Hurricane Harvey: How to Help Its Survivors

from Washington Post

This past weekend, Hurricane Harvey struck the Texas Gulf Coast, becoming the first cyclone to make US landfall since 2005, and has left almost undefinably horrific destruction in its wake. Over the last six days, the initially Category 4 hurricane and subsequent rainfall have drenched the coast and the Houston metro area with over 50 inches of rain, requiring 13,000 rescues (and counting); obliterating the coastal city of Rockport, where it touched down; flooding roadways large and small; displacing many thousands of people, and crippling a metro area of over 6 million people; and causing at current count roughly more than two dozen deaths.

from Washington Post

Though the storm is tracking eastward, potentially causing flooding and displacement in Louisiana, rain continues to fall both in the city of Houston and its environs, rivers, lakes, bayous, reservoirs and dams are at capacity, and highways, streets, and entire neighborhoods remain underwater. A great deal of Houston's critical infrastructure is either under threat or damaged as well. It is the worst recorded flood in Texas history, and recovery will likely take many years. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone there and their family members across the country and globe. The few people I know living in Houston are thankfully all out of direct harm's way, but have no idea when they will be able to return to their homes.

from Washington Post

Both in the near term and the long term, residents of the affected areas are going to need support, from the government and everyone else. In particular, children, the elderly, those who are ill, homeless people, and people with disabilities, to name just a few, will require sustained help. Below are links from reputable news sites with links on how to donate money, blood, food, clothing, funds for clean-up and rebuilding, and more. All Houstonians and residents of the Gulf Coast and states to the east, where rain is currently drenching cities and towns, will need our support. Please scroll through the various agencies, and if you can give something, please do, now and, if possible, down the road. 

Via NPR:

"Here's How You Can Help People Affected by Harvey"

(Links for general relief, blood donations, shelter, food, people with disabilities, children, and animals)

Via Huffington Post:

"Here's How to Help the Victims of Hurricane Harvey"

(This was the first set of links I saw, and it includes crowdfunding links for specific needs.)

Via Colorlines (h/t Ernest Hardy for this link)

"How to Donate and Other Aid to Communities of Color in Houston" 

(More targeted donation options)

Via The New York Times:

"Making Sure Your Help Gets to Hurricane Victims"

(A fine list of organizations, with links, to help people in the affected areas)

Via CNN:

"Here's how you can help the victims of Hurricane Harvey"

(Many very helpful links here)

Via Rolling Stone:

"Hurricane Harvey Disaster Relief: How to Help"

(Some of the same links as above, with a few different ones)

Via Forbes:

"Helping Out After Hurricane Harvey: Where, When & How to Donate"

(A list with updated links)

Normalcy + iPhone Portraits

It has been two weeks since the national and local elections, and three weeks since Tropical Storm Sandy, and I feel, at least in some ways, that life is slowly returning to something approaching normalcy, even if there are still many signs that everyone and everyone around me is still recovering, to varying degrees, from the devastation and trauma the storm wrought. I cannot complain and over all feel very thankful; we made it through mostly unscathed, but for the lack of electricity and heat for over a week. Three graduate students in one of the programs I'm affiliated with, however, lost a great deal of their personal belongings, and one of these students was completely flooded out. I know her, though not well, and feel great empathy for what she and so many continue to face. Every day I read about people who've lost their loved ones, homes and jobs, who are struggling to rebuild and recover, who are not sure how they are going to keep going on, beyond hope and perseverance and and prayers.

The physical damage is still present too, even in Jersey City: lights are still out at some intersections; many small businesses remain shuttered or, once you step through their open doors, have had to tear out walls, shelving, flooring, everything, in an effort to rebuild; and other businesses, having gone days without power and weeks without customers, are hanging on by the most gossamer thread. The garbage trucks have mostly hauled away the first few mountains of rotted drywall, spalted wood, moldy carpeting. Littler heaps nevertheless reappear at curbsides. One local restaurant on Grove St., one of the main commercial downtown strips, though reopened, was still unable to restock just a week ago, and its proprietor nearly started crying as she recounted the challenges she faced. Her emotion, just below the surface, is visible in the faces of so many.

I noted to C how last week, when in Manhattan, I noted a muted, almost wary, melancholy mood on the streets. Some people looked like I have felt: wrung out. I thought it was the rejiggered schedule, the hyperpacked PATH trains, the rationing date schedule, the sense that in the wider world, the storm and its damage have left the news for so much else. (There was the election, which was a burst of positivity in so many ways.) Then I read Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, and he committed to his blog a fuller portrait of what I've detected. Just a quote from his post "Post-Sandy Mood", which I felt could really be titled "Post-Sandy Blues" or "Post-Sandy Blahs," to give you a sense of what he says:

"Tired" is the predominant feeling--represented by the largest type in this word cloud (I collapsed synonyms like "exhausted" into it, as with others). This tiredness is a tiredness that seems to go on and on, for those hit hardest and for those barely impacted. Most of us are tired. 

Curiously, no one said they feel angry. They're frustrated and annoyed, resentful and cranky, but what about angry? Anger takes energy, and when you're exhausted, it's not easy to be angry.

Along with feeling exhausted, depressed, and worried, unmotivated and annoyed, many people are also feeling grateful and lucky--for not losing their homes or for just being alive in the midst of loss. Many feel hopeful. Several said they feel empathetic for those who are suffering. 

JVNY features word clouds that quite accurately reflect, at least to me, the malaise lying beneath the surfaces of things. Or perhaps not a malaise, but a disquiet. I'm not sure it could fill a book, as Fernando Pessoa once did, but it does feel worth mentioning. Soon enough, it too will pass, though the struggles of so many, Sandy-related and not, will go on, as they always do, without any notice or notation from the wider world. Helpfully he provides links to psychological resources for those still trying to cope.

The PATH trains are running irregularly; the World Trade Center and Hoboken stations are still being repaired after flooding that could easily have appeared in a 1970s disaster flick. One image from the Hoboken PATH station eerily recalled The Shining, though it was salt water, and not blood, that gushed through the elevator doors. (Is "thankfully" appropriate here?) The Exchange Place Station also remains closed. Whenever I envision the volume of water that rushed down its vertiginous stairs onto the tracks below, I get chills. Given the damage, the Port Authority has not offered any predictions on when any of these stations will open. The light rail trains, in Hudson County and in Newark, are running again following their regular schedules, but like the PATH, they are sometimes so full it amazes me they can advance down the track.

In those moments when I am not pressed like a piece of herring in a tin and the trains aren't seesawing around the bend I still try to get in a few sketches. Drawing is a deeply calming, centering, enjoyable activity for me, and has been since I was small. Here are a few very recent life portraits, all on my iPhone, using Sketchbook Pro. I got a stylus with the new phone, but I have yet to use it. I have gotten so used to my fingers working in favor of pen and pencil tips that they've become my default. At any rate, I'll take rocking trains and an altered schedule that requires a bit more pre-planning over having to get in a car and drive on the highway, even if it's a 15-20-minute trip, any day.

Surviving Sandy

My apologies for all the errors in the post on the color "blue"! I wrote it after a long, busy teaching day, and only noted well afterwards how garbled it was. It should be less so now. There are no solid sheets of blue above us today, nor have there been for the last few days. Instead, it's been shades of gray, gray clouds, gray sky, all auguring what we're being told is the worst storm to hit this area in a year. I wasn't here last October when Hurricane Irene struck, but Hurricane Sandy, or the Frankenstorm, which blew through the Caribbean, leaving 60 dead and widespread damage, has begun barreling towards barreled onto the shore, exacerbated by a full moon's high tides, and preceded by terrifying winds, some as high as 90 mph, and one of the lowest recorded pressures in decades at 940 milibars.
UPDATED (The storm terminated my original post on Monday.)

The storm subsumed swaths of the Eastern seaboard from North Carolina north to Connecticut, battering coastal New York City, Long Island and New Jersey, where it touched down in devastating fashion. Whole shore towns, as well as inland cities along rivers, were underwater, yet even communities farther away from watercourses suffered flooding and sewer backups. Atlantic City, which finds itself near the eye of the storm, has suffered flooding all along its boardwalk and beaches, and other littoral towns are also drowning. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the evacuation of low-lying coastal neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, calling those who could not or refused to leave "selfish," and many of those areas, like Red Hook in Brooklyn, and Bay Terrace in Staten Island, New York City, ended up underwater. The MTA was shut down, as was the PATH and NJ Transit, the airports in Newark and Queens, and many major roads; subway tunnels flooded, the PATH line from the World Trade Center also turned into a swimming pool, and many train lines suffered damage or blockage from downed trees, strewn vehicles, and, in several cases, boats hurled up onto their tracks.  Lower Manhattan experienced a transformer explosion, which extinguished almost all of its power (save that of Goldman Sachs), and the NYU Medical Center had to be evacuated. So far more than 30 people are confirmed dead, and there are others whose whereabouts remain unknown.

Closer to home, the storm's anticipated and current destruction led to flooding all along the Jersey City waterfront, and nearby Hoboken was plunged almost completely underwater. Newark also suffered such extensive damage and flooding that the university was shut down until Monday.  Thankfully we suffered no flooding and no damage to the house or cars, but the storm stripped the siding off many nearby houses; knocked a huge limb into a neighbor's front yard, damaging one of their eaves; peeled the roof of an apartment building off like a sardine can; and removed an awning as if it were a baseball cap. Electricity went out around 7 pm Monday. As of today, Friday, November 2, four and a half days after the shutdown, we are still without electricity, though we thankfully do have gas in the car (and gasoline is scarce all over the bi-state area, not just in our city), hot water (because of a gas-powered water heater installed a few years ago), enough funds to get by, and non-perishable food. Because we did keep an analog phone and an old battery-powered radio we are able to maintain contact with the outside world. Because we had candles, batteries and flashlights in the house, we have light; because we own a cooler, we can keep food outside in the cold weather. Parts of Jersey City's downtown, especially where the financial firms are located, do have power, but large sections of the city do not, nor do large portions of the neighboring cities and towns of Bayonne, North Bergen, Union City, Harrison, Secaucus, Hoboken, and Kearney.

Driving around feels at times like being in a J. G. Ballard (The Drowned World) or Octavia Butler (The Parable of the Sower; The Parable of the Talents) novel. (Or my own novel set in 1804, Palimpsests!) As I said, gasoline is scarce, and many stations that have it cannot meet demand or lack the electricity to pump it. Meanwhile rumors circulate about where one can find it. The cash machines are mostly empty of cash, and since the electricity is still down in many places, stores cannot guarantee that they can accept debit cards. Unless you have access to analog devices, you may not be able even to contact the police or any authorities if something goes wrong. Streetlights remain out, and there are pockets of police in place, but in other areas, only a think veneer separates one from lawlessness. One neighbor confessed to feeling rage and desperation at the lack of contact with authorities, the lack of updates, and the failure of almost every system. She did fortunately have gas in her car and some cash on her, so she and her sons weren't stranded, but her husband and his brother are stuck somewhere and remained unreachable. A friend has lost his car and had to shelter his landlord, whose home was flooded. He is now living with his mother, who lives in a neighboring town, reaching her by walking to her home. Another friend, who teaches at Rutgers-New Brunswick, mentioned the Darwinian air now taking hold in Greenwich Village and other parts of lower Manhattan. Yet another colleague was fortunate to find a train now running to take him and visit his elderly mother who had taken ill while finding herself in the dark down in the middle of the state. And these are only a few of the stories I have heard.

What this storm has underlined for me is not just the urge to non-theological providence and prudence that my Depression-era late grandfather always urged, but also a rethinking of so much of my acceptance and internalization of the contemporary shift to the digital, to the electric and electronic, and to any credence I have placed in private companies, especially the large ones like AT&T and PSE&G, on whom so many lives depend, without a healthy dose of skepticism. As of today we continue to have spotty cell phone service, and the power company has been dismal about letting us know with anything approaching a reasonable estimate. Originally we were told that we would get service by next Monday, but as of yesterday the automated response was saying next Friday, November 9! Our voting station is nearby, at a local eldercare center, so will that be operative by Tuesday? Or are there other provisions that are being taken to ensure that we have electricity in this area and will be able to vote? Their actions make one of the best cases for active government regulation. So much of the local and regional infrastructure went kaput, despite assurances that it could withstand such a storm, and despite the prior warnings and the example of last year's Hurricane Irene, previous snowstorms, the 2003 Blackout, and the attacks of September 11, 2001. It seems that instead of taking into account the best science and spending the money to ensure future viability, corporate executives, unless forced to, stuff the money into their pockets. These are the people we are told daily we're supposed to extol. No thanks!

The local officials have been mostly decent; our governor, Republican Chris Christie, was on the air communicating with citizens proactively and has been visible since, even appearing with and praising President Barack Obama, who came to New Jersey to view the wreckage, on Wednesday. (Based on information that hasn't been shared with us, Obama said we would have electricity by yesterday, but so far, that hasn't panned out.) New York's Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, and New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, also displayed real leadership as the storm was approaching, and both also have spoken out about the need for the US to address the reality of global warming and climate change, an anathema subject among the GOP and many Democrats, and a topic about which the president has grown silent in recent years. Newark's mayor, Cory Booker, already a superhero in the eyes of many, not only was responding directly to requests his constituents tweeted to him, but even opened his home to feed neighbors and provide them a charging station.




Jersey City's mayor, Jerramiah Healy, has appeared to go missing, issuing evacuation orders and the curfew, but otherwise invisible. I have not heard him on the radio even once; his name appears only intermittently, except to be denounced, on online sites focusing on local news. Some downtown residents have even posted signs asking where "Waldo Healy Is?" and labeling the city "All On Our Own Again." He has waltzed into office each time he's run, so perhaps voters will get past the D (for "Developers'-Best-Friend"?) next to his name and give a challenger, a more progressive Democrat or a moderate, a chance. Whatever happens, I just hope the electricity returns sooner rather than later. C, I and the cats are holding up, but a cold house is a cold house. I'm not so ready to be off the grid--yet--but even if I were, I also know now what I've always been urged: be prepared.