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As the East Coast battled the ravages of tropical storm Florence, President Donald Trump’s own bluster continued Friday, claiming Hurricane Maria’s death toll a year ago rose suspiciously “like magic” and that there was “no way” the count was accurate.

Trump tweeted at 7:05 p.m. Friday, about four hours after the first reported deaths from Florence were announced, that he visited Puerto Rico last October and was told by officials on the island that 16 people had died.

“Over many months, it went to 64 people,” Trump tweeted. “Then, like magic, ‘3,000 people killed.”

Trump’s rhetoric on Maria has been persistent in the last two days. On Thursday he claimed that the death toll in Puerto Rico was a Democratic ploy to “make me look as bad as possible.”

Public health experts have estimated that nearly 3,000 perished because of the effects of Hurricane Maria. But Trump, whose efforts to help the island territory recover have been persistently criticized, has intently insisted for two days that the numbers are unrealistic.

“FIFTY TIMES LAST ORIGINAL NUMBER – NO WAY!” he tweeted late Friday.

The president has also questioned the findings of a detailed study commissioned by the Puerto Rico’s government and claimed that its conclusion was politically motivated.

Democratic politicians were especially harsh in the denunciation of Trump’s tweets.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called Trump’s tweets “shameful” and said the president owes “3,000 families in Puerto Rico an apology.”

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio wrote on Twitter that “even tragedy becomes political” in the current environment and he backed the finding that nearly 3,000 people died.

“Both Fed & local gov made mistakes,” he said. “We all need to stop the blame game & focus on recovery, helping those still hurting & fixing the mistakes.”

More: Outpourings of outrage fill Twitter after Trump denies Hurricane Maria’s 3,000 death toll

Related: How Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria death toll of 3,000 was calculated

Voices: Trump’s denial of Maria death toll a punch ‘in the face’ to Puerto Ricans on the island

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/09/15/trump-deaths-maria-magic-puerto-rico-no-way-tropical-storm-florence/1313371002/

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The post Study: Hurricane Maria killed nearly 3,000 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Puerto Rico’s governor on Tuesday raised the official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975, in response to a new study that found the initial numbers reported were undercounted.

The study, an independent investigation ordered by the local government, found that nearly 3,000 people died in the hurricane, which hit the island in September 2017.

Gov. Ricardo Rossello responded to the study by the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University by officially raising the toll.

The number is more than double the government’s previous estimated death toll of 1,400.

“We never anticipated a scenario of zero communication, zero energy, zero highway access,” Rossello said. “I think the lesson is to anticipate the worst.”

A previous study led by a team of Harvard scientists found that more than 4,600 people were killed in the devastation, dismissing the initial toll of 64 as a “substantial underestimate.”

BBC REPORTER COVERING HAWAII HURRICANE HIT BY FALLING TREE DURING LIVE REPORT: ‘THAT WAS UNEXPECTED’

Rossello said he’s forming a commission to study the response to the storm. He said a registry of vulnerable people will also be created prior to any future hurricanes.

There’s no national standard for how to calculate disaster-related deaths. While the National Hurricane Center (NHC) reports only direct deaths, such as those caused by flying debris or drowning, some local governments may include indirect deaths from things as heart attacks and house fires.

This photo, from NOAA, shows Hurricane Maria at its strongest on Sept. 20, 2017.  (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Researchers with George Washington said they counted deaths over the span of six months — a much longer period than usual — because so many people were without power during that time.

The number of dead has political implications for the Trump administration, which was accused of responding half-heartedly to the disaster. Shortly after the storm, when the official death toll stood at 16, President Trump marveled over the small loss of life compared to that of “a real catastrophe like Katrina.”

HURRICANE LANE CREATED A STEAMY WHITE-OUT AT HAWAII’S KILAUEU VOLCANO

Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005, was directly responsible for about 1,200 deaths, according to the NHC. That does not include indirect deaths of the sort the George Washington researchers counted in Puerto Rico.

In response to the death roll rise, the White House said Tuesday that “the federal government has been, and will continue to be, supportive of Governor Rosselló’s efforts to ensure a full accountability and transparency of fatalities resulting from last year’s hurricanes – the American people, including those grieving the loss of a loved one, deserve no less.”

The administration said they’re “focused on Puerto Rico’s recovery and preparedness for the current Hurricane season.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The disasters caused $306 billion in total damage in 2017, with 16 events that caused more than $1 billion in damage each. The bulk of the damage, at $265 billion, came from hurricanes.

“2017 was a historic year for billion-dollar weather and climate disasters,” said Adam Smith, an economist for NOAA, on a call with reporters.

The record-breaking year raises concerns about the effects of future natural disasters, as scientists fear climate change could make extreme weather events more damaging.

Hurricane Harvey, which sparked extreme flooding in Houston and the surrounding area in August and September, caused $125 billion in damage, the year’s most expensive disaster. Hurricane Maria, which in September set off a fatal and ongoing humanitarian crisis in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico and elsewhere, caused $90 billion in damage. Hurricane Irma raked across the Caribbean and hit Florida in September, causing $50 billion in total damage, NOAA reports.

The storms also caused 251 combined deaths, the report found. According to Smith, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria now join 2005’s Katrina and 2012’s Sandy among the five most costly U.S. hurricanes in the agency’s disaster record.

Western wildfires cost an additional $18 billion and 54 lives, the report found. This, too, was an annual record. Other large costs came from tornadoes, droughts, flooding and other severe weather events.

The previous most expensive disaster year was 2005, when events such as Hurricane Katrina caused $215 billion in U.S. damage when adjusted for inflation. NOAA’s record of billion-dollar natural disasters goes back to 1980.

(NOAA)

According to NOAA, there have been 215 U.S. disasters costing $1 billion or more since 1980, for a total of more than $1.2 trillion in damage. The year 2017 tied 2011 for the largest total number of such events, at 16.

With numbers like the ones above, it’s no wonder the insurance industry also took a massive hit during 2017, thanks in large part to the trio of hurricanes that ravaged parts of the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and parts of the South.

Insurers are set to pay out a record $135 billion stemming from natural disasters around the globe last year, according to data released this month from the world’s largest reinsurer.

Those huge payouts stem largely from last year’s deadly and devastating hurricanes, but those were far from the only disasters. Widespread flooding caused by monsoon rains in South Asia also contributed to the costs, as did a severe earthquake in Mexico, according to Munich Re, a German-based reinsurer.

Overall losses, which include uninsured losses, amounted to about $330 billion, the reinsurer said. That is second only to 2011, when a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan fueled overall losses of more than $350 billion in today’s dollars.

The firm identified 710 natural catastrophes around the globe, significantly higher than the annual average of 605. But those in the United States were by far the most costly, accounting for roughly half of all insurance payouts.

Insurance officials also said they expect more such catastrophes ahead.

“Some of the catastrophic events, such as the series of three extremely damaging hurricanes, or the very severe flooding in South Asia after extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains, are giving us a foretaste of what is to come,” Torsten Jeworrek, a Munich Re board member, said in an announcement about the global losses. “Because even though individual events cannot be directly traced to climate change, our experts expect such extreme weather to occur more often in future.”

Indeed, the key question underlying the latest tally of disaster cost is to what extent climate change may be driving the United States and the rest of the world toward more numerous or more severe disasters.

NOAA experts demurred on this question on a media call, declining to apportion how much of the damage could be attributed to a changing climate as opposed to other factors. One key factor that is also known to be worsening damage is that there is more valuable infrastructure, such as homes and businesses, in harm’s way — along coastlines or in areas vulnerable to wildfire.

“For the purposes especially of this product, we do not try to parse those apart,” said Deke Arndt, chief of the monitoring section at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “We’re more interested in quantifying what’s going on. Both the economists and physical scientists will retrospectively look at that, but those sort of happen at the speed of science.”

But one expert, Harvard oceanographer and climate expert James McCarthy, highlighted the role of climate change in a statement in response to the NOAA findings.

“We can expect extreme weather events and economic losses and costs associated with them to continue increasing unless we make dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy authored a recent report with Robert Watson, the former chairman of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Liliana Hisas, the executive director of the Universal Ecological Fund (FEU-US), arguing that U.S. $ 1 billion disasters are increasing over time and suggesting economic costs from such events will only increase under climate change.

“As we both know hurricanes, wild-fires, floods and severe weather events occur naturally,” said Watson by email. “However, the data shows an overall increased frequency in these events, and an associated increase in intensity.  The precautionary principle would suggest that we should assume a significant contribution from human activities and prepare to adapt and mitigate.”

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/01/08/hurricanes-wildfires-made-2017-the-most-costly-u-s-disaster-year-on-record/

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Sonia Rodriguez relies on a generator to power the elevator in her five-story assisted living center so residents can get down for their outdoor meals and some relief from the lack of air conditioning.

More than a month after Hurricane Maria ravaged this island with 155-mph winds, three-quarters of the residents are still without power, lining up at banks for cash and gathering at shopping malls, hotels or government buildings just to charge their cellphones.

Police are directing traffic at major intersections without working traffic lights. Water plants are still out of commission, forcing people to gather water from roadside streams and then boil it to be safe from bacteria. Those without home generators are living without refrigeration, air conditioning and anything but natural light. Those with generators need to pay for gasoline or diesel fuel, and haul those volatile liquids in their cars, along with water and daily groceries.

“Nowadays businesses run with the rising sun and close as soon as whatever they have runs out, or they don’t open at all,” said Andrews, 45, as she sat in a dark hall of her shop in Old San Juan. “Now a business of my caliber, which depends on tourism, is completely affected. It’s on total shutdown.”

 Even Gov. Ricardo Rosselló admits that his pledge to restore 95% of power by mid-December is “aggressive.”

The task is daunting as the Puerto Rico faces challenges not seen on the U.S. mainland after other recent storms devastated Texas and Florida.

• The entire island lost power after the Sept. 20 Category 5 storm damaged power plants and 80% of the island’s electrical grid, which includes 2,400 miles of transmission lines and 30,000 miles of distribution lines, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

• Getting help to the island is cumbersome.  Supplies and people to fix the power problems have to travel through ports and airports that are overwhelmed by aid deliveries, building materials, bucket trucks, helicopters, and every other necessity, slowing the delivery of supplies where needed.

• Puerto Rico’s power grid, saddled with years of financial mismanagement, was already weakened because preventive maintenance and upgrades were deferred to save money.

Col. Jeff Lloyd of the Army Corps of Engineers in Puerto Rico, which the federal government is relying on to help the U.S. territory restore power, would not commit to Rosselló’s mid-December timeline. The Corps has ordered $130 million worth of supplies, including 62,000 telephone poles from the U.S. mainland.

“The governor said that’s an aggressive estimate,” Lloyd said. “We’re going to do everything we can to make it possible. … What’s going to be most challenging is the rugged terrain in restoring the grid.”

The power restoration project is focused on three tracks, giving priority to critical life-saving, health and public safety facilities.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, working with the governor’s office, has identified 537 sites for emergency power generators that are still being delivered and installed across the island.

Most generators are delivered by trucks, which are sometimes delayed by landslides, missing road signs and cellular service that would help GPS-aided navigation, said Lisa Hunter, a Army Corps spokeswoman. A recent rain storm delayed sending a generator by Chinook helicopter to a government-funded health clinic on the island of Culebra.

Transmission lines that deliver electricity from major power stations are also under repair across the island. Much of that work is being done by Montana-based Whitefish Energy, which specializes in rugged, mountainous terrain.

“The interior of the country is all mountains with minimal road access,” said Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski. “This is why we use helicopters to access points.”

The company brought four helicopters to Puerto Rico, to carry workers to the tops of transmission towers and to act as sky cranes for equipment and lines. The National Guard and PREPA, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, have more helicopters to support Whitefish operations.

Techmanski said recent rains are hampering his 300 workers now on the island. Helicopters can’t be used in pouring rain. And an access road his crews built flooded a few days later.

“You can’t drive a vehicle up a road when it has 3 feet of running water on it,” Techmanski said.

And the power company will have to rebuild the smaller lines that deliver power to neighborhoods, homes and businesses.

As Puerto Rico’s electric grid is rebuilt, some planning is needed to include new technology, said Tom Lewis, president of Louis Berger, a New Jersey-based contractor helping PREPA and the Army Corps.  Solar power, wind power and smart micro grids can operate even when other sections of the grid shut down.

That would be “putting something back that is more sustainable and resilient for the next storm,” Lewis said.

He predicted that restoring 95% of the island’s power will probably happen in late December or early winter.

“The last mile is always the distribution network,” Lewis said. “Whether it’s more difficult in terms of access or dollars I don’t know, but it’s certainly the last part of the process.”

In the Égida Señora Perpetuo Socorro assisted living center, the 67 residents have power from a generator for about four hours in the morning and four hours at night. That’s when they have running water and an elevator, but still no air conditioning.

They have their meals on an outdoor patio sheltered from the sun. But administrator Rodriguez points out she doesn’t always have enough money to buy diesel for the generator.

“Sadly, if there comes a time all our resources end, those with nowhere to go would have to be relocated to a shelter,” she said. But so far they have managed. “While there’s diesel there is hope.”

Contributing: Atabey Nuñez 

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/10/23/storm-whipped-puerto-rico-power-restoration-plagued-problems-after-maria/792376001/

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RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP /Getty Images

The post Puerto Ricans Are Still Without Food, Water, and Power One Month After Hurricane Maria first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Nate — the first hurricane to make landfall in Mississippi since Katrina in 2005 — quickly lost power, with its winds diminishing to a tropical depression as it pushed northward into Alabama and toward Georgia with heavy rain. It was a Category 1 hurricane when it pushed ashore outside Biloxi early Sunday, its second landfall after initially hitting southeastern Louisiana on Saturday evening.

The storm surge from the Mississippi Sound littered Biloxi’s main beachfront highway with debris and flooded a casino’s lobby and parking structure overnight.

By dawn, however, Nate’s receding floodwaters didn’t reveal any signs of widespread damage in the city where Katrina had leveled thousands of beachfront homes and businesses.

A sailboat beached near Margaritaville and the Golden Nugget in Biloxi, Miss., on Sunday, after Hurricane Nate made landfall.  (Justin Sellers/The Clarion-Ledger via AP)

No storm-related deaths or injuries were immediately reported.

As Nate roared ashore, the hurricane-spawned storm surge in coastal areas, flooding the parking structure of the Golden Nugget casino in Biloxi and pushing water several blocks deep into the city.

“It kind of surprised us,” Mike Kovacevich, who lives two blocks north of U.S. 90, told Biloxi officials on their Facebook page. “We didn’t expect to be this deep. It come in pretty good — a lot of water.”

Biloxi public works employees clearing debris from U.S. 90 in Biloxi on Sunday.  (Justin Sellers/The Clarion-Ledger via AP)

Around 28,000 customers from multiple utility companies were without power in southern portions of the state, but officials from Mississippi Power, which covers all three counties on the state’s Gulf Coast, told Fox News they expect to fully restore power by Sunday night.

“Following Hurricane Nate, our dedicated team at Mississippi Power is actively assisting our customers and restoring service,” Mississippi Power CEO Anthony Wilson said. “The safety of our customers and employees is our top priority. We know how important electrical service is to restoring quality of life after a storm and we are working hard for our customers and their businesses.”

Combined, more than 100,000 residents in Mississippi and Alabama were without power Sunday morning, although some were starting to get electricity restored. About 6,800 customers lost power in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott said.

Mississippi’s Gulf Coast casinos got approval to reopen in midmorning after closing Saturday as the storm approached.

Pumpkins strewn around Highway 90 along the Gulf of Mexico in Pass Christian, Miss., in the aftermath of Hurricane Nate.  (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

In Alabama, the storm flooded homes and cars on the coast and inundated at least one major road in downtown Mobile.

At sunrise in Pensacola Beach, Florida, a small front-end loader scraped sand off a parking lot and returned it to the nearby beach. Sand also was blown onto the decks of beachside bars and restaurants.

In Alabama, Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said he woke up around 3 a.m. Sunday to discover knee-deep water in his yard. Although some homes and cars on the island had flooded, Collier said he hadn’t heard of anyone needing rescue.

“We didn’t think it would be quite that bad,” he said. “It kind of snuck up on us in the wee hours of the morning.”

Before Nate sped past Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula late Friday and entered the Gulf of Mexico, it drenched Central America with rains that left at least 22 people dead. Still, Nate didn’t approach the intensity of Harvey, Irma and Maria — powerful storms that left behind massive destruction during 2017’s exceptionally busy hurricane season.

“We are thankful because this looked like it was going to be a freight train barreling through the city,” said Vincent Creel, a spokesman for the city of Biloxi.

Fox News’ Travis Fedschun and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/10/08/hurricane-nate-unleashes-flooding-power-outages-on-gulf-coast.html

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Then Las Vegas, the nation’s playground, witnessed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history — the latest in this peerless series of catastrophes. Some were natural, some man-made. Together, they’ve shadowed a usually optimistic nation with a cloud of sorrow and anxiety.

You didn’t have to be in Vegas, Seattle, Houston, Key West or San Juan, or have relatives in Mexico, or live in the Inter-mountain West with a respiratory condition, to be worried. A nation that had thought itself numbed to tragedy is realizing that no matter how bad things are, they apparently can always get worse.

“Why?’’ asked country music star Blake Shelton in a tweet after the shooting. That was one question, shared many times by many others. There was another: “What’s next?’’

A summer that seemed destined to be remembered for its magnificent solar eclipse had lurched suddenly toward the eve of destruction. And autumn hasn’t been much better.

  So much has gone wrong so fast it’s fair to review the overlapping calamities:

• In the span of two weeks, two major hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, hit the continental U.S., the first time two category 4 storms have ever done so in a single season. Then a third storm, Maria, clobbered the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, producing a level of misery that still may not have crested.
• Mexico was shaken by two earthquakes 12 days apart that killed hundreds of people. The second occurred on the anniversary of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake that killed thousands. That quake had been commemorated, and a national earthquake drill held, just two hours before the ground again began to shake on Sept. 19.
• Wildfires, spurred by some of the driest, hottest late summer weather on record,  consumed an area in the West 50% larger than the state of New Jersey. As air quality plummeted across Washington State, the governor declared a state of emergency and told everyone in some areas to stay indoors.
• The leaders of the U.S. and North Korea traded insults and threats. President Trump ridiculed his own secretary of state’s efforts to negotiate with the Kim Jong Un regime to peacefully resolve the nuclear faceoff. Trump tweeted that Rex Tillerson “is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man…’’

The natural disasters produced images that unsettled even those nowhere near them.  Consider just the wildfires.

In normally wet Seattle, which on Aug. 8 recorded its record 52nd straight day without rain, ash from Central Washington fires fell like snow and covered the city with a dense smoke cloud. In Montana, wildfires closed the western part of Glacier National Park’s famous Going-to-the-Sun Road …. while the eastern portion was closed by ice and snow. In Oregon, a photo showed golfers in the foreground playing through as a huge forest fire roared in the background.

“Yes,’’ the Dallas Morning News editorialized last month, “it does feel like Mother Nature is just done with us.’’

The crises brought out the best in some people. Texas saw an American Dunkirk, with more than 15,000 rescued from high waters by a motley array of craft. And Mexicans spontaneously formed bucket brigades to remove rubble and search for survivors in the ruins of hundreds of collapsed schools and other buildings.

More: September was a hellish month for hurricanes. What will October bring?

More: The land of the stars & stripes has become a country of stress & strife.

More: Las Vegas shooting now tops list of worst mass shootings in U.S. history

More: Here are the worst hurricanes and floods in U.S. history

But for all too many, it was all too much.

Tamara Harpster, 54, of Lakeside, Calif., wrote on Facebook that when she learned of the shooting “I felt numb.’’ After the last month, “it seems like ‘Oh well, just another day in a sucky world now.’ … I feel such a loss of control and a realization that there is nothing an individual can do to stop these horrible things from happening.’’

And yet, she wrote, “I want somehow to fix things and make them stop.’’

Daniel Gardner, who teaches communications at Mississippi State, says that while most people in the rural South shake their heads over the troubles and move on, the millennials he teaches are different: With instantaneous communication via social media, they are “easily shaken emotionally, and prone to be more naive and gullible. … So the confluence of bad events makes them feel more vulnerable.’’

The question was why it seemed to be going there.

There was an obvious answer — coincidence — and on one level, it was all explicable.

Storms? That’s why they call this hurricane season. And until 2017 it had been 12 years since any hurricane of such intensity made continental U.S. landfall.

Quakes? Mexico sits on unstable tectonic plates.

Fires? Forests have been burning in North America since before any civilization.

Korea? The Korean War never officially ended when hostilities ceased in 1953. Sabers have been rattling ever since.

As for Las Vegas, America since Columbine has repeatedly demonstrated what happens when a wealthy, historically violent nation with many angry, mentally disturbed residents has loose gun laws.

Some blamed global warming for the storms and the fires; some blamed Trump for Korea and the halting Puerto Rico relief effort.

Others saw a higher authority in control.

‘What else is needed to get our attention?’’ asked Michael L. Brown, the conservative host of the nationally syndicated radio show, The Line of Fire.

 “We need to get on our faces before the Lord, acknowledging our own sins and shortcomings, not pointing the finger at others but rather at ourselves. And whatever our views on climate control and gun control and immigration reform and President Trump, we need to implore the only one who can heal our land.’’

In a video he posted online, actor Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains) called the hurricanes “a spectacular display of God’s immense power” and said, “weather is sent to cause us to respond to God in humility, awe and repentance.”

Was Judgement Day at hand? Several who studied the question had set the date at Sept. 23. But as the day passed and the tribulations continued, some didn’t need obscure scriptural passages or complicated astrological projections to feel the end was near.

That’s one theology. Another is held by the Rev. Ryan Moore of First Presbyterian Church in Tulsa. He told the Tulsa World that he doesn’t spend much time trying to predict when The End is coming, because a daily faith matters more.

“But with all that’s going on in the world,’’ he admits, “you can’t help but be a little bit apocalyptic.”

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/10/03/storms-quakes-fires-korea-and-now-vegas-shooting-whats-next/725889001/

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Volunteers have been preparing and transporting supplies for those affected by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. (Carlos Giusti/AP)

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