hurricane

31Jan

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CELEBRITIES

Brad Pitt’s Green Housing Dream For Hurricane Katrina Survivors Turned Into A Nightmare

Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation built 109 eye-catching and affordable homes in New Orleans for a community where many people were displaced by damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now this housing development is in disarray. The vast majority of the recently constructed homes are riddled with construction-related problems that have led to mold, termites, rotting wood, flooding and other woes. At least six are boarded up and abandoned. Many residents have filed lawsuits that are still pending. That is, a nonprofit that built houses with input from Frank Gehry and other prominent architects amid much fanfare for survivors of one disaster then ushered in another disaster. Structural and other problems are making many residents fear for their health. Make It Right, despite what ...

Hurricane Season Threatens Billions Of Chickens

16Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS, ENVIRONMENT

Hurricane Season Threatens Billions Of Chickens

Hurricanes can have devastating consequences for both residents and businesses in their path. And one sector that’s particularly exposed is the broiler chicken industry. CC BY-SA Virtually all of the breasts or legs you eat at home or in a restaurant come from broilers, the name given to chickens bred and raised for meat production. Sometimes you’ll hear chickens called fryers, roasters and Cornish game hens, but generally these all refer to broilers harvested at specific ages and weights. The U.S. produced 9.18 billion broilers in 2019, more than any country in the world. It’s also the second-biggest exporter of poultry. Yet over half, or 5.1 billion, are at risk for six months of every year – from June 1 to Nov. 30 – of getting wiped out by a hurricane. Six of the top 10 broiler-produ...

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is so intense, it just ran out of storm names

18Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is so intense, it just ran out of storm names

Here’s how active this year’s Atlantic hurricane season has been: When Tropical Storm Wilfred formed on Sept. 18, the National Hurricane Center ran out of names for only the second time since naming began in 1950. Even more surprising is that we reached the 21st tropical storm of the year more than two weeks earlier than the only other time this happened, in 2005. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is far from over. When the next tropical storm forms, forecasters will shift from the alphabetical list of people’s names to letters of the Greek alphabet – Alpha, Beta and so on. The 2005 season had six Greek-letter storms, ending with Zeta. So, why is the Atlantic so active this year? Meteorologists like myself have been following a few important differences, including many tropical storms ...

A burning chemical plant may be just the tip of Hurricane Laura’s damage in this area of oil fields and industry

28Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT

A burning chemical plant may be just the tip of Hurricane Laura’s damage in this area of oil fields and industry

Hurricane Laura plowed through the heart of Louisiana’s oil and chemical industries as a powerful Category 4 storm, leaving a chlorine plant on fire and the potential for more hazardous damage in its wake. The burning BioLab facility sent dark smoke and chlorine gas into the air over the small community of Westlake, near Lake Charles, and shut down Interstate 10, officials said. The governor warned residents, already reeling from the hurricane’s damage, to stay in their homes, close their windows and doors, and turn off any air conditioning that might still be operating. While the full health impacts of the fire weren’t immediately known, a storm-driven chlorine gas release in a vulnerable community is the type of worst-case scenario that scientists and engineers like myself have warned ...