PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Rescuers trying to reach thousands of Pakistani flood victims were hampered by deluged roads and damaged bridges Saturday, though there were signs that waters were receding in parts of the country.
Floods killed more than 430 people in one week, left some 400,000 people stranded in far-flung villages and severely damaged the nation’s already-weak infrastructure. The U.N. estimated Saturday that some 1 million people were affected, though it didn’t specify exactly what that meant.
In the northwest, the hardest-hit region, it was the worst flooding since 1929. People clung to fences and each other as water gushed over their heads, TV footage showed. Scores of men, women and children sat on roofs.
“There are very bad conditions,” said Amjad Ali, a rescue worker in the Nowshera area. “They have no water, no food.”
Estimated 700 people killed this year as landslides and high water levels causes billions of pounds in damage
Floodwaters in south-west Chongqing municipality, after torrential rains hit areas along the Yangtze river.
Flooding in China this year has killed 701 people, left 347 missing and caused billions of pounds in damage, a senior Chinese official has said.
Three-quarters of China’s provinces have been hit by flooding and 25 rivers have seen record high water levels, causing the worst death toll in a decade, Liu Ning, general secretary of the government’s flood prevention agency, told a news conference.
Aside from the dead and missing, 645,000 houses were toppled and overall damage totalled 142.2bn yuan (£13.7bn). All the figures, Liu said, were the highest China had seen since 2000.
With the flood season far from over, this year is shaping up to be one of the most devastating since 1998, which was the worst in 50 years.
Floods after days of driving rain have killed at least 39 people in northeastern Brazil, and left 1,000 unaccounted for and another 100,000 people homeless.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called a crisis cabinet meeting and said the government would make federal funds available to help the homeless.
“Up until the early afternoon we had 26 confirmed dead in Alagoas and more than 1,000 people missing,” Teotonio Vilela Filho, the Alagoas Governor, said.
“We are praying for the missing to be found alive. But we are very worried because bodies are starting to turn up on beaches and on riverbanks,” Mr Vilela said.
Civil defence officials in devastated Alagoas state said the Mundau River burst its banks in the town of Uniao dos Palmares, leaving at least 500 people unaccounted for there.
“Pernambuco state’s rivers all run out through Alagoas. Swollen as they were they devastated cities,” Mr Vilela said. Thirteen people have been confirmed dead so far in Pernambuco, officials said.
The torrents swept away more than 40,000 houses, entire bridges and streets, as well as rail lines in 22 towns across Alagoas, Vilela said.
Unusually heavy seasonal flooding in China has killed at least 155 people and forced more than 1 million to flee as water levels in some areas reached at their highest in more than a decade, the government reported today.
Direct economic losses total 24 billion yuan (£4.5 billion), with large swaths of the country’s southeast hit especially hard, according to the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters.
Virtually all of the country’s major rivers were swollen, while water levels in lakes along the mighty Yangtze River were higher than in 1998, when catastrophic flooding killed about 4,000 people.
A man photographs a flooded commercial building along Elmwood Avenue as the Pawtuxett River overflows in Cranston, Rhode Island on March 30, 2010. Getty Images
April 1 (Bloomberg) — As many as 200,000 people may be affected by flooding in Rhode Island that has halted Amtrak service to Boston for two days, blocked highways and threatened a Rhode Island dam.
After two record flood crests in March, Rhode Island is dealing with damage reminiscent of hurricanes, Teddy Hampton, American Red Cross disaster relief operations job director, said in a telephone interview today.
“When you start talking about the numbers of people who are affected, it’s pretty dad-gum close to a Category 3 to Category 4 hurricane,” said Hampton, who flew in from Alabama and often has to respond to the tropical systems. “It’s going to far, far exceed the local chapter’s capability in every way.”
About 184 people were housed in Red Cross shelters last night, and many more went to the shelters to eat, Hampton said. The Red Cross estimates 180,000 to 200,000 people will be dealing with the flood on some level, from cleaning the sewer- tainted water that washed over their homes to finding food.
At least 1.5 million people have been displaced in the flood-affected states
BURDIPADU, India — The death toll from the worst floods to hit southern India in decades passed 300, officials said Wednesday, as relief efforts struggled to help survivors.
At least 1.5 million people have been displaced in the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh after days of torrential rain.
More than 200 people have been killed in Karnataka alone, said H.V. Parashwanath, secretary of Karnataka’s disaster monitoring agency.
“There could be 200,000 to 300,000 people in villages where aid has not reached,” he said.
Authorities said more than half a million people were in relief camps in Andhra Pradesh, with a further 650,000 in shelters in Karnataka.
This is another picture after typhoon Ketsana hit:
People wade in the chest deep floodwater Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009 in suburban Cainta, east of Manila, Philippines Source: Time
Residents go on with their normal life amidst floodwaters in Taytay township, Rizal province, east of Manila, Philippines Friday Oct. 2, 2009. Tropical storm Ketsana brought the worst flooding in metropolitan Manila and neighboring provinces in more than 40 years that left more than 250 people dead and dozens more missing. The Philippines is bracing for the super typhoon Parma which is expected to hit the northern part of the country Saturday. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
MANILA, Philippines — Tens of thousands of villagers fled the likely path of a powerful typhoon bearing down Friday on the Philippines, as the government braced for the possibility of a second disaster just days after a storm killed more than 400.
Heavy rain drenched mountainous coastal regions in the northeast as Typhoon Parma tracked ominously toward heavily populated areas still saturated from the worst flooding in 40 years.
Parma was forecast to hit the east coast Saturday, packing sustained winds of up to 120 mph (195 kph) and gusts up to 140 mph (230 kph). Officials fear it may develop into a “super-typhoon,” the government’s weather bureau said.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared a nationwide “state of calamity” and ordered six provincial governments to evacuate residents from flood- and landslide-prone areas in the path of the storm.
The “state of calamity” extends the one applied to Manila and 25 provinces hit by the earlier storm. The declaration frees up funds to respond to emergencies.
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Typhoon Ketsana headed west toward Laos Wednesday after battering central Vietnam with powerful winds and heavy rain, leaving behind blue and sunny skies but dangerously rising flood waters. The official death toll was placed at 41, but officials said that number was expected to rise as more reports came in and as floodwaters threatened further destruction.
“The rain was heavy and the wind was like crazy,” said Nguyen Trong Tung, a photographer, describing the scene in a telephone call from Danang. “Right now the sun is beautiful, there are white clouds and the sky is blue and the streets are already clear.”
The clear weather is deceptive and the danger has not passed, said Andrew Wells-Dang, a representative of Catholic Relief Services, who called Ketsana “the most serious typhoon that’s hit here in four or five years.”
“The casualty figures will get worse over the next days as more reports come in and also as the river levels rise from rain up in the mountains that will cause more flooding,” he said in a telephone call from the capital, Hanoi. The floods could reach the historic highs of 1964, said Le Van Duong, a relief and disaster mitigation coordinator for World Vision, speaking by telephone from Danang.
A military truck loaded with evacuees braves the flooded street after the water subsides allowing big trucks to enter the area Monday, Sept. 28, 2009 in suburban Cainta, east of Manila, Philippines. Weary victims of a tropical storm that unleashed worst flooding in more than a decades begun cleaning up their damaged homes as rescue workers plucked more dead bodies from muddy floodwaters. (AP Photo/ Pat Roque)
MANILA, Philippines — Rescuers pulled more bodies from swollen rivers Monday as residents started to dig out their homes from under carpets of mud after flooding left 140 people dead in the Philippine capital and surrounding towns.
Overwhelmed officials called for international help, warning they may not have sufficient resources to withstand another storm that forecasters said was brewing east of the island nation and could hit as early as Friday.
Authorities expected the death toll from Tropical Storm Ketsana, which scythed across the northern Philippines on Saturday, to rise as rescuers penetrate villages blocked off by floating cars and other debris. The storm dumped more than a month’s worth of rain in just 12 hours, fueling the worst flooding to hit the country in more than 40 years. At least 140 people died, and 32 are missing.
Willie Jensen, 17, paddles a kayak down a flooded street near downtown Snoqualmie, Wash. on Wednesday. Thompson/AP
Josh Myers, 17, carries his sister Nicole, 15, through floodwaters in downtown Snoqualmie.
Thousands of western Washington state residents were primed to evacuate their homes Thursday amid heavy flooding along the region’s rivers and streams.
A state emergency management official offered a silver lining or two, saying some rivers haven’t flooded as badly as expected. But the flooding in western Washington is a danger, a situation has been exacerbated by unseasonably high temperatures that have caused a lot of snow to melt.
“It’s a very significant event,” said Dana Felton, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Seattle.
He said the steady rainfall that has brought around 15 inches of rain over the last two days to some regions has come to an end. He said cooler air is moving in, and there will be some light rain that won’t affect waterways.
Kyle Herman, Washington State Emergency Management spokesman, said eight cities are on a voluntary evacuation status.
They are Orting, Packwood, Randle, Stanwood, Snoqualmie, Naselle, Fife, and parts of Tacoma — areas amounting to roughly 25,000 people. He said there are 20 local emergency declarations in various communities that were prompted by the recent heavy snowfall and rain.
Nov 27 – President Lula flies over flooded area in southern Brazil where 100 have died and some 54,000 are homeless.
Six areas in Brazil’s southern state of Santa Catarina declared a state of emergency and as many as 100,000 people are still trapped after landslides and raging rivers washed out roads and cut power.
In Rio Bonito in the province of Rio de Janeiro ambulances rushed to a scene of a landslide while residents scrambled to dig through the mud, searching for survivors.
Houses and cars were buried under mudslides throughout the region, while trees and household items drifted through flooded streets.
Chicago received more than 6 inches of rain Saturday, breaking a 1987 record.
CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) — Chicago authorities asked Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to issue a disaster declaration after rainfall Saturday in the Windy City broke a single-day record that had stood for more than two decades.
The deluge flooded streets and stranded residents in their homes. Officials worked to rescue people Sunday as the city grappled with another day of drenching.
O’Hare International Airport recorded 6.64 inches of rain Saturday — breaking the all-time record of 6.49 inches set in 1987, according to the National Weather Service. Records have been kept since 1871.
HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) — Hurricane Ike tore across Cuba with 100-mph winds Monday, sending 50-foot waves crashing over buildings and forcing the evacuation of 900,000 people.
Fallen bricks crushed a van Monday in Camaguey, Cuba, as Hurricane Ike struck the island.
At 2 p.m., Ike’s eye had moved back over water off Cuba’s southern coast. Ike was a Category 2 hurricane, with steady 100-mph (160-kph) winds and higher gusts, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.
Ike’s eye is expected to move back over Cuba on Tuesday, then move into the Gulf of Mexico and grow again in intensity.
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) — Hurricane Ike moved past the southern Bahamas on Sunday, carrying high winds and heavy rain as the Category 4 storm surged forward on a track that could take it toward the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Obenson Etienne walks to his house Sunday in Providenciales, one of the isles in the Turks and Caicos.
The possibility prompted state and local officials in Florida and Louisiana to prepare for what may be the third major storm to affect the Gulf Coast in less than a month.
“Let’s hope it’s all a false alarm,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Sunday as he pre-emptively issued a state of emergency. His state is still recovering from Hurricane Gustav; more than 370,000 people there are still without power, nearly a week after Gustav made landfall, he said.
“There continues to be much uncertainty about the predicted track,” he said of Ike.
On Sunday, President Bush declared a state of emergency in Florida. The hurricane’s outer bands could start affecting the Florida Keys by Monday afternoon.
· No food or drinking water as tempests batter nation
· Desolation in Cuba is like Hiroshima, says Castro
Friday September 5 2008
Haiti was reeling last night from a series of tropical storms which devastated crops and infrastructure and left bodies floating in flooded towns. Three storms in three weeks unleashed “catastrophe” and submerged much of the impoverished Caribbean nation, said President Rene Preval. A fourth storm, Ike, was gathering force in the Atlantic and could strike next week.
More than 120 people have died, thousands are homeless and agriculture and transport networks have been washed away, prompting calls for emergency international aid.
“There are a lot of people who have been on top of the roofs of their homes over 24 hours now,” the interior minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, told Reuters. “They have no water, no food and we can’t even help them.”
Stranded people make their way through flood waters in Bihar.
REUTERS/ Krishna Murari Kishan
The humanitarian needs created by the worst floods in the eastern Indian state of Bihar for 50 years are outstripping government and agencies’ ability to cope, aid workers say.
A week ago, the Kosi river in neighbouring Nepal burst its banks and forged a new course through Bihar, submerging hundreds of villages in the five districts of Supaul, Madhepura, Sharsa, Madhubani and Bhagalpur. According to the latest estimates, over 2 million people have been displaced and a quarter of a million homes have been destroyed.
A catastrophe for Iowa farmers will not be just a catastrophe for Midwestern Americans. In the Iowa floods, we’ll see more evidence of how the problems of weird weather (climate change) combine and ramify the problems associated with Peak Oil. In this particular case they lead to an inflection point sometime around the 2008 harvest season, which will also be our time of political harvest.
These are not your daddy’s or granddaddy’s floods. These are 500-year floods, events not seen before non-Indian people started living out on that stretch of the North American prairie. The vast majority of homeowners in Eastern Iowa did not have flood insurance because the likelihood of being affected above the 500-year-line was so miniscule – their insurance agents actually advised them against getting it.
The personal ruin out there will be comprehensive and profound, a wet version of the 1930s Dust Bowl, with families facing total loss and perhaps migrating elsewhere in the nation because they have no home to go back to.
Iowa in 2008 will be an even slower-motion disaster than Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Beyond the troubles of 25,000 people who have lost all their material possessions is a world whose grain reserves stand at record lows. The crop losses in Iowa will aggravate what is already a pretty dire situation. So far, the US public has experienced the world grain situation mainly in higher supermarket prices.
Cheap corn is behind the magic of the American processed food industry – all those pizza pockets and juicy-juice boxes that frantic Americans resort to because they have no time between two jobs and family-chauffeur duties to actually cook (note: reheating is not cooking).
LEVEES on the cresting Mississippi River held today as the worst US Midwest flooding in 15 years began to ebb, but multibillion-dollar crop losses may boost world food prices for years.
Water levels on the river receded for the second straight day as mostly clear weather gave saturated areas a chance to start draining. Forecasts for similar dry weather in coming days gave further encouragement.
The swollen river was expected to crest tomorrow in St Louis at 11.9 metres, 3.3 metres below the record set in 1993 and a level considered “manageable”, said US Army Corps of Engineers St Louis District spokesman Alan Dooley.
“The crest in the areas up the Mississippi River in the district has passed,” Dooley said. “The water is still up very high and it is up against levees.”
The crest of the swollen Mississippi River moved downstream yesterday as volunteers manned sandbagged levees and coped with the costs of the Midwest’s worst flooding in 15 years. “At times like these you don’t know whether to cry or laugh. But here in the Midwest we tend to favour the latter,” said Charlotte Hoerr, who, with her husband Brent, farms land not far from the river in this small Missouri town.
The river overcame more than two dozen levees last week, submerging small towns and vast stretches of prime farmland as the nation’s most vital waterway absorbed the run-off of torrential rains that put many Iowa towns under water. The Midwest flooding and storms are expected to push US and world food prices higher.Up to five million acres of newly planted crops have been lost at the heart of the world’s top grain and food exporter. Prices for corn, cattle and pigs all set records this week owing to the floods, as a world economy already hit by inflation from rising energy prices absorbed the blow.
As soon as I became aware of the flooding situation in the American Midwest, I posted the story with the EMERGENCY prefix on the title. Just so we’re clear, when I write EMERGENCY at the beginning of a post title, this is my way of indicating that the situation is as serious as it gets. It means that I feel as though everyone reading should consider taking immediate evasive action. All the jawboning about conspiracy, how things could have been, how things should be, etc. are behind us now. You know, EMERGENCY, act fast, eyes wide, nostrils flared, etc.
While the food supply situation has skated along a knife edge so far this year, with higher prices and many countries experiencing food riots, widespread famine did not take hold. In an incredible move, the Japanese quietly eased rice shortages by releasing portions of their imported rice stockpiles-from giant warehouses in Tokyo-into the system; a welcome but one off blip in the big picture. What happens next time?
Now, this growing season, when yields need to be at record levels to avert disaster, what do we find? Floods or droughts in several of the breadbaskets of the world.
Whatever your plans are, I hope that you’re ready to execute them (or, better yet, are executing them). I’m pretty sure that most people have done nothing, and I don’t know why this continues to amaze me.
How can so many people, even those who should know better, be content to hit the wall without doing anything at all to change course? This includes my own family, who lives in Southern California.
I view Southern California as one of the most dangerous death traps in the world. Since it’s such an important focus of economic activity, though, I like to keep tabs on herd activity there, just for my own situational awareness. I can’t get a meaningful response from my dad-who thinks that traffic jams everywhere in the region and at all times of the day and night represent ‘progress’-I emailed someone there who’s about to flee to a country in Northern Europe. I asked if there was even a subtle sense of panic setting in with regard to the food and fuel prices. Here is part of the response I received:
I have noticed that most people don’t even have instinct enough to panic and hoard, and they wouldn’t know *what* to hoard. They don’t cook, they don’t know what a ‘staple’ means. A young woman in my training last week brought animal crackers and cheese ruffles for breakfast, and a box of Cheezits and Coke Zero for lunch. I asked her mockingly if she’d tried fruit or vegetables, she said she couldn’t afford them. I once saw a woman behind me at Ralphs with food stamps, and she was buying cottage cheese, dry pinto beans, and wheat bread, and told her kid to put the Doritos back. If you don’t have that kind of sense to begin with, the current situation is not going to give it to you.
We’re now well into a phase where system maintenance depends on the inability of the herd to grasp the nature of the immanent threat. “Yes, Kevin,” you say. “Same as it ever was.”
I don’t think so. The food situation is far off the radar screens of Joe Average. It only becomes a problem after it’s too late to do anything substantive to ameliorate conditions. We’ve already seen food riots, armed escorts for grain deliveries, rationing, sharply higher prices. And still, I’m mostly noticing yawns and drugged gurgles from the herd. Meanwhile, the die is all but cast on this year’s lower crop yields.
If the herd had any idea of what was coming, this show would be over inside of 24 hours. You might be sick of reading this on Cryptogon, but, it’s worth repeating: Use your time wisely.
Consumers were warned to expect even sharper increases in global food prices after US officials said that some of the country’s best farmland was facing its worst flooding for 15 years.
Agriculture officials and traders said the damage could push up worldwide corn and soyabean prices, which have spiralled in recent days as floods have swamped crops in parts of Iowa, the US’s biggest corn-producing state.
The warning comes at a time when high food prices are already sparking protests across the developing world.
Corn futures in Chicago this week rose to record highs of more than $8 a bushel on fears that up to 5m acres of the crop could be lost, while soyabean prices hit a record of $15.93 a bushel.
Government terrorists are continuing their agenda of terrorizing the American people and destroying individual liberty. Using the guise of keeping people safe from the floods in Iowa, uniformed terrorists are setting up Nazi like checkpoints forbidding people from going back to their homes. These checkpoints are not only unnecessary but also illegal as people should not be forbidden from going back to their own private property because some Nazi in a uniform is claiming that they are blocking the road for the purposes of public safety. People have the right to travel freely regardless of what these uniformed terrorists say. Like Hurricane Katrina, the government is taking advantage of this disaster to setup a system of control that Hitler and Stalin would have approved of. These government terrorists need to be held accountable for unlawfully violating the Constitutional rights of American citizens. It doesn’t matter if there’s a flood, earthquake, tornado or an invasion by space aliens, the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land. The government does not have the right to block law abiding citizens from their own private property regardless of the situation.
Police twice caught a man in his flood-damaged home before the property had been cleared by city inspectors. But Rick Blazek vowed to return – even if he had to sneak behind bushes.
“Once I’m in there, I’m not coming out unless they have handcuffs and leg shackles,” he pledged Sunday at a checkpoint where authorities were limiting access.
That’s what happened Monday when officers pulled Blazek out of his pickup after he tried to run a checkpoint. When he allegedly bumped an Iowa state trooper with the truck, police drew their guns, broke a window on his vehicle and wrestled Blazek out. He was charged with assaulting an officer.
Blazek was among thousands of flood victims frustrated by authorities’ decision Monday to cut off access to flood-damaged homes because of safety concerns. About 25,000 people have had to leave their homes since the Cedar River began flooding.
This is entirely ridiculous. The so called police officers are the real criminals by infringing on this man’s right to freely travel. At the very least, these individuals should be charged with destruction of property for breaking Mr. Blazek’s truck window and be required to compensate him accordingly. Here is a man who was simply trying to access his private property. These government goon squads had no right to block this man from his private property in the name of public safety. This man was not infringing on anyone else’s liberty and should have been left alone. The fact that he bumped one of these goons with his automobile would not have happened if these uniformed terrorists weren’t unlawfully blocking the road and preventing people from accessing their private property. The fact that he is being charged with assaulting an officer is absurd. He’s not the one terrorizing homeowners by not letting them access their private property.
What is really insane about this whole deal is that while people are not allowed to access their homes, these inspectors from the government are allowed to wander around to people’s property for safety purposes. This is a recipe for corruption. How can people be assured that their homes are not being looted by these so called government officials? Governments have time and time again proven to be one of the most corrupt and criminal institutions in the history of mankind. If you don’t believe this to be true, take a look at the looting and pillaging that is currently taking place by the crooks in the federal government.
In Iowa City, the Mayor actually ordered hundreds of people to evacuate their homes. This government bureaucrat has no right to order people to leave their private property regardless of the situation. If people believe the conditions are unsafe, they’ll leave, if not, they’ll stay. It is up to the individual to make that decision, not the government.
These government bureaucrats should be removed from office for allowing these checkpoints to be setup and not allowing people to go back to their homes. In addition, it is disgraceful that these uniformed terrorists are enforcing these unconstitutional orders. With insanity like this going on, this country is gone. We can certainly expect more of this as this nation descends further into the depths of the New World Order.
“Indiana residents affected by Saturday’s flooding shouldn’t expect assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency any time soon, and perhaps not at all,” Michael Hampton writes for the Homeland Stupidity blog. If and when Gov. Mitch Daniels declares disaster, FEMA will “come to the rescue” by “setting up a phone number and web site for individuals to ask for assistance in the form of loans.” Short of a declaration and miles of red tape, Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson told the Indy Star residents are basically on their own. Erickson said Hoosiers should “start the cleanup process and don’t wait for federal assistance at this point.”
Hampton adds: “You heard it straight from the FEMA spokesman’s mouth. Don’t wait for them. They might not even show up at all. Pray they don’t, or southern Indiana could wind up like New Orleans. Travel trailers, anyone?”
“In the current series of disasters,” writes Jim Kirwan, “there are no troops here to help with evacuations, and the only help that FEMA is currently offering to victims of the Iowa flooding is: ’save all your receipts, because you’ll need to prove what it cost you if you want any help after this is over.’”
“Indiana residents affected by Saturday’s flooding shouldn’t expect assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency any time soon, and perhaps not at all,” Michael Hampton writes for the Homeland Stupidity blog. If and when Gov. Mitch Daniels declares disaster, FEMA will “come to the rescue” by “setting up a phone number and web site for individuals to ask for assistance in the form of loans.” Short of a declaration and miles of red tape, Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson told the Indy Star residents are basically on their own. Erickson said Hoosiers should “start the cleanup process and don’t wait for federal assistance at this point.”
Hampton adds: “You heard it straight from the FEMA spokesman’s mouth. Don’t wait for them. They might not even show up at all. Pray they don’t, or southern Indiana could wind up like New Orleans. Travel trailers, anyone?”
“In the current series of disasters,” writes Jim Kirwan, “there are no [National Guard] troops here to help with evacuations, and the only help that FEMA is currently offering to victims of the Iowa flooding is: ’save all your receipts, because you’ll need to prove what it cost you if you want any help after this is over.’”
As Allen Roland writes for Salon blogs, reposted on the Global Research website, “the real purpose of FEMA is to not only protect the government but to be its principal vehicle for martial law” and this is why “FEMA could not respond immediately to the Hurricane Katrina disaster — humanitarian efforts were no longer part of its job description under the Department of Homeland Security.”
It appears Hurricane Katrina also provided FEMA with an excuse to “dry run” its unconstitutional powers in New Orleans, rounding up “refugees” (now called “evacuees”) and “relocating” them in various camps. “Some evacuees are being treated as ‘internees’ by FEMA,” writes former NSA employee Wayne Madsen.
In fact, as Steve Watson noted in the wake of Katrina, FEMA deliberately sabotaged relief efforts in New Orleans. “Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts has agreed that FEMA has deliberately withheld aid, and cut emergency communication lines, and automatically made the crisis look worse in order to empower the image of a police state emerging to ’save the day’. He even insinuated that the shoot to kill policy was part of the overall operation in order get an awful precedence set to aid the military industrial complex takeover of America.” FEMA, Watson adds, is nothing short of a “federalized front group for the corrupt money hoarding Department of Homeland Security, the Orwellian titled agency that has nothing to do with security and everything to do with limiting the freedoms of people all over the country.”
In other words, as cruel as it may sound, the flood ravaged people of Indiana and other states in the Midwest are better off without a declaration of disaster and FEMA “assistance.”
As DHS spokesman John Erickson hinted and Allen Roland underscored, assisting people during natural disasters ranks low on FEMA’s list of responsibilities. As Harry V. Martin wrote in 1995, after FEMA “dropped the ball” in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, Congress commenced a study of the agency and discovered “FEMA was spending 12 times more for ‘black operations’ than for disaster relief.”
It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress , only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a “black curtain” around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.
Operation Cable Splicer, Garden Plot, and REX 84 (short for Readiness Exercise 1984) are programs long on the shelf, awaiting the appropriate “disaster” to be taken down and implemented. Garden Plot is a program designed to control the population, while Cable Splicer is a program engineered for an orderly takeover of state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and will head up operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation, and include the following:
10990 (allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports), 10995 (allows the government to seize and control the communication media), 10997 (allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals), 10998 (allows the government to take over all food resources and farms), 11000 (allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision), 11001 (allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions), 11002 (designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons), 11003 (allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft), 11004 (allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations) and 11005 (allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities).
More recently, the National Defense Authorization Act, under Sect. 1042, allows the use of “the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies” and explicitly gives the executive the power to invoke martial law – in other words, kiss Posse Comitatus good-bye. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to “a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order,” Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle in February. Add to this the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and National Security Presidential Directive 51, allowing for “continuity of government” in the event of what NSPD-5 vaguely calls a “catastrophic emergency,” and the framework is in place for the imposition of martial law.
As a recent example of the sort of activity FEMA is engaged in, as they tell flood victims in the Midwest to fend for themselves, consider the $22 million per year the agency has spent “on a terror training program within a real town in New Mexico where helicopters buzz overhead in the middle of the night, mock nuclear explosions are drilled and ’suicide bombers’ are taken down by SWAT teams who pull citizens out of their homes,” writes Steve Watson. The Associated Press (see video) deems such events “unthinkable,” and indeed they are, while floods and hurricanes are a reality.
FEMA has very little to do with the sort of natural disasters the people of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana are currently experiencing and everything to do with martial law, thus DHS boss Chertoff’s satisfaction “with the federal response to the massive Midwest flooding” is little more than a dog and pony show, a public relations gimmick slapped over the real face of FEMA.
The governor declares 83 of 99 counties disaster areas as waters continue to rise. The weather is expected to turn foul again.
DES MOINES — Officials on Friday urged tens of thousands of workers and residents to evacuate as rivers across the Hawkeye state continued to flood towns big and small.
Though the National Weather Service expected water levels here in the capital to peak Friday night or early this morning, emergency management officials said they were focused on making sure people were safe and dry in case the situation changed.
“The risk very clearly is that the levee system is extraordinarily taxed right now and anyone in the . . . flood plain is going to be at risk,” Public Works Director Bill Stowe told reporters Friday.
Iowa Gov. Chet Culver on Friday declared 83 of Iowa’s 99 counties disaster areas as rivers either reached or were expected to hit historic levels — flowing over soil already saturated from an extremely wet spring. Dozens of roads were closed, along with sections of two major interstates, forcing weary residents to battle congested, hours-long detours to escape the rising waters.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRejectRead More https://infiniteunknown.net/dsgvo/
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
