SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Satellite image of Hurricane Florence swirling in the Atlantic Ocean as it approaches the U.S. coastline in the early hours of Wednesday morning. (Photo: CIRA/RAAMB)
Nuclear Plants, Toxic Waste Sites Under Threat as Florence Readies 'Mike Tyson Punch to Carolina Coast'
As new pathway of storm predicted, National Hurricane Center calls looming storm "very large and incredibly dangerous"
Sep 12, 2018
With reports of skyscraper-likes waves out at sea, the potential for historic coastal surges and rainfall, and severe threats to vulnerable nuclear plants and other industrial waste sites--a behemoth Hurricane Florence is fast-approaching the southeastern U.S. coast on Wednesday as weather experts and emergency management officials intensify their warnings about the dangers the "once-in-a-lifetime" storm poses.
With state governments in South Carolina and North Carolina issuing evacuations along the coast and other potential flood zones, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has said that it is mobilizing for a storm that could knock out power for weeks and lead to the displacement of tens if not hundreds of thousands of residents across multiple states.
The National Weather Service (NWS) in Wilmington, N.C., said Florence "will likely be the storm of a lifetime for portions of the Carolina coast," in a statement early Wednesday morning. "And that's saying a lot given the impacts we've seen from Hurricanes Diana, Hugo, Fran, Bonnie, Floyd and Matthew."
At 11:00 AM, the National Hurricane Center (NHC)--which called Florence "very large and incredibly dangerous"--updated the hurricane's track, saying the storm path had moved slightly southward. While still moving towards the Carolinas it could potentially impact Georgia as well.
During a separate FEMA press conference, the agency's Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery, Jeff Byard, said the storm's shift towards the south was not good news for people of the region.
Calling on residents to follow evacuation orders declared by state and local officials, Byard said the hit by hurricane would not be a "glancing blow," but rather "a Mike Tyson punch to the Carolina coast." After its initial impact, Byard said the most serious concern will be massive rainfalls that would produce dangerous inland flooding.
It is that flooding, warn public health experts, that could have disastrous consequences if toxic wastes, manure pits from industrial agriculture operations, and other storage facilities are overwhelmed by the waters.
According to the Associated Press:
The heavy rain expected from Hurricane Florence could flood hog manure pits, coal ash dumps and other industrial sites in North Carolina, creating a noxious witches' brew of waste that might wash into homes and threaten drinking water supplies.
Computer models predict more than 3 feet of rain in the eastern part of the state, a fertile low-lying plain veined by brackish rivers with a propensity for escaping their banks. Longtime locals don't have to strain their imaginations to foresee what rain like that can do. It's happened before.
"This one is pretty scary," Jamie Kruse, director of the Center for Natural Hazards Research at East Carolina University, told AP. "The environmental impacts will be from concentrated animal feeding operations and coal ash pits. Until the system gets flushed out, there's going to be a lot of junk in the water."
Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, warned the "The coal-ash sites are very vulnerable to this hurricane and any other."
As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, there is also serious concern about several nuclear plants in the region--with the most serious threat thought to be the Brunswick Nuclear Generating Station that is located near Southport, North Carolina. The Beaumont Enterprise reports:
Predictions from the National Hurricane Center also showed the Brunswick plant to be in an area that could be affected by storm surge -- seawater forced inland by the storm's winds.
The NHC warned that the storm surge could lead to "catastrophic" flash flooding far inland. Rising water levels could leave coastal parts of North Carolina under 9 feet of water, the National Hurricane Center's director, Ken Graham, told CBS News on Tuesday.
Citing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Reuters reports that the Brunswick station is waterproof up to 22 feet, but weather experts have said that area could see a storm surge that is higher than any in recorded history.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
With reports of skyscraper-likes waves out at sea, the potential for historic coastal surges and rainfall, and severe threats to vulnerable nuclear plants and other industrial waste sites--a behemoth Hurricane Florence is fast-approaching the southeastern U.S. coast on Wednesday as weather experts and emergency management officials intensify their warnings about the dangers the "once-in-a-lifetime" storm poses.
With state governments in South Carolina and North Carolina issuing evacuations along the coast and other potential flood zones, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has said that it is mobilizing for a storm that could knock out power for weeks and lead to the displacement of tens if not hundreds of thousands of residents across multiple states.
The National Weather Service (NWS) in Wilmington, N.C., said Florence "will likely be the storm of a lifetime for portions of the Carolina coast," in a statement early Wednesday morning. "And that's saying a lot given the impacts we've seen from Hurricanes Diana, Hugo, Fran, Bonnie, Floyd and Matthew."
At 11:00 AM, the National Hurricane Center (NHC)--which called Florence "very large and incredibly dangerous"--updated the hurricane's track, saying the storm path had moved slightly southward. While still moving towards the Carolinas it could potentially impact Georgia as well.
During a separate FEMA press conference, the agency's Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery, Jeff Byard, said the storm's shift towards the south was not good news for people of the region.
Calling on residents to follow evacuation orders declared by state and local officials, Byard said the hit by hurricane would not be a "glancing blow," but rather "a Mike Tyson punch to the Carolina coast." After its initial impact, Byard said the most serious concern will be massive rainfalls that would produce dangerous inland flooding.
It is that flooding, warn public health experts, that could have disastrous consequences if toxic wastes, manure pits from industrial agriculture operations, and other storage facilities are overwhelmed by the waters.
According to the Associated Press:
The heavy rain expected from Hurricane Florence could flood hog manure pits, coal ash dumps and other industrial sites in North Carolina, creating a noxious witches' brew of waste that might wash into homes and threaten drinking water supplies.
Computer models predict more than 3 feet of rain in the eastern part of the state, a fertile low-lying plain veined by brackish rivers with a propensity for escaping their banks. Longtime locals don't have to strain their imaginations to foresee what rain like that can do. It's happened before.
"This one is pretty scary," Jamie Kruse, director of the Center for Natural Hazards Research at East Carolina University, told AP. "The environmental impacts will be from concentrated animal feeding operations and coal ash pits. Until the system gets flushed out, there's going to be a lot of junk in the water."
Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, warned the "The coal-ash sites are very vulnerable to this hurricane and any other."
As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, there is also serious concern about several nuclear plants in the region--with the most serious threat thought to be the Brunswick Nuclear Generating Station that is located near Southport, North Carolina. The Beaumont Enterprise reports:
Predictions from the National Hurricane Center also showed the Brunswick plant to be in an area that could be affected by storm surge -- seawater forced inland by the storm's winds.
The NHC warned that the storm surge could lead to "catastrophic" flash flooding far inland. Rising water levels could leave coastal parts of North Carolina under 9 feet of water, the National Hurricane Center's director, Ken Graham, told CBS News on Tuesday.
Citing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Reuters reports that the Brunswick station is waterproof up to 22 feet, but weather experts have said that area could see a storm surge that is higher than any in recorded history.
With reports of skyscraper-likes waves out at sea, the potential for historic coastal surges and rainfall, and severe threats to vulnerable nuclear plants and other industrial waste sites--a behemoth Hurricane Florence is fast-approaching the southeastern U.S. coast on Wednesday as weather experts and emergency management officials intensify their warnings about the dangers the "once-in-a-lifetime" storm poses.
With state governments in South Carolina and North Carolina issuing evacuations along the coast and other potential flood zones, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has said that it is mobilizing for a storm that could knock out power for weeks and lead to the displacement of tens if not hundreds of thousands of residents across multiple states.
The National Weather Service (NWS) in Wilmington, N.C., said Florence "will likely be the storm of a lifetime for portions of the Carolina coast," in a statement early Wednesday morning. "And that's saying a lot given the impacts we've seen from Hurricanes Diana, Hugo, Fran, Bonnie, Floyd and Matthew."
At 11:00 AM, the National Hurricane Center (NHC)--which called Florence "very large and incredibly dangerous"--updated the hurricane's track, saying the storm path had moved slightly southward. While still moving towards the Carolinas it could potentially impact Georgia as well.
During a separate FEMA press conference, the agency's Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery, Jeff Byard, said the storm's shift towards the south was not good news for people of the region.
Calling on residents to follow evacuation orders declared by state and local officials, Byard said the hit by hurricane would not be a "glancing blow," but rather "a Mike Tyson punch to the Carolina coast." After its initial impact, Byard said the most serious concern will be massive rainfalls that would produce dangerous inland flooding.
It is that flooding, warn public health experts, that could have disastrous consequences if toxic wastes, manure pits from industrial agriculture operations, and other storage facilities are overwhelmed by the waters.
According to the Associated Press:
The heavy rain expected from Hurricane Florence could flood hog manure pits, coal ash dumps and other industrial sites in North Carolina, creating a noxious witches' brew of waste that might wash into homes and threaten drinking water supplies.
Computer models predict more than 3 feet of rain in the eastern part of the state, a fertile low-lying plain veined by brackish rivers with a propensity for escaping their banks. Longtime locals don't have to strain their imaginations to foresee what rain like that can do. It's happened before.
"This one is pretty scary," Jamie Kruse, director of the Center for Natural Hazards Research at East Carolina University, told AP. "The environmental impacts will be from concentrated animal feeding operations and coal ash pits. Until the system gets flushed out, there's going to be a lot of junk in the water."
Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, warned the "The coal-ash sites are very vulnerable to this hurricane and any other."
As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, there is also serious concern about several nuclear plants in the region--with the most serious threat thought to be the Brunswick Nuclear Generating Station that is located near Southport, North Carolina. The Beaumont Enterprise reports:
Predictions from the National Hurricane Center also showed the Brunswick plant to be in an area that could be affected by storm surge -- seawater forced inland by the storm's winds.
The NHC warned that the storm surge could lead to "catastrophic" flash flooding far inland. Rising water levels could leave coastal parts of North Carolina under 9 feet of water, the National Hurricane Center's director, Ken Graham, told CBS News on Tuesday.
Citing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Reuters reports that the Brunswick station is waterproof up to 22 feet, but weather experts have said that area could see a storm surge that is higher than any in recorded history.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.