CCR / Results for: En_Fossil_Mn Hurricanes_MN
Search website. Enter your search term above.
Oil and gas investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz says the extent of damage done after Hurricane Ida from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry from leaks, spills, flaring, ruptures and chemical releases in the Gulf Coast could be among the worst of such events ever recorded.
Hurricane Larry, the 12th named storm of the busy 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane on Friday night in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, the National Hurricane Center said.
At least 48 people have died in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast as a result of flooding and tornadoes associated with Post-Tropical Cyclone Ida, and the toll continues to rise. Between its category 4 landfall in Louisiana, which killed at least 13, and its rampage through the eastern U.S., Ida has taken more than 60 lives, and it appears destined to go on the books as one of the deadliest and most destructive U.S. hurricanes of the 21st century so far.
The electric grid’s dysfunctional relationship with hurricanes offers a new twist on the Humpty-Dumpty story. Again and again when fierce storms like Hurricane Ida topple wires and poles, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men do put the grid back together again. But with the next big blow, down it goes.
Some of the worst urban flash flooding in U.S. history struck the New York City area on Wednesday night, as the remnants of once-category 4 Hurricane Ida teamed up with a frontal zone, upper-level energy, and an influx of tropical moisture to dump historic rains across the Northeast. Countless homes and businesses were flooded, some severely, and the nation’s largest city was brought to a virtual standstill, with scenes that seemed drawn from an apocalyptic future.
Three days after Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana, its weakened remnants tore into the Northeast and claimed at least 43 lives across New York, New Jersey and two other states in an onslaught that ended Thursday and served as an ominous sign of climate change’s capacity to wreak new kinds of havoc.
Hurricane Ida, which on Sunday struck the coast of Louisiana near Port Fourchon as a very strong Category 4 storm, will teach us many lessons. The first is the hardest to acknowledge: No matter what you spend in vulnerable coastal areas, you can’t protect everything from every storm.
Officials in Louisiana are still assessing the damage from Hurricane Ida, but two things are already clear: While there was widespread flooding around the state, the systems built to defend New Orleans mostly held up. And, the electrical grid did not.
Entergy said Wednesday that it is slowly adding power back to New Orleans, and the pace of that work will determine how quickly the region’s important oil refineries can restart operations that were shut down by Hurricane Ida.
The utility company said that it restored power “for some customers in Eastern New Orleans” — it didn’t say how many — but hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remained without power or water service.
A fertilizer plant battered by Hurricane Ida belched highly toxic anhydrous ammonia into the air. Two damaged gas pipelines leaked isobutane and propylene, flammable chemicals that are hazardous to human health. And a plastic plant that lost power in the storm’s aftermath is emitting ethylene dichloride, yet another toxic substance.