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Storms are terrible things and it looks like a monster is heading to the Mid-Atlantic coast.
Those in the know turn to Waffle House for a guide. The 24/7 restaurant is known in storm circles for its Waffle House Index, a quasi-informal assessment of potential damage and vulnerabilities in local infrastructure, used to predict which stores can stay open safely. It is even monitored by FEMA.
When Waffle House announces a preventive closure of a store in the middle of a storm, the index just went red. FiveThirtyEight says it briefly: If Waffle House closes its doors, it's time to panic.
The Waffle House Alert Center is activated and monitors, the index for the region being generally green at the time of publication. "Plan ahead and be safe #Florence" they tweeted.
Despite President Trump's self-assessment of the government's performance in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, there is cause for concern. There are more than 750,000 homes on the way to the storm. If Florence delivers on its deadly promise, property damage could reach $ 170 billion, according to the CoreLogic real estate data company.
And then there are the pigs.
Hurricane Florence is on the verge of killing thousands of farm animals and causing catastrophic spills of garbage throughout the region. It happened before.
North Carolina is the third largest poultry producer in the United States and the second largest producer of pork, with more than 2,000 licensed hog farms and 9.3 million hogs. Their waste is stored in swampy pits called lagoons and are used to spray on neighboring fields. But even a little extra rain is a recipe for disaster. "The summer has been wet. Five weeks of almost continuous rain, "said pork producer Tom Butler at News watcher. "I have covered lagoons. I can not imagine guys with open lagoons.
(Of course, the hog trade, which is high in faeces, is dirty in all weathers, is the subject of numerous litigation, investigations and reports, as farms are located near low-income African-American rural communities. , environmental racism too.)
North Carolina's agricultural economy provides one-fifth of all jobs in the region and a lot of food to the rest of the population. The majority of farms have been asked to expect at least two feet of rain, but even half are problematic. "The majority of the crops are still on the ground," said Mike Yoder, emergency program coordinator for the NC State Extension. The Washington Post. "[A]These men are likely to suffer as much or more than the cattle industry. "
In some situations, it seems, this is a draw on the safest course of action.
Thousands of inmates, guards and staff will be forced to remain in the evacuation zones in South Carolina and Virginia. (Things did not go well for the men incarcerated in the Stiles Unit, a Texas state prison during Hurricane Harvey.)
Oh, and it seems that the discussions on the non-respect of climate change that have been made by legislators in the region are not aging well.
If the worst-case scenario occurred, we would soon be inundated with stories, of the inspiring and authentic kind, but especially of the hopeless variety: the things that a rich nation should already know how to provide.
But for now, as they fly away and flee, we pray for the higher power of our choice for the best possible end. Good luck to everyone.
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