Editorial roundup
The next storm
While Houstonians help our neighbors demuck or try to make temporary housing feel like home, the nation yet again turns its eyes and hearts to the destruction wrought by nature’s fury.
Hurricane Irma has crossed the state of Florida, bringing winds and rain to coastal communities. People fled the storm’s path by the millions in one of the largest evacuations in U.S. history. Downtown Miami flooded; Jacksonville was inundated with a record storm surge, and millions of people are without power across the state.
Before it made landfall, Irma was one of the most powerful hurricanes on record, with sustained winds of 185 mph for more than 24-hours straight and a footprint the size of Texas. So far, reports are hinting that Florida and Puerto Rico may have both avoided the worst-case scenario of this unprecedented storm. Parts of the U.S. Virgin Islands and other Caribbean nations, however, weren’t as lucky.
Congress should not hesitate to approve an Irma recovery bill with all the speed and robust funding that was demonstrated in the $15 billion Hurricane Harvey bill passed this month.
But it cannot end there. Rebuilding Texas, Florida and other hurricane-ravaged communities will likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars. A final recovery package must include enough resources to not only help people get back on their feet, but also fully fund the infrastructure needed to harden our cities against future hurricanes and floods.
The United States has to start making the smart investments in coastal communities.
The sad fact is that millions of Americans live in the path of a storm and our government is ill prepared at every level to keep them safe. The cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg breathed a collective sigh of relief as they avoided a direct hit from Irma. The metropolitan area has been the subject of a series of academic studies and news reports revealing how it is dangerously vulnerable to a major hurricane.
Houstonians share in that fear every time we watch a scientific model of a hurricane moving up the ship channel, or read projections about the destruction wrought by a failure at the Addicks and Barker dams.
From Texas to Florida, volunteers and helping hands are doing everything they can to repair and rebuild. Not even an ocean can stand in the way: Puerto Ricans are sailing to the U.S. Virgin Islands with supplies and tools to help people recover after Irma.
Now Congress needs to do its part to keep us safe from the next storm.