'I left her as a baby - 16 years later she saved my life'

After losing everything in the horror of Hurricane Katrina, artist Matjames Metson was broke, traumatised and "braced for the end" when he received an unexpected phone call. It was from the daughter he hadn't seen since she was a baby, and it gave him a reason to live.

Matjames Metson was 16 when he met the future mother of his child.

"Selanie walked into my American history class and I was just blown away. I was like, 'Oh my God, who is that?' It was an instant: 'I need to know who that person is.'"

Matjames's parents were artists, and his stepfather worked as an art professor at a succession of different art schools.

"We moved endlessly, it seemed like," Matjames says, "and I'd never really had an opportunity to make actual friends. I'd meet people and then we would leave and so it always gave me this distance that I still hold on to today, I think."

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After a stay in the south of France, the family moved to the small town of Yellow Springs in Ohio, where he met his first girlfriend, Selanie.

"We got together and we had a relationship for several years and then it had actually ended, but we had what they call now 'a hook-up' and Selanie became pregnant," says Matjames, "but we were still not a couple."

Matjames was 18 years old and didn't feel ready to become a father.

"I was utterly terrified. It threw my world upside down," he says.

"I didn't have the faculties to deal with it in any sense. I was too young, too naïve and I didn't know what to do."

Selanie gave birth to a little girl called Tyler.

After she was born, Matjames met Selanie at the entrance to the Glen Helen Nature Preserve, and he cuddled the baby for the first time.

"I held Tyler in my arms for about 30 seconds I'd say, and that was it.

"I didn't understand that it was my child on an emotional level. I knew biologically I was involved and I was just like, 'Oh my God this is just really heavy. I don't know how to react to this, I don't know what to do.'"

Matjames says it started a lifetime of running away - from everything.

TYLER HURWITZ

"It's classic fight or flight. Having zero self-esteem at the time, I chose to run and continued to do so."

After stays in Montreal and Boston, Matjames eventually arrived in a bustling and vibrant New Orleans around the age of 19 or 20.

"I was a kid, I was young for my age, emotionally, and all of a sudden here I am in a very exotic, very different place. It was a good place to hide, I suppose."

But if he was hiding from his past, he couldn't completely escape from it.

In a graphic novel Matjames produced later about his life, a sketched image shows him hunched over, carrying the heavy weight of guilt on his shoulders. It felt like carrying a "16-tonne block of burden" around, he says.

This contributed to a mental breakdown that left him in an institution "for quite some time" he says.

When he was discharged he gradually became a well-known face in the city's French quarter, famous for its nightlife, its music and free-flowing bourbon.

"I went in as a fairly anonymous resident of New Orleans, but I came out and it gave me some sort of mystique, and suddenly I knew everybody. I was living in someone's closet and I didn't have anything except for my pens, so I'd go to the coffee house, the bar or wherever people were and I was embraced as a character and a spectacle," he says.

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He'd always been an artist, but now began getting more attention. As he didn't have a permanent home, all his work had to be on paper.

Later, as he became more of a "domesticated creature", he started making assemblage art - finding objects and gluing them together into sculptures.

New Orleans was a treasure trove for this he remembers. Wherever you looked - even on the ground - you could find the artistic equivalent of gold dust- such as early American photographs that were 100 years old. He would find beauty in repurposing materials such as wooden matches and lolly sticks.

And he was successful, making art "like a fiend" and exhibiting at shows in the city, while supporting himself by working in bars, and riding around the city on his bicycle, delivering pizza.

Meanwhile his daughter, Tyler Hurwitz, was growing up in Yellow Springs with her mum, Selanie, another talented artist. She remembers accompanying her mother on an upholstery apprenticeship at the age of four.

"I was submerged in a creative environment from the time I was born basically, and that has never ended," she says.

Her home was a happy one. Selanie had got married and had another daughter, and growing up in this tight family unit, Tyler says she didn't take a great interest in her biological father.

TYLER HURWITZ

"I had so many people and family and friends surrounding me all the time, I guess I just didn't really think about it," she says. 

"It wasn't something that had ever existed in my mind, so it wasn't ever a huge question as to who my father was, or where he was, or why he wasn't there.

"I never asked, therefore I didn't really know."

Like her mother, she became an expert at upholstering furniture and a skilled artist.

By the age of 30, Matjames was considered one of the city's "home-grown" artists, despite the fact he'd lived the first two decades of his life elsewhere. He also had a permanent job restoring antique builders' tools. His two dogs, Pikachu and Pearl, were everything to him.

"Suddenly I was like… 'I can't believe I've survived to 30,'" he says. 

He'd had a "live fast, die young" mentality, and decided it was now time to slow down. First he moved out of the French Quarter, then he left New Orleans altogether for a few years, returning in the spring of 2005.

"I get an apartment, I unpack my stuff and that's when Katrina hit," he says.

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Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005, flooding large areas of the city. Nearly 2,000 people were killed and one million displaced, and there was a terrifying breakdown of law and order.

"It was utter destruction," says Matjames, who is still distressed by what he witnessed. "If I close my eyes I can still see it.

"There was a lot of loss of life, everything was completely broken. 

The stores weren't open, the groceries weren't open, the crime was insane. There's so many people just losing their houses and possessions, it was nothing more than just utter desperation on everybody's part."

Matjames's apartment was waterlogged and he lost most of his belongings, including almost all of his artwork.

Fearing that he might not be able to take his beloved dogs with him, Matjames remained in the wreckage of the city for eight days, until one day he found a working payphone, called his mother to let her know he was safe, and then called a friend, who helped get him, Pikachu and Pearl to Los Angeles.

He moved into a very small apartment on a busy intersection in the LA district of Koreatown, with demolition crews busy all around.

"Once I'd moved into this flat they literally tore down every building surrounding me. So the little four-storey building I was in suddenly was infested with mice and cockroaches and meth heads," he says.

"Someone gave me a futon, I had a little black and white TV and maybe a couple of T-shirts and that was it."

Pages of a graphic novel, Survivors Guild, by Matjames Metson

Matjames says his dogs were not only his best friends, but also his children, his confidants and even his eating partners.

"When I got regular food they'd get some," he says. "And when I didn't have regular food I'd eat some of theirs. I'd reach in the dog food bag and eat handfuls of dried kibble."

He found a job in another part of the city, working as a "stock boy" in an art supply store for $7 (£6) an hour, but would have to beg for change for the fare to travel there.

Whenever the phone rang, it would be bad news about a friend from New Orleans suffering from the after-effects of the storm.

He thinks many of them had post-traumatic stress disorder, the consequences of which could be devastating. "Some people drank, some people took narcotics, some people committed suicide."

Matjames says he shut down emotionally, and would sit in his apartment just staring at the television set, not even changing the channel. He couldn't make art and says he was "braced for the end".

"My capacity for self-preservation was slipping and slipping and slipping and I had nowhere to really turn," he says, "until the phone call which not only saved my life, but it changed my life."

Tyler, who was then 16, was cleaning her bedroom when her mum came in and handed her a piece of paper. On one side was a PO Box number, and the other a mobile phone number. Her mum told her this was how she could contact her biological father.

TYLER HURWITZ

"I think that she just kind of stumbled upon it in a stack of papers and was just like, 'Oh, better give this to Tyler in case she wants to call,'" Tyler says.

"It was just like a very nonchalant thing that she'd just done, and she specifically asked me to write instead of call, but minutes after she gave me the paper I called the number. I think half of me really was not expecting anybody to answer, so I didn't put much thought into it.

"I kind of had this mentality of, 'I've got nothing to lose.' So when he answered, I wasn't emotional, and I wasn't nervous."

She says she hadn't even made a conscious decision to call, she was simply acting spontaneously.

Matjames feared it would be more bad news about one of his friends - and then he heard Tyler's voice.

"Have you ever heard the name Tyler before?" she said.

Matjames replied: "Tyler, I've been waiting for this call for 16 years."

"Then I said, 'Do you hate me?'" says Tyler.

"I said, 'I really don't hate you. Do you hate me?'" says Matjames. 

CARTWHEEL ART

"And she said 'No.' Like here I am, a total messed up, traumatised artist guy who had zero to offer her, but we talked about music and we talked about this and that."

Tyler says that as they finished the call they didn't plan how to stay in touch, but just knew that they could call each other if they wanted to.

For Matjames, the call was life-transforming.

"I really feel as though my spine straightened and my eyes opened and I stopped looking on the ground and started to say, 'Well OK, here I am in Los Angeles, my daughter thinks that's amazing, maybe I should think that's amazing?'"

He says he wanted to impress Tyler and the only way he felt he could do this was through his creativity.

"I'm not going to be able to do it with my home or my bank account or my clothes. I'm going to be the best artist I can possibly be, and that is something I have picked up and have not put down, and I owe that all to Tyler."

As he slowly got himself back on his feet, he began to produce and exhibit his work again. He was able to move to a better apartment and a few years later, as a new exhibition of his work opened, Tyler flew to LA to meet him for the first time.

"I was nervous, which I feel is understandable," says Tyler, "but then the second that we were acquainted it just felt OK, it felt natural and normal and I was perfectly content with being myself."

She instantly noticed the physical resemblances too.

"I have curly hair and my mum has pin-straight hair and it's always been a situation trying to figure out how to deal with my hair," she says. "So when I met Matjames I was like, 'Well, we both have curly hair, that explains it.' And we have similar hands and we both have green eyes."

One of the first pieces of art that Tyler says Matjames showed her was an intricate sculptural assemblage tower.

"If you open this door and unlatch this thing and you slide this over, you'd look down in there and in between a bunch of nails you'd find my name," she says. "So my name is hidden in a lot of his work, you have to search for it, but it's definitely there and it's just kind of cool knowing where to look."

She believes this symbolises the motivation that she provided for Matjames to resume his work as an artist.

Having visited Matjames in his artistic habitat, Tyler later challenged Matjames to visit hers in Ohio.

"I knew she was right and I had to do it. It was like resetting some sort of machine," he says.

"It was a way for me to suddenly become my age and grow up and stop being the teenager who ran."

While he was there, Tyler was re-upholstering a sofa and Matjames got to help with the project and witness his daughter's artistry at work.

TYLER HURWITZ

"My whole inspiration behind upholstery and my love for furniture and fabrics was initially inspired by my mother," says Tyler, now 29. 

"So the sofa was really a project where the brains of all three of us came together."

Meeting Matjames has also meant that she has connected with his parents - his mother, stepfather and father - all of them artists.

"To be a creative person and then suddenly find your long-lost family, only to find out that literally every single one of them are artists - it's wild," says Tyler, who, inspired by her grandparents, is now studying again in the craft and material studies department of a university in Virginia.

Over the years, Matjames and Tyler have talked a lot about why he left her.

"She understands why I had to go," says Matjames.

"We talked a couple of weeks ago. She was like, 'You couldn't have lived here, it wouldn't have been the right thing for you, no matter what.' So it's nice to have the person that I left clearly understanding why I had to do it and not resenting me for it, which is huge and brave and really remarkable."

Tyler acknowledges that there is a social stigma associated with fathers who leave a family, but says what Matjames did was right for him, and ultimately for her too.

Had she adhered to "societal standards" and judged him negatively it would have achieved nothing, she says. Instead she has gained a new family, a new source of inspiration, and is "living a great life".

(Source: BBC)

Trump ‘suggested firing nuclear weapons at hurricanes to stop them hitting US’, report claims

‘Needless to say, this is not a good idea...’

Donald Trump suggested firing nuclear weapons into hurricanes to prevent them hitting the US, reports in Washington claim.

The president is said to have raised the idea of bombing hurricanes with senior Homeland Security and national security officials on numerous occasions, dating back as far as 2017.

“I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” one source told US news website Axios the president had asked during a hurricane briefing at the White House.

The source said the briefer was “knocked back on his heels” as Mr Trump went on to suggest dropping a nuclear bomb in the eye of an off-shore hurricane would disrupt its formation.

“People were astonished,” the source added. “After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f***? What do we do with this?’”

The briefer is said to have told the president they would “look into” the possibility.

Later, other officials were also reportedly briefed on the president’s remarks, which were recorded in a National Security Council (NSC) memorandum.

Another NSC memo from 2017 also reportedly details Mr Trump asking whether hurricanes could be bombed with conventional weapons in order to prevent them hitting the US.

“His goal – to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland – is not bad,” another senior White House official, who had been briefed on the president’s remarks told Axios. “His objective is not bad.”

Far from being a revolutionary, the idea of using nuclear weapons against hurricanes has a remarkably long history.

As far back at the late Fifties, scientists and government agencies in the US had floated proposals for exploding nuclear devices to break up large storms.

In 1959, meteorologist Jack W Reed suggested submarines could be used to launch warheads into the eye of a hurricane, one of several “peaceful” applications he imagined for nuclear weapons.

Today’s meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) however have less enthusiasm for nuking weather systems.

“Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems,” NOAA says on its website.

“Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”

Mr Trump later tweeted: "The story by Axios that President Trump wanted to blow up large hurricanes with nuclear weapons prior to reaching shore is ridiculous. I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!"

(Source: Independent) 

Nuclear weapons and hurricanes don't mix, NOAA advises

Using nuclear weapons to destroy hurricanes is not a good idea, a US scientific agency has said, following reports that President Donald Trump wanted to explore the option.

The Axios news website said Mr Trump had asked several national security officials about the possibility.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the results would be "devastating".

Hurricane Florence battered the US East Coast last year

Mr Trump has denied making the suggestion.

Hurricanes typically affect the US east coast, often causing serious damage.

It's not the first time the idea has been considered.

Following reports of Mr Trump's suggestion, the hashtag #ThatsHowTheApocalyseStarted has been trending on Twitter.

What effect would nuking a hurricane have?
Mr Trump asked why the US couldn't drop a bomb into the eye of the storm to stop it from making landfall, news site Axios said.

The NOAA says that using nuclear weapons on a hurricane "might not even alter the storm" and the "radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas".

The difficulty with using explosives to change hurricanes, it says, is the amount of energy needed.

The heat release of a hurricane is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes.

Even though the mechanical energy of a bomb is closer to that of the storm, "the task of focusing even half of the energy on a spot in the middle of a remote ocean would be formidable", it adds.

"Attacking weak tropical waves or depressions before they have a chance to grow into hurricanes isn't promising either," says the NOAA.

"About 80 of these disturbances form every year in the Atlantic basin but only about five become hurricanes in a typical year. There is no way to tell in advance which ones will develop."

How long has this idea been around?
The idea of bombing a hurricane has been around since the 1950s when the suggestion was originally made by a government scientist.

During a speech at the National Press Club in 1961, Francis Riechelderfer, head of the US Weather Bureau, said he could "imagine the possibility of someday exploding a nuclear bomb on a hurricane far at sea".

The Weather Bureau would only begin acquiring nuclear weapons when "we know what we're doing", he added, according to National Geographic.

The NOAA says the idea is often suggested during hurricane season.

George Washington University Professor Sharon Squassoni says the idea stems from the Plowshares Program of the 1950s when a "laundry list of different weird... fantastical, slightly crazy" uses for nuclear weapons was devised by government researchers.

In nearly 20 years, the US exploded 31 warheads in 27 tests in order to test whether America's nuclear arsenal could be used to excavate canals or mines, or create a harbour for ships.

As the dangers of radiation became more clear, the notion was dropped, Prof Squassoni tells BBC News, adding that current international treaties would ban the US from exploding a nuclear weapon in a hurricane.

Several other outlandish ideas have been floated in recent years, including one Facebook event calling for US gun owners to "shoot down" Hurricane Irma in 2017 with bullets and flamethrowers.

The event attracted 55,000 people to sign up and was taken seriously enough by one Florida sheriff that he issued a stern warning on Twitter saying: "You won't make it turn around & it will have very dangerous side effects."

When is the US hurricane season?
The Atlantic Hurricane season runs from 1 June until the end of November. The peak of the season comes in September when sea temperatures are at their highest.

Tropical Storm Dorian is currently swirling towards the Caribbean islands and is forecast to become a hurricane by Tuesday, and will threaten the US island territory of Puerto Rico in the coming days.

When asked for a comment by BBC News, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the agency is focused on Dorian and deferred questions on the "topic of hurricanes and nukes" to the NOAA guidelines.

The NOAA warned earlier this month that conditions were now more favourable for above-normal hurricane activity. It is predicting between 10 and 17 named storms, of which 5-9 will become hurricanes, including 2-4 major hurricanes.

Four named storms have formed so far this year. They were Andrea, Barry, Chantal and Dorian.

(Source: BBC)

Climate change is increasing hurricanes, tropical storms and floods, scientists confirm

Report is latest to show global warming is already having devastating impact on lives

Climate change is increasing hurricanes, tropical storms and floods, according to a new study that looked at 120 years of data for the latest research to confirm a link between human activity and the dramatic rise of extreme weather events.

Increased temperatures not only make heatwaves more extreme and wildfires more likely, they also tamper with weather patterns, making storms more intense.

As part of the study, scientists looked at three storms in North Carolina from the past 20 years – hurricanes Floyd, Matthew and Florence.

They found the probability of them occurring randomly in such a short period of time is just two per cent.

“North Carolina has one of the highest impact zones of tropical cyclones in the world, and we have these carefully kept records that shows us that the last 20 years of precipitation events have been off the charts,” said Professor Hans Paerl, lead author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Flood waters isolate homes in Lumberton, North Carolina, in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence last September ( Getty )

The scientists analysed records of tropical cyclone landfalls and rainfall associated with Costal North Carolina storms since 1898.

They found that six out of the seven largest hurricanes, tropical storms and floods occurred in the last 20 years. This frequency is probably caused by “increased moisture carrying capacity of tropical cyclones due to the warming climate”, the study said.

As well as more storms, North Carolina has also experienced unprecedented levels of rainfall since the late 1990s. In the long term it has also seen an increase in rainfall from tropical storms over the past 120 years.

This is increasingly problematic as the state is now home to more than 10.3 million people and climate change is already having a devastating impact on people’s lives.

“The price we’re paying is that we’re having to cope with increasing levels of catastrophic flooding,” said Professor Paerl, from the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences.

“Coastal watersheds are having to absorb more rain. Let’s go back to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, which flooded half of the coastal plain of North Carolina. Then, we had Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Just recently we had Hurricane Florence in 2018. These events are causing a huge amount of human suffering, economic and ecological damage.”

Increased rainfall results in more runoff into coastal waters and estuaries. This results in organic matter and nutrient losses from soil erosion which results in damaging algal blooms.

“We are in part responsible for what’s going on in the context of fossil fuel combustion emissions that are leading to global warming,” Prof Paerl said. “The ocean is a huge reservoir that is absorbing heat and seeing more evaporation. With more evaporation comes more rainfall.”

At the end of last year, the research found that extreme weather events cost the world billions of pounds in the previous 12 months.

The report by Christian Aid identified 10 of the most expensive natural disasters that struck in 2018, all of which cost at least $1bn (£790m) each.

The costs established for these events are likely to be underestimated, as they often only included insured losses and did not take into account long-term costs to productivity.

(Source: Independent)

Hurricane Michael: 'Extremely dangerous' storm set to hit Florida

Hurricane Michael has been upgraded to an "extremely dangerous" category 4 storm, hours before it is due to make landfall in Florida.

The storm has sustained winds of 130mph (210km/h) and is due to make landfall at about midday (16:00 GMT).

More than 370,000 people in Florida have been ordered to evacuate and move to higher ground.

Florida Governor Rick Scott warned state residents that "this storm could kill you"

At least 13 people reportedly died in Central America over the weekend as a result of storm rains and floods.

Florida has declared a state of emergency, as have Alabama and Georgia.

What are the latest developments?
In its latest bulletin, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Michael had become "an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane".

Waiting for the storm on Florida's Panama City Beach

It warned of a life-threatening storm surge, hurricane force winds and heavy rainfall along the north-eastern Gulf coast.

Michael, it added, could see some additional strengthening before it made landfall in the Florida Panhandle - a strip of land bordering the Gulf of Mexico - or the Big Bend area to its east.

At 02:00 local time on Wednesday, the eye of Michael was about 170 miles south-west of the coastal city of Apalachicola.

The NHC warns that some regions of Florida may experience storm surges of up to 13ft (4m).

Michael is currently moving northwards at 12mph.

On the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, category 4 includes winds of up to 156mph with possible severe damage to even well-built homes and trees being felled.

Residents put plywood up in Port St Joe, Florida

"Weakening is expected after landfall as Michael moves across the south-eastern United States," the NHC added.

Florida Governor Rick Scott called Michael "monstrous storm" and urged residents to listen to officials.

Despite the warnings, local officials believe a far smaller number of people have in fact moved away.

Schools and state offices in the area are to remain shut this week.

On Tuesday, Gov Scott said he had activated 2,500 Florida National Guard troops.

Heavy rains are forecast for the Carolinas, which were drenched by Hurricane Florence last month.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper told residents: "I know people are fatigued from Florence, but don't let this storm catch you with your guard down."

More than 300 miles of coastline are currently under threat, the National Weather Service has said.

Forecasters in Alabama warned of possible tornados.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday: "We are very well prepared for the incoming hurricane."

Residents face frightening ordeal
By BBC's Gary O'Donoghue in Florida

Adrian Mahangos hopes he is one of the lucky ones.

Sitting outside his home, reading a magazine, less than 100 yards from the water's edge in Wynnehaven, he knows Hurricane Michael is now due to make landfall 50 or 60 miles to his east.

Mr Mahangos is not going anywhere.

His house is 11ft above sea level and if the 4ft surge predicted for this part of the coast goes no higher, then he's confident his newly built home will survive.

Just an hour along the coast, it's different.

The aptly named Lullwater Beach, just west of Panama City Beach, is quiet at the moment, but this whole stretch is looking at a possible surge of up to 13ft.

A man in the distance is gathering sand from the beach while it's still light and pouring it into trash bags - making do with what's at hand to protect from the water.

Local officials are warning that not nearly enough people have evacuated as they would wish.

Florida is used to storms but the Panhandle, with its low-lying coastal strip and scattered communities, hasn't seen anything this strong for more than a dozen years.

Those that remain will be facing a frightening ordeal.

Where has Hurricane Michael hit so far?
According to the Associated Press, six people were killed in Honduras, four in Nicaragua and three in El Salvador.

Images on social media showed evacuating families wading through water to get to safety.

Western Cuba, including Havana, was struck by Hurricane Michael on Monday

Parts of western Cuba, which was hit by the storm on Monday, were forecast to receive up to a foot of rain.

Offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico have evacuated workers, halting nearly a fifth of daily production.

Five drilling rigs have been moved out of the storm's path, according to the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

(Source: BBC)

Florida declares emergency in 26 counties as Tropical Storm Michael approaches

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency for 26 counties as Tropical Storm Michael gathers strength in the Caribbean and barrels toward the Florida Panhandle.

The storm is on track to become a hurricane on Monday, bringing heavy rain to the western tip of Cuba, before making landfall on the northeastern Gulf Coast on Wednesday.

'Everybody's got to get ready'
Scott warned that Michael could reach land as a Category 2 hurricane with winds in excess of 100 mph.

"This storm will be life-threatening and extremely dangerous," Scott said in a news briefing. "This storm has the potential to bring devastating impacts to communities across the Panhandle and Big Bend and every family must be prepared."

Scott also activated 500 National Guard Troops in advance of the storm.

"Everybody's got to get ready. Don't take a chance," he said. "We're going to get storm surge, we have wind, we have a chance of flooding, we have a significant chance of tornadoes."

Michael will dump heavy rain on Cuba before heading toward the US.

Hurricane warning in effect in Cuba
As of 5 a.m. ET Monday, Tropical Storm Michael was centered about 90 miles east of Cozumel, Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm's tropical storm-force winds extended 175 miles from its center, according to the weather center.

Michael's maximum sustained winds had reached 70 mph, it said. A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of 74 to 95 mph.

"Additional strengthening is forecast, and Michael is expected to become a hurricane later today. Michael is forecast to be near or at major hurricane strength when it reaches the northeastern Gulf of Mexico Tuesday night and Wednesday," the hurricane center said.

Track the storm
Michael, which formed near the Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday, is expected to dump 4 to 8 inches of rain -- and as much as 12 inches in some areas -- on western Cuba before it hits the United States.
The rainfall could lead to "life-threatening" flash floods and mudslides in mountainous regions, the hurricane center said.

A hurricane warning has been issued for the Cuban province of Pinar del Rio and tropical storm warnings are in effect for the Cuban province of Isle of Youth and the Mexican coast from Tulum to Cabo Catoche.

In the United States, a storm surge watch has been issued from Navarre, Florida to Anna Maria Island, Florida. A hurricane watch is in effect from the Alabama-Florida border eastward to the Suwanee River, and tropical storm watches have been issued from the Suwanee River to Anna Maria Island and from the Alabama-Florida border to the Mississippi-Alabama border.

Candidates adjust campaign schedules
Michael's trek to Florida is also affecting politics in the state.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum canceled campaign events in South Florida on Monday and Tuesday to prepare for the storm, his campaign said. The forecast projects Tallahassee, where Gillum is mayor, will be directly hit.

Meanwhile, Scott, the Republican nominee for US Senate, will be leaving the campaign trail for the "next few days" to address storm preparations, a campaign spokesperson told CNN.

(Source: CNN)

Why so many people don’t ‘just leave’ when a major hurricane hits

It has nothing to do with being lazy or negligent.

Diane Berberian was so inundated with calls from well-meaning friends and family inviting her to seek shelter from Hurricane Irma with them that she shut off her phone on Tuesday evening.

Despite the grave warnings, the 59-year-old Florida native isn’t going anywhere. It’s far too expensive for the St. Petersburg resident to leave. A flight out of nearby Tampa to Philadelphia, where Berberian has family, would cost her over $1,000, she said. (She noted that she has booked last-minute tickets to Philly in the past that cost as little as $200.)

Berberian is visually impaired, so she doesn’t drive. Even if she did, gas stations across the state are running low on gas. Berberian lives alone and doesn’t have relatives in the area, but she does have friends who will help her get to a shelter, should the need arise.

“I’ve been through this,” Berberian told HuffPost of her past experiences with hurricanes. “I have respect for weather, so I wouldn’t do anything foolish.”

Berberian is hardly alone when it comes to people being unable to escape a hurricane, even one as threatening as Irma.

St. Petersburg resident Diane Berberian won’t be leaving before the storm hits.
She can’t drive and planes are too expensive.

The “extremely dangerous” Category 5 storm has already left at least 13 people dead in the Caribbean and is expected to hit Florida by the weekend. But its path remains uncertain. Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency on Monday and mandatory evacuations have been implemented for the Florida Keys and parts of Miami-Dade County.

Officials in Pinellas County  ― where Berberian lives ― announced on Thursday that they’re evacuating the coastal areas and mobile homes.

“This hurricane will be remembered as one of the greats for generations,” Brian McNoldy, senior hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, told HuffPost.

Historic storm or not, many Floridians have no choice but to stay put when the winds rise.

A man sleeps on the roof of his porch in Biloxi, Mississippi, on Sept. 1, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home.

Those who don’t evacuate before huge storms are often criticized for “choosing” to stay behind. A 2010 study from Northwestern found that the majority of observers looked favorably on Hurricane Katrina victims who had evacuated, calling them “hardworking and self-reliant.” Those who didn’t leave were described as “lazy, negligent and stubborn.”

Such harsh judgments didn’t match the reality of the situation.

Fourteen percent of the people who remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina had a physical disability. Fifty-five percent of them didn’t have access to a car or another way to leave. And 68 percent didn’t have either money in the bank or a useable credit card, Pacific Standard Magazine reported in 2015.

Sometimes, trying to leave can be as risky as sheltering in place.

Travel logistics were a deciding factor last month when Texas officials didn’t order residents to depart before Hurricane Harvey barreled through. At the time, they thought the risks associated with a mass evacuation outweighed those posed by the storm itself, the Los Angeles Times reported.

And they had reason for their fears: In 2005, when Hurricane Rita slammed southeast Texas, at least 60 of the 118 storm-related deaths were connected to the evacuation, according to a report from the Texas House of Representatives. There were cases of heat stroke, fights on the crowded roads and other dangers, the Times noted.

“You literally cannot put 6.5 million [people] on the road,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said as Harvey’s rains were flooding his city. “If you think the situation right now is bad — you give an order to evacuate, you are creating a nightmare.”

Martha Velazquez stands on the road in stalled traffic in eastern Houston as people try to evacuate in advance of Hurricane Rita on Sept. 22, 2005.

For Floridians with access to cars and gas, trying to drive away from the storm is not clearly any safer. Mass evacuations in the face of Irma could cause miles-long gridlock in the state’s long, narrow peninsula, CNN reported.

Flying out is not an easy answer, either. Many flights scheduled for Friday and later have been canceled. Last-minute tickets out of the state were running as high as $3,000, the Miami Herald reported.

A number of airlines have said they aren’t price gouging, which is illegal following a declared state of emergency. American Airlines told the Herald that it hasn’t changed its fare structures and it has added capacity to help affected residents. JetBlue even capped its direct fares out of Florida at $99, but those tickets sold out quickly.

Buses are generally one of the cheaper options. A one-way ticket from Miami to South Carolina costs about $180. But for people who are destitute, even that is out of reach.

People wait in line to purchase plywood at Home Depot in Miami as they prepare for Hurricane Irma on Sept. 6, 2017.

For those who have the money and the physical ability to leave, there’s still the question of where to go and where to stay. Unlike Berberian, not everybody has friends and family ready to shelter them for some unknown period of time.

Camillus House, a Miami-based nonprofit that supports homeless people, has been preparing all week for those who have nowhere else to go during the storm. It currently serves about 1,100 people and is preparing to house an additional 100. The group is reaching out to people on the streets, stocking up on supplies, and seeking out additional volunteers who can help fill sandbags and make sandwiches.

For the city’s most underserved demographics, nonprofits like Camillus House could be their only refuge.

“For folks who are homeless, they’re stuck. They’re not moving because they don’t have a means of getting out of here,” Sam Gil, vice president of marketing and communications at Camillus House, told HuffPost. “For people who are poor or homeless, it’s very, very difficult.”

(Source: HuffPo)

Hurricane Florence: North Carolina fears possible environmental disaster

Waste from hog manure pits, coal ash dumps and other industrial sites could wash into homes and contaminate drinking water

Hurricane Florence could cause an environmental disaster in North Carolina, where waste from hog manure pits, coal ash dumps and other industrial sites could wash into homes and threaten drinking water supplies.

Preparations are also being made at half a dozen nuclear power plants that stand in the path of the 500-mile-wide hurricane, which is barreling toward the US east coast, expected to make landfall Thursday night. More than 1.4 million residents across North and South Carolina have been ordered to evacuate.

“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the National Hurricane Center warned Wednesday morning.

Donald Trump has declared that his administration was “absolutely, totally prepared” to deal with the storm, despite warnings from the National Weather Service that Florence “will likely be the storm of a lifetime for portions of the Carolina coast”.

The president insisted on Wednesday that – despite widespread criticism – his government had done an “under-appreciated great job” handling Hurricane Maria last year in Puerto Rico, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Georgia on Wednesday joined North and South Carolina and Virginia in declaring a state of emergency ahead of the storm making landfall.

In North Carolina, computer models predict more than 3ft of rain in the eastern part of the state – and fears were exacerbated by the many environmental hazards lying in the path of the storm.

There are 16 nuclear reactors in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, the states expected to suffer the most damage from Florence.

Duke Energy, which runs reactors at six sites, has said operators would begin shutting down nuclear plants at least two hours before hurricane-force winds arrive.

Brunswick nuclear plant, located south of Wilmington near the mouth of the Cape Fear river, was identified in 2014 by Huffpost and Weather.com as one of the nuclear facilities most at risk from rising sea levels and resulting floods.

Workers board up shops in preparation for Hurricane Florence in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on 11 September. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The Brunswick plant’s two reactors are of the same design as those in Fukushima, Japan, that exploded and leaked radiation following a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Following that disaster, federal regulators required all US nuclear plants to perform upgrades to better withstand earthquakes and flooding.

Duke Energy did not respond to requests for information about specific changes made at Brunswick, other than to say emergency generators and pumps will remove stormwater at the plant if it floods. The company issued assurances this week that it is ready for Florence, which is predicted to pack winds of up to 140 miles per hour and a 13ft storm surge.

“They were safe then. They are even safer now,” said Kathryn Green, a Duke spokeswoman, referring to the post-Fukushima improvements. “We have backups for backups for backups.”

The area in the path of the storm in eastern North Carolina is 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 at the level predicted from Florence can do. It’s happened before.

In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd came ashore near Cape Fear as a category 2 storm that dumped about 2ft of water on a region already soaked days earlier by Hurricane Dennis. The result was the worst natural disaster in state history, a flood that killed dozens of people and left whole towns underwater, with residents stranded on rooftops.

The bloated carcasses of hundreds of thousands of hogs, chickens and other drowned livestock bobbed in a nose-stinging soup of fecal matter, pesticides, fertilizer and gasoline so toxic that fish flopped helplessly on the surface to escape it. Rescue workers smeared Vick’s VapoRub under their noses to try to numb their senses against the stench.

Florence is forecast to make landfall in the same region as a much stronger storm.

“This one is pretty scary,” said Jamie Kruse, director of the Center for Natural Hazards Research at East Carolina University. “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.”

North Carolina has roughly 2,100 industrial-scale pork farms containing more than 9 million hogs typically housed in long metal sheds with grated floors designed to allow the animals’ urine and feces to fall through and flow into nearby open-air pits containing millions of gallons of untreated sewage.

During Floyd, dozens of these lagoons either breached or were inundated by flood waters, spilling the contents. State taxpayers ended up buying out and closing 43 farms located in floodplains.

To prepare for Florence, the North Carolina Pork Council says its members have pumped down lagoon levels to absorb at least 2ft of rain. Low-lying farms have been moving their hogs to higher ground.

Murphy Family Farms employees float dead pigs down a flooded road near Beulaville, North Carolina, on 24 September 1999, following Hurricane Floyd. Photograph: Alan Marler/AP

The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that it would be monitoring nine toxic waste cleanup sites near the Carolinas coast for potential flooding. More than a dozen such Superfund sites in and around Houston flooded last year in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, with spills of potentially hazardous materials reported at two.

Also of concern are more than two dozen massive coal ash pits operated by Duke Energy. The gray ash that remains after coal is burned contains potentially harmful amounts of mercury, arsenic and lead.

Since power plants need vast amounts of water to generate steam, their unlined waste pits are located along lakes and rivers. Some of the pits were inundated during past storms, including during Floyd and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

After a 2014 spill at a Duke plant that coated 70 miles of the Dan River in toxic gray sludge, state regulators forced the Charlotte-based company to begin phasing out its coal ash pits by 2029. Because that work was already underway, wastewater levels inside the ash ponds have been falling, Duke Energy spokesman Bill Norton said Tuesday.

“We’re more prepared than ever,” said Norton, adding that crews will be monitoring water levels at the pits throughout the storm.

(Source: The Guardian)

Coral oases that resist climate change offer ‘glimmer of hope’ for dying reefs

Understanding how some pockets of reef avoid destruction may help save others, but scientists warn there is no room for complacency

Sections of coral in the Pacific and the Caribbean are fighting back against the global threats that have decimated reefs worldwide.

While the discovery does not allow any room for complacency in the fight to save the world’s reefs from extinction, scientists are tentatively optimistic about what they can learn from these pockets of resistance.

Climate change, hurricanes and human activities such as intensive fishing have destroyed vast swathes of the planet’s reefs, but in a new study scientists found this destruction was not uniform.

Some coral “oases” are either avoiding these effects altogether, resisting them or bouncing back following changes that saw off nearby reefs.

“There are a number of reasons why one coral reef might survive while its neighbour dies,” said Dr James Guest, a coral reef researcher at Newcastle University who led the study.

“It could be that the location is simply better for survival – deeper water that is outside the storm tracks, for example.”

Coral reefs might also possess certain biological characteristics that make them able to resist damage, or characteristics of their environment may allow them to rebuild themselves effectively following damage.

“Identifying cases in which individuals or communities perform better than their neighbours, despite being at equal risk, is common in public health and medical fields and using a similar approach in ecology can help us to identify areas that can be prioritised for conservation,” said Dr Guest.

Dozens of coral sites in the Pacific and Caribbean show signs of resisting the harmful effects of climate change and human activity ( Getty )

These findings were laid out in a study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology that explored dozens of these cases from tropical regions around the world.

As an example, the study’s lead author, Professor Peter Edmunds from California State University, Northridge, described being “blown away” by the ability of reefs off the French Polynesian island of Moorea to recover from destruction.

Soon after Professor Edmunds and his team began working on the island in 2005, the local reefs were overrun by hordes of crown-of-thorns starfish.

These many-armed creatures have played a major role in the decline of the Great Barrier Reef in recent years.

“By 2010, there was as close to zero coral on the outer reefs as I have seen in my entire career. And yet, within eight years, that coral has regrown,” said Professor Edmunds in reference to his Moorea study site.

“In places, about 80 per cent of the sea floor is now covered by live coral. It is a remarkable example of an oasis.”

Professor Edmunds emphasised that case studies like this do not contradict the reports of mass bleaching events and predictions that coral reefs are facings an existential threat unless action is taken to avert climate change.

“However, there are kernels of hope in places where corals are doing better, or where they are doing less badly than elsewhere and these places provide us with a focus of attention that might be used to enhance coral conservation efforts,” he noted.

Scientists have voiced the need for “radical interventions” such as genetic modification of corals and geoengineering of the atmosphere in an effort to cool the reefs.

Massive bleaching events caused by heatwaves led to “catastrophic die-offs” in the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 from which Australian researchers have concluded the natural wonder is unlikely to recover.

“This glimmer of hope does not mean we can be complacent about the severity of the crisis facing most of the world’s coral reefs,” said Dr Guest.

“But it does give us a starting point from which to understand why some ecosystems might be more resistant than others and to identify areas that warrant stronger protection or specific management strategies, such as restoration or mitigation.”

(Source: The Independent)