By Eric Holthaus 20 September 2017 (Grist) – After multiple intense hurricane landfalls this month, the scenes from the Caribbean have been horrific — trees stripped bare, houses flattened, million-dollar yachts strewn like toys. Category 5 hurricanes, like Irma and Maria, are the pinnacle of nature’s fury. There is simply no weather event on Earth […]
By Matthew Nussbaum And Marc Caputo 30 September 2017 (Politico) – President Donald Trump attacked the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday, writing on Twitter that she and other leaders on the storm-ravaged territory “want everything to be done for them.” Trump’s early morning broadsides came after San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz […]
By Abby Hamblin 29 September 2017 (San Diego Tribune) – Puerto Rico Mayor Yulín Cruz is begging for help with Hurricane Maria relief for the island of more than 3.4 million people suffering without power and other basic necessities. “I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying,” she said […]
By Anthony Faiola 12 September 2017 CRUZ BAY, U.S. Virgin Islands (The Washington Post) – The Asolare restaurant is gone, practically blown off its cliff, along with its world-famous carrot ginger soup. The facade of Margarita Phil’s is a junkyard of yellow and vermilion planks. Multimillion-dollar homes and aluminum huts alike lie in ruins.On the […]
By T.J. Raphael 14 September 2017 (PRI) – Barbuda has been left completely devastated by Hurricane Irma. An estimated 95% of Barbuda’s structures are damaged, and the entire island of around 1,800 people has been evacuated. “The damage is complete,” says Ambassador Ronald Sanders, who has served as Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the U.S. […]
By Jay Reeves 14 September 2017 IMMOKALEE, Florida (Associated Press) – Larry and Elida Dimas didn’t have much to begin with, and Hurricane Irma left them with even less.The storm peeled open the roof of the old mobile home where they live with their 18-year-old twins, and it destroyed another one they rented to migrant […]
By Anne Barker 8 September 2017 (ABC News) – An estimated 40 million people in South Asia are struggling to rebuild their lives after massive floods devastated the region nearly a month ago.Entire villages across Bangladesh, India, and Nepal remained submerged under water since the floods began in mid-August.Authorities have described it as the region’s […]
By Suhasini Raj and Jeffrey Gettleman 7 September 2017MURMALA, India (The New York Times) – As the floodwaters sloshed into her hut, Phoolvati, a poor and landless woman living in a farming village in Bihar State, scrambled to grab some jewelry, a soccer ball and a wad of rupees — the last of the family’s […]
By Ben Walker 25 August 2017 SANTIAGO K, Bolivia (InsideClimate News) – Someone’s nearly always lived in Santiago K. Cupped in the Bolivian highlands that border Chile, the small village is littered by centuries of conquest and expansion: from the pre-Incas, who ringed the surrounding hills with protective fortresses, to the gold-hungry Spanish conquistadors drawn […]
20 July 2017 (National Butterfly Center) – The surveyor’s stakes marking the 150 ft “clearing zone” for Trump’s Border Fence appeared at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, TX, on Thursday, 20 July 2017, along with a work crew with chainsaws and heavy equipment. When Marianna Trevino Wright, executive director of the nonprofit center confronted […]