Remember Hurricane Laura? If you live in Louisiana or Texas, I will just bet you do. If you live anywhere else, it may already have slipped down below the fold and out of consciousness, as the firehose of horrifying Trump-related news continues unabated.
So here. Have some stats:
* As many as 14,000 evacuees are seeking shelter in Louisiana and Texas hotels.
* At least 14 deaths in Louisiana have been attributed to Hurricane Laura.
* Four deaths in Texas were connected to the storm.
* With nearly 300,000 still without power, officials said outages could last for weeks.
* Schools in Calcasieu and in Cameron parishes will remain closed until further notice.
We must remember that every stat is a PERSON — or many people sharing the same fate. Every stat represents actual individuals — people like you — like me — like us.
People struggling to make ends meet — to pay the rent — to afford enough food.
People who have to get to work if their job wasn't wiped out by the hurricane. People who have to find missing relatives — figure out daycare — hope missing pets come home — clean out their ravaged basements — call in claims on their totaled cars — fix their roofs — pump out the water — haul debris off their lot — figure out who to call and where to go next. People doing this during a global pandemic, where cases are still out of control and even staying in a shelter means taking your life in your hands.
People who are soaked to the skin and tired to their bones and furious and terrified and in need of help. Help now from the government and NGOs, and ongoing massively-difficult-to-effectuate help to make sure that we don’t spiral out of control and into the hellscape dystopia Margaret Atwood painted so vividly back in 2015.
YES. 2015. Five years ago.
Remember, fellow Daily Kos folks: emissions are still rising.
And yes, there is a lot going on. New day? New crisis! But this one is the Big Kahuna. This one is the Mother of All Crises. This one could be lights out if we don’t rise to the challenge.
This is not a fucking drill. This is CLIMATE CHANGE. And everyone needs to ACT NOW. We do not have a MINUTE. TO. WASTE.
#HairOnFirePeople
