Hurricane Milton's Harm Made Worse By GOP Conspiracy Theories - The Thursday AM Quickie 10/10/24
As a child of Washington State who grew up watching family members feed the local raccoons, I was naturally intrigued by this story about a woman who was suddenly swarmed by 100 of the furry bandits after having fed a few of them over the years without incident. Something clearly happened. Did some influential raccoon restaurant critic post a five-star review of the lady's house, or what? - Corey
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Today you'll read about how Republican lies are leading to threats against weather forecasters and FEMA workers responding to Hurricane Milton, Donald Trump's precipitous loss of small-dollar donors, and how Viktor Orbán endured an antifascist chorus at the European Parliament.
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THE BIG NEWS
Homes Flattened, Roads Flooded, Nearly 3 Million Without Power in Florida as Climate Disaster Strikes Again; Dead Yet to Be Counted
The "explosively" fast-forming Hurricane Milton had slowed from a Category 5 to a Category 3 storm when it made landfall last night in Sarasota County, Florida, and further weakened to a Category 1 storm as it crossed the state's central peninsula. But a Category 1 hurricane with 85mph winds is still very dangerous, and the wind speed as measured by that familiar meterological scale doesn't speak to the accompanying damage caused by an ocean storm surge, flash flooding – or, in Milton's case, the 19-plus deadly tornadoes stirred up by the storm's advance.
It's the third hurricane to strike Florida so far this year, which, per CNN, has happened only five times in the past 150 years. Human-caused climate change is to blame. "The warmer we get, the worse these are going to become," meteorologist Bernadette Woods Placky tells the Associated Press. "There's a direct connection between the damage we're seeing in communities far and wide and the amount of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere."
"Multiple" people died as Milton struck – although it will take some time for a full accounting of the damage. More than 2.8 million Florida utility customers lost power last night. St. Petersburg shut off drinking water service at midnight "due to a water line break." Winds sheared the roof off of Tropicana Field, the Tampa Bay Rays' stadium that was being used as a staging area for emergency responders. Cranes toppled into buildings. Water poured into hospitals, some of which were already postponing surgeries due to a shortage of IV fluids caused by Hurricane Helene last month. An estimated 100,000 Floridians are in emergency shelters and some won't have homes to return to.
Price gougers and profiteers aren't the only people taking advantage of the chaos, unfortunately. A Republican disinformation campaign typified by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's insane claim that "they can control the weather" has inspired death threats against meteorologists, Rolling Stone reports. President Joe Biden yesterday condemned the "reckless, irresponsible, relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies" about Milton and the federal response. Federal Emergency Management Agency workers on the ground have also been threatened, CNN reports, as a result of antisemitic incitement and xenophobic lies.