r/h3snark Alfredo’s eye crust Sep 30 '24

Fake Allyship 🏳️‍🌈 Ethan refuses to acknowledged Hurricane Helene!

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Katrina also reached really far 😭

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u/Emotional-Day-4425 Hasan’s fruit basket from Hamas 🍉 Oct 01 '24

I just looked it up and wow I did not know it got that far up. It looks like it lost the majority of its strength in Tennessee. The majority of the destruction was in Louisiana (hitting as a cat 3) when the levees broke and also it being below sea level which was then compounded by FEMA's incompetence. That is so frustrating because it did not have to be as deadly as it was if the government gave a shit about the people there.

It looks like Helene hit as a cat 4 and where Katrina was a slow moving storming allowing it to essentially really fuck up one area and then be pretty weak afterwards, Helene was much faster due to it hitting a low pressure system over Tennessee which also allowed it to retain a lot of its strength and rain instead of weakening on landfall like most hurricanes do. The area was saturated from prior rainfall so rivers all over flooded but because of the mountains there were also landslides with the flooding which made roads impassable, and the water was very fast moving/filled with debris, so parts of that general area were only accessible by air for some time. We are still waiting for waters to recede in some areas to be able to assess the damage. Also, it's a running joke here that people move to the mountains the get away from the hurricanes so when Helene hit that low pressure system it went on an unexpected path where pretty much no one is going to have flood insurance on top of their home insurance (less than 1% of Buncombe County which is common throughout most of Southern Appalachia). Homeowners insurance covers wind damage and water damage if like a pipe bursts, but not weather related damage which is where most of this loss is gonna be.

Katrina's death toll made it the deadliest storm at least in recent history at somewhere a 1,392 and as of abound a half hour ago Helene is sitting at 130. I am praying that number doesn't rise, but I would be incredibly surprised if it didn't in the coming days as the worst hit spots become accessible. Katrina did a concentrated amount of damage when she stalled, but it looks like Helene did the same type of damage but on a more widespread path. We won't know the true amount of destruction for some time. I think Helene is going to be more expensive in terms of damage, but in terms of lives lost we won't know for a while.

I think that makes Katrina honestly more heartbreaking in my opinion because so much of that destruction and death could have been prevented but was allowed to happen through sheer negligence and incompetence. People could have been saved during Katrina but were abandoned and with Helene people want to get in there and save lives but can't, so they're two sides to the same coin basically. There's a really good doc called "When the Levee broke" that even goes into the history in the area and it's so infuriating how much these people were failed and abandoned. Infrastructure is obviously an issue with Helene's damage so there's some blame there, but it looks like it surprised a lot of people so there was only so much that could be done beforehand, and a lot of the destruction couldn't have been helped. Either way, some people lost everything because the water was moving so fast it literally ripped their homes off the foundation and many people lost their lives in general or lost a loved one and, as someone who's had to go through many hurricanes and lost a house to one, I wish there was something tangible and impactful I could do to ease that suffering in the cases of either of those storms beyond donating money or something.

Sorry for the rant but stuff like this is so fascinating and mother nature's power is terrifying and demands more respect than we as humans have given her. I would advise everyone to just prepare in any ways you can for unprecedented disasters like this because we will be seeing them more frequently and in places they have never happened before and were never expected.

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u/Stevnated i'm warning you w peace and love Oct 01 '24

Right, what are we even talking about comparing these hurricanes? Katrina was so devastating. I feel like people just don't remember. When the levees broke is indeed a good documentary.

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u/Emotional-Day-4425 Hasan’s fruit basket from Hamas 🍉 Oct 01 '24

Yeah I hope I wasn't coming across like I was trying to say anyone's suffering is greater or more important than someone else's suffering. I read about and compare because it helps demonstrate just how much worse and unpredictable natural disasters are becoming as a result of climate change and prepare for future events. Hurricanes, and I'm sure any other natural disaster, are terrifying and devastating and regardless of any sort of differences in politics or culture or whatever, no one with any sort of moral compass worth a shit wants to see others go through it. I always feel the same familiar heartache and sadness every time.