In Miami's 'Little Haiti,' Anxiety Over Loved Ones Back Home
Miami may have been spared the wrath of Hurricane Matthew, but for residents of the city's Little Haiti neighborhood the anxiety over the storm was acute. Haiti, birth nation to most of the people in the Miami enclave, was devastated by the storm, which killed hundreds of people on the island and left fears of an even greater toll.
"I have two cousins I have not heard from – I'm very worried," Daniel Fils Aimé, who has lived in Little Haiti for a quarter of a century and was last in his native Les Cayes two years ago, said. "Somebody is supposed to let me know. Someone is investigating."
Mr. Aimé, 72, managed to get in touch with several friends in the devastated southwestern region of Haiti. "I've heard from some friends – not others," he said as he bought pastries and bread at the Piman Bouk Bakery. "They're all scattered now. People lost their houses. They had chickens and cows in the yard — everything went straight into the ocean."
As the chairman of the Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce, which he founded in 2005, Mr. Aimé said he was trying raise money to buy enough food to fill a container, with the intention of sending it to Les Cayes.
Sitting with a friend in a small park at the intersection of 62nd Street and North Miami Avenue, Maximin Raphael, 59, closed his eyes and pu rsed his lips as he thought about his 43-year-old sister, Gyslaine Joseph, in Les Cayes, and what she went through during the hurricane.
Mr. Raphael, who has lived in the United States for 34 years, had finally managed to reach her by telephone on Friday morning, after days of trying.
"Her house is gone," Mr. Raphael said. "The roof flew away. Everybody that lives there has a big problem."
At the Piman Bouk Bakery, murals, both inside and out, portray a verdant and abundant Haiti in the manner of much of the country's art. But the crushing realities of life there, made even more so by frequent batterings it takes from natural calamities like storms and earthquakes, were all too plain to the customers — almost invariably Haitian immigrants — who lined up Friday afternoon to buy goods.
"We are all Haitian, so we have to be concerned, regardless of whether they are family or not," said Marie-Claude Richardson, a registered nurse who was born in Cap Haitien, in the country's north, and who moved to Miami in 1986 after completing high school in her native country. — NICK MADIGAN, in Miami
Florida Governor Declines to Extend Voter Registration
Mr. Scott, a Republican, declined to extend the deadline after a call from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to accommodate people disrupted by the hurricane. Read more »[1]
Could Hurricane Loop Back?
Forecasters say there are hints that the storm could take a path back toward the coastline, at a reduced strength. Read more from John Schwartz »[2]
High Tide Warnings and Parties in South Carolina
On Friday afternoon in Charleston, S.C., officials warned of potentially record-setting high tides, urged people to evacuate if they had not done so and set a curfew, from midnight until 6 a.m. Saturday, for those who remained.
But as the wind whistled and rain began to spit on this peninsular city, those who remained here seemed remarkably relaxed.
"There's parties all over," said Elle Norton, 58, as she boarded up the windows of her pale pink house in downtown Charleston, and brought her potted plants inside. "I have to go to the st ore now to get some appetizers."
To Ms. Norton and many others here, the emptiness of Charleston's palm-tree-lined streets, where antebellum architecture is dotted with hidden courtyards and lush window boxes, was a refreshing break, because the city is usually brimming with tourists.
"It's so pleasant just hearing the birds," Ms. Norton said.
A few streets over, Normandy Farm Bakery had filled the case it normally reserved for oysters — of which there were only three left — with hot dogs and beer, and strung up a random assortment of celebratory balloons outside to signal they were staying open.
"You ride it out in your house, you're gonna go bananas," said the owner, Mike Ray, who seemed unmoved by the dire warnings from public officials. "I don't think it's gonna flood right here."
Nearby, Jerome Monroe, a local handy man, closed the shutters on a fine arts gallery. He was planning to ride out the storm inside the Footlight Player's Theater, where he would use a ShopVac to try to minimize flooding, though he knew he was powerless to prevent it entirely.
"When the water comes," Mr. Monroe said, "you're not stopping it." — JESSICA BIDGOOD in Charleston, S.C.
Our Reporter Is Taking Hurricane Questions
John Schwartz, a New York Times reporter who covers climate change[3] and the environment, is answering reader questions about the storm. He rode out his first hurricane[4], Carla, in his hometown, Galveston, Tex., at age 4. He has covered the[5] aftermath [6]of Hurricane Katrina[7], as well as other[8] storms[9] for The Times.
Ask your hurricane questions here[10].
Why do weather agencies and the news media keep getting the forecasts so wrong and overstate the severity of hurricanes? Is this some kind of insurance liability issue, where they are afraid of getting sued if they don't paint a 'doomsday' picture? — Jim
The conservative approach isn't about liability, Jim, it's about saving lives. The storm track that Matthew has followed has been well within the range of possibilities that the National Hurricane Center has been talking about all along. This is still a dangerous storm, and just because some stretches of the Florida coast have not been hit as catastrophically as was possible, that does not mean the rest of Florida or Georgia or South Carolina are in the clear.
Marshall Shepherd, the director of Atmospheric Sciences Program, University of Georgia, has been fiercely defending the warnings on Twitter, and I'll let him do the talking here:
Chris W. Landsea, science and operations officer for the National Hurricane Center, said that while the storm has weakened somewhat, it is now spread over a larger area, and "a larger hurricane can cause more storm surge," and a larger wind field; the wind damage, in other words, can be felt over a larger area. So a slightly weaker but larger storm is "kind of a wash, as far as impacts," he said.
I grew up in Houston and also rode out Carla as a child as well as Henrietta in Cabo as an adult. I certainly believe in climate change, but is the hurricane season really worse now? What about the 1900 Galveston hurricane? — Jackie Berry
There have always been hurricanes, and many have been profoundly destructive. The Great Storm of 1900< a href="#readabilityFootnoteLink-11" class="readability-DoNotFootnote" style="color: inherit;">[11] killed at least 6,000 people on Galveston Island, and remains the deadliest natural disaster in United States history.
But climate change isn't about these isolated incidents. It's the long-term trend, and the long-term trend is not good.
People remember the 1900 storm — and the haunting song about it, Wasn't that a Mighty Storm?[12] and Erik Larson's book "Isaac's Storm" — because it stands out in the damage that it did. What climate change is doing is dumping more heat into the oceans and more moisture into the air — conditions that are likely, over time, to make the strong storms that do develop become more powerful, and possibly more frequent, as well.
Katharine Hayhoe[13], a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, noted that while global average temperatures are rising, "20 times more heat is going into the ocean" than into the atmosphere, and so that's a lot of power in the sea for hurricanes to draw on. And, in fact, while the 1900 storm was terribly destructive, much of that tragedy could be blamed on the lack of warning in those pre-satellite times.
It's hard to attribute any single weather event to climate change, but it's clear that climate change sets up conditions that can lead to more 1900 storms, more Katrinas, more Sandys. When I wrote about the science of attribution last year, Andrew E. Dessler[14], a climate researcher at Texas A & M, told me determining whether an extreme weather event like a flood is caused by climate change is like trying to figure out which of Barry Bonds's home runs were caused by his steroid use.
"You know statistically som e of them were, but you don't know which ones," he said. "Almost certainly, it would have rained a lot even without climate change — but it's possible climate change juiced it, added a little bit."
Continue reading the main story[15]References
- ^ Read more » (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ Read more from John Schwartz » (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ Recent and archival news about global warming. (topics.nytimes.com)
- ^ rode out his first hurricane (thelede.blogs.nytimes.com)
- ^ the (query.nytimes.com)
- ^ aftermath (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ Katrina (query.nytimes.com)
- ^ other (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ storms (www.n ytimes.com)
- ^ here (www.nytimes.com)
- ^ The Great Storm of 1900 (timesmachine.nytimes.com)
- ^ Wasn't that a Mighty Storm? (www.youtube.com)
- ^ Katharine Hayhoe (katharinehayhoe.com)
- ^ Andrew E. Dessler (atmo.tamu.edu)
- ^ Continue reading the main story (www.nytimes.com)
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar