Why was American capitalism unable to prepare for Hurricane Irma?
11 September 2017
After devastating islands in the Caribbean, Irma made landfall Sunday in the United States as a Category 4 hurricane, pummeling the Florida Keys with 130 mph winds and inundating the low-lying islands with up to 10 feet of storm surge.
The 400-mile-wide storm has engulfed the entire state as it makes its way up Florida’s western coast, slamming into the Tampa area as a Category 2 hurricane around midnight. Miami, in the southeast, saw unprecedented flooding as the storm brought major storm surges to both sides of the peninsula.
As of this writing, at least 26 people have been killed by the storm, with four fatalities already recorded in Florida. The total is expected to rise as the scope of the damage left in Irma’s wake is surveyed. Initial estimates indicate that Irma could leave behind $200 billion in damage, greater than that done by Harvey.
Hurricane Irma is a mass event. The storm will eventually impact the lives of tens of millions, including the friends and family of those directly impacted. More than 6.5 million people are under evacuation orders in Florida and another 570,000 in Georgia. Approximately 116,000 people are waiting out the storm in emergency shelters. Thousands of hotel rooms have been booked up in inland Florida and for hundreds of miles north of evacuation zones.
Such major calamities expose the basic structures of social and political life in a particularly stark form. Both Irma and Harvey before it have revealed a country riven by social inequality, plagued by decaying infrastructure and presided over by a ruling elite that acts with criminal indifference when confronted with the basic needs of society.
Even as workers in Houston and the surrounding area…