Mid-South Mugged
CNN’s latest round-up on the Southern storms:
Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN) — Daylight illuminated a scene of utter devastation across many areas of the South Thursday, following storms of near-epic proportions that killed as many as 231 people in six states.
The vast majority of fatalities occurred in Alabama, where as many as 149 people perished, although Gov. Robert Bentley told reporters Thursday there were 131 confirmed deaths.
A breakdown provided by Bentley’s office showed that violent weather claimed lives in 16 Alabama counties. Thirty people perished in DeKalb County in northeastern Alabama; the death toll in the hard-hit city of Tuscaloosa, in west-central Alabama, was at 36 as of Thursday morning, said Mayor Walter Maddox.
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was monitoring the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant near Athens in north Alabama, about 32 miles west of Huntsville, after it lost offsite power Wednesday night due to the storms. The three units at the plant shut down automatically when power was lost, it said. “One of the plant’s diesel generators was out of service for maintenance, but the other seven started to power the units’ emergency loads,” the commission said. “Plant operators and Tennessee Valley Authority line crews are working to restore offsite power to all three units.” The Tennessee Valley Authority operates the plant.
TVA spokeswoman Barbara Martocci told CNN no radiation was released as a result of the shutdown, and the plant is currently in a safe shutdown mode.
Fortunately the Republicants haven’t managed to totally destroy the Federal government’s ability to respond to disasters, which is the logical endpoint of what they are doing in Congress, so the fiscally conservative Republicant governors who have already managed to seriously damage the ability of their states to respond, can ask for Federal welfare/assistance. They won’t tax themselves, but they don’t mind getting money from taxpayers who are willing to pay for government in California and New York.
Fortunately the TVA is a government entity created under FDR, so it actually has the on-site resources to avoid a meltdown like Fukushima.
I have been following this frontal system on the Tornado Map on my sidebar since last Friday. It has been crawling to the East and throwing off severe thunderstorms and tornado every day since. It finally passed through my area early this morning as a rather noisy thunderstorm with high winds.
6 comments
Waiting for some Baptist preacher to say this is God’s punishment to the South for their sins in three…. two… one…. err. Nevermind. I forgot. It’s only God’s punishment when *other* people get smited, not when good God-fearin’ white trash rednecks get smited. Alrighty, then!
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
There have been too many “double-wide churches” destroyed for this to be “G*d’s will”, unlike those “heathen Catholic temples” in New Orleans.
It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Alabama took the money for “Gulf Coast recovery” after Katrina, and used it to build high-priced condos in Tuskaloosa, rather than rebuilding Bayou la Batre. Access to luxury rental properties during the football season was more important than the lives of a bunch of poor fisherfolk.
Oh, but Bryan, you know that states always know what they need better than the feral gummint does; it’s a tenet (or was that “tenant”) of right-wing ideology.
I don’t mind helping the people who were injured, but I strenuously object to helping the politicians who made the misery worse by decades of neglect. Building a new port facility on the Gulf while Waveland, Mississippi was struggling to survive as a community is one of the smaller crimes of the reign of Haley Barbour.
Never fear, the Rethugian Carpetbaggers have gotten their hands on TVA now and are in the process of Rape, Robbing and Pillaging the assets. As a TVA retiree I get to help bear the brunt of their actions. While I only got a 1.2% COLA for the last two years, the President of TVA will be getting a 3.5 million dollar bonus for his great performance. So by butt reaming me and other retirees, he gets wealthy. The man could be a six term Senator and not steal as much legally and in public view.
The Rethugians have wanted to get their hands on TVA since back in the 1950’s and the only thing stopping them right now is the 25 billion dollars of debt load. If they can get the crooks in DC to shift that burden to the US taxpayers, then they will sell off the assets to their buddies and share in the proceeds for years to come. The Koch brothers would love to expand their empire.
I also am a resident of Alabama so I get to witness all of these dumbass redneck teabaggers who voted for the Rethugians line up to get FEMA assistance. I wonder if they ever stop and think that if they continue to vote that way FEMA will cease to exist.
Welcome, Dave, and, yeah, it is very predictable: a government service is privatized and the first thing the MBAs attack is the pension plan. No one thinks about the fact that the President of the United States seems to get along on $400K/year, and a lot of people still seem to want the job. I have to say that $3.5 million is clearly excessive because the head football coach at the University of Florida only make $2 million/year, and that’s the most important job in the world, ask anyone in Florida.
The fact that the timber companies own the majority of land in Alabama and the state constitution limits their property tax to less than a dollar per acre is criminal. How can the government do anything for the people of Alabama with restrictions like that?
The Koch brothers probably have the TVA in their sights after they finish taking over all of the publicly-owned utilities in Wisconsin, their current target. They will break it up, and put the total debt load into one sub-unit and have that unit declare bankruptcy – it isn’t hard to do, and has been done multiple times in the past. How do you think someone like Donald Trump can have three bankruptcies and still be rolling in cash? Paying what you owe, is only for the lower classes, not the high rollers.
It is amazing how these deficit-hawk Republicants never consider the source of the money they suck out of FEMA. If they cut the budget, there is no money for FEMA, and people are on their own. A lot of the people who got hit are unemployed and lost their homeowners/renters insurance when they couldn’t afford to pay the premiums, so coming back is going to be really slow.
I have been through a number of major hurricanes, so I know about the situation, and understand their pain, but they have to stop voting for people who hate them.