they could have handled. “It
was a 200-year storm, and we had half an inch of rain in five minutes,”
Lewin told the media. The mudslides killed at least 20 people, destroyed
100 homes and shut down drinking water, electricity and natural gas in
the region.
But government officials did little to warn the towns’ less than 9,000
residents, and nothing to organize to get them out of harm’s way. The
deaths, destruction and social crisis are a man-made disaster, not a
natural one — the direct result of the workings of capitalism. It’s
“every man for himself” moral values, and the callousness of the
capitalist government at every level.
The way the Cuban people and their revolutionary government mobilized to
meet Hurricane Irma stands in sharp contrast.
The mudslides are a direct result of the Thomas Fire, which ravaged
nearly 240,000 acres in the area in the first two weeks of December, and
of the way the propertied rulers responded. The fire burned so
destructively because years of drought were followed by a year of heavy
rains that gave a spurt to combustible grasses, shrubs and trees,
followed by another drought. Though officials knew this provided fuel
for fires, they did nothing to thin it out.
Besides the damage and destruction, the fires also destroyed the top
soil, creating prime ground for flooding and mudslides. This has
happened many times in California. In the fall of 2003 after a fire
ravaged the San Bernadino Mountains, mudflows killed 14 people. After
the 2010 Station Fire, a mudslide damaged more than 40 homes in La
Cañada Flintridge.
The increasing destruction from wildfires is not a “natural” disaster
either. Seeking to maximize profits, real estate developers are building
more homes near fire-prone vegetation and forests. Local governments
fail to adopt policies that would prevent the accumulation of dry
vegetation, creating the threat of large, uncontrollable fires.
Local officials issued mandatory evacuation orders Jan. 6 for some 7,000
people closest to areas burned by the Thomas Fire, and sheriff deputies
the next night went door to door in that area. In addition, some 23,000
people were in “voluntary evacuation zones.”
Reports make it sound like the cops had talked to everyone. But Santa
Barbara County officials admitted that only 1,200 residents in the
mandatory zone had been contacted in person.
Government officials had a detailed map that showed in advance where
they expected mudslides to hit the hardest. But many of those areas were
labeled for “voluntary” evacuation. Voluntary warnings don’t actually
advise residents to leave, but to be on “high alert, and ready to
evacuate at a moment’s notice,” the Santa Barbara Independent explained.
Most importantly, no government authorities did anything to organize a
collective evacuation, alternative housing, food and other necessities,
or to mobilize crews to battle any flooding to come.
That’s the capitalist way. You’re on your own, and what you can do
depends on how wealthy you are.
Warnings sent after mudslide starts
After the National Weather Service texted a flash-flood warning about
2:30 a.m., Jan. 9, county officials waited until 3:50 a.m. to send out a
text-message warning to people in the area. By that time it was too late
— a wall of mud moving at 20 mph or faster was already sweeping down the
hillsides.
Montecito resident Cia Monroe told the Associated Press that her family
had to evacuate three times during the wildfire and then was told they
should evacuate a fourth time as the heavy rains hit.
“Where do you go when you’re a family of four and you don’t have a
second home?” she asked, noting that a one-week stay in a hotel could
cost them $3,000.
Now — after the deaths and destruction — people are being ordered to
leave the area. “It’s martial law here, basically,” Sarah Ettman told AP.
Water and power have been turned off. When will water be restored?
“We’re not days away, but certainly sometime before the next two
months,” Nick Turner, general manager of the Montecito Water District,
told the Los Angeles Times Jan. 15. Shades of Puerto Rico.
How Cuba responds to storms
It doesn’t have to be this way. The way the revolutionary government of
Cuba responds to natural disasters is the exact opposite.
In a speech to Cuba’s National Assembly Dec. 21, President Raúl Castro
recounted how the Cuban government worked with mass organizations, from
unions to neighborhood committees, to evacuate nearly 1.8 million people
prior to the arrival of Hurricane Irma, to get them out of harm’s way.
After the storm, brigades of electrical workers organized before the
hurricane hit went into action. “In just 20 days the flow of electricity
and water was re-established in the entire national territory,” Castro
said. “Nobody was left on their own.”
It showed “the spirit of resistance and victory of our people, who
confronted the event and the recovery period with organization, unity,
discipline, and solidarity,” Castro said.
While rebuilding tens of thousands of homes still lies ahead, it’s being
taken on in the same spirit.
Unlike in the United States, where the government’s priority is to
protect the wealth of the capitalist class and dog-eat-dog prevails, in
Cuba the government is run by working people and organizes to meet the
challenges ahead.
A team of members of the Socialist Workers Party went door to door in
Ventura, California, Jan. 13, an area hard hit by the December fire but
spared the mudslides, so far. Militant subscriber Katherine Necessary
said that during the Thomas Fire, “we were told it was up to us whether
to evacuate or not.”
“There is no reason that people in Santa Barbara should have died,” she
said, pointing to similar government inaction in the face of the
mudslides.
Dennis Richter from Los Angeles contributed to this article.
Related articles:
Cuban Revolution: Example for working people in U.S.
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