Category: Disasters and Disaster Preparedness
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Hurricane Season: Are You Ready?
by Kerry Dougherty I admit it. After decades in the news business I’m jaded. Bored, too. Especially with the tedious, fear-inducing fluff pieces that news outlets sprinkle throughout the year as their reporters obediently attend press conferences and act as stenographers for bureaucrats. You know, the stories with ridiculous “safety precautions” published year after year…
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Summer Dangers
by James C. Sherlock This weekend is the unofficial start of summer, and summer and early fall weather can induce disasters in this state. We’ll look at the hurricane threat to all of Virginia, not just the coasts. Coasts. Hurricanes get the most press and preparations on the coasts. Hampton Roads homeowners expect the…
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Storm’s Coming. Where’s FEMA?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore At his press conference in the Virginia Emergency Operation Center last fall in the aftermath of Hurricane Helen, Gov. Glenn Youngkin introduced “my newest best friend”—the representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). (The “best friend” comment can be found at the 13:15 mark in the video.) When a major disaster…
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About That $660 Million
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Earlier this year, I had an article in Bacon’s Rebellion discussing the concerns of U.S. Senator Mark Warner about a possible hold-up of federal disaster funds meant for the repair of the damage to the Virginia Creeper Trail caused by Hurricane Helene. Several readers expressed their consternation, and rightly so, at the…
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Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Report
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Below are two instances of waste, fraud, and abuse of federal funds that have been recently identified and dealt with in Virginia: Hurricane Helene aid—The Virginia Creeper Trail and the tourist revenue associated with it are important to the town of Damascus and the rest of Washington County in southwest Virginia. Hurricane…
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How NOT to Reverse DEI
by James A. Bacon Here in Virginia, conservatives are making principled arguments against Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in K-12 schools, higher education, and government. DEI bureaucracies cost millions of dollars and crowd out spending for other priorities. DEI compels speech in some instances (pronouns and diversity statements) and suppresses it in others (through…
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7,000 Virginia Properties Have Made Repeated Flooding Insurance Claims
by James A. Bacon I don’t share the apocalyptic alarmism of those who assert that global warming is increasing the frequency and severity of hurricanes. (Read Roger Pielke’s latest essay on the use of a fake data set to buttress the claim.) But I do agree about one thing. Flooding in Hampton Roads is increasing…
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B.R. Readers, Help Us Cut Through the Spin About the Disaster in Carolina
by James A. Bacon by James A. Bacon It turns out that the “October surprise” of the 2024 election wasn’t some political machination but an act of nature — Hurricane Helene. Unprecedented flooding in the mountains of North Carolina and neighboring states (including Virginia on the margins) have created a Hurricane Katrina-scale disaster. Paralleling the…
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Response to Kerry: You Are Wrong
by Dick Hall-Sizemore This whole story about FEMA being broke and, consequently, not being able to assist Helene victims, is another lie propagated by Trump. First, the Secretary of Homeland Security was referring to the possibility of having enough funding to cover the costs of another major storm this season. Congress just appropriated an additional…
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FEMA To Helene Victims: Tough Luck. We’re Broke.
by Kerry Dougherty Perhaps you heard. FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency – is broke. That’s right. Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas stood up this week and figuratively turned his pockets inside out, showing nothing but lint. You see, while you weren’t looking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris quietly transformed FEMA into a giant…
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No, RTD, Hurricane Helene Not Proof of “Climate Change”
By Steve Haner The Richmond Times-Dispatch no longer has a climate alarmist on staff, so today it fell to one of its liberal political columnists (it still has two of those; they will be the last employees out the door) to blame Hurricane Helene on “climate change.” It was a terrible storm, no question. But…
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How’s Your Hurricane Box?
by Kerry Dougherty Quick. Call the cops. Seems I’ve been robbed. Yup, sometime during the past year or two a prowler must have slipped into my house and made off with my valuables. Once inside, he cleverly went past the stuff we’d miss right away, the TV, the pickleball paddles. This bandit took batteries –…
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Tornado
by Kerry Dougherty Virginia Beach isn’t tornado country. We know the drill with hurricanes. We had a rash of those in the ‘80s and ‘90s. From August to November most of us keep well-stocked hurricane boxes handy. And we have days — sometimes more than a week — to prepare or evacuate when a storm…
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Virginia Emergency Management During COVID – A Well-Documented Scandal
By James C. Sherlock We could see it wasn’t right as it unfolded. Virginia’s flawed response to COVID was slow for all Virginians. Fatal for some. But the public just saw the broad stroke external effects. We saw executive orders that seemed sudden, sweeping, and disconnected from the information we had. It turns out that…
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Government Actors Try to Deflect, Deny and “Move On” from Failures During COVID
by James C. Sherlock The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is in full self-defense mode. CDC and the left backed, indeed insisted, upon social isolation during the pandemic. Now they deflect and deny agency in the consequences. They continue to try to insulate themselves from the catastrophic educational and mental health effects on…