In the early hours of Dec. 14, a vicious storm with hurricane force winds hit the Pacific Northwest causing extensive damage, flooding, power outages and at least 14 deaths. Downed trees and other wind debris as well as wind damage closed many roads and bridges and killed several people.
Huge swaths of urban areas went dark as 1.5 million people lost electrical power. The two daily newspapers failed to
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Storms are a natural occurrence. While there is some evidence that global warming may be causing more frequent and larger storms, big storms, hurricanes and earthquakes happen regardless. But, while everyone may experience the same weather or natural disaster, not everyone experiences the same effects or aftermath.
An example is the tragic death of Kate Fleming. Fleming lived with her partner Charlene Strong in a modest house on the edge of Seattle’s Madison Valley neighborhood. She was a recording actress who earned part of her living by recording books for the blind. As her neighborhood began to flood, she went down to her basement studio to save her recording equipment. That was when a four-foot-high wave of water hit the house, tore off a part of the foundation and rushed into the basement, trapping and drowning Fleming.
While the mini-tsunami probably was caused by a mudslide, the flooding was entirely preventable. Madison Valley is a low-lying neighborhood east of downtown Seattle. It has always been plagued by flooding after big storms. The city recently completed a remodel of the storm drainage system and constructed a floodwater detention basin. It was this basin that overflowed.
City engineers had first proposed and the neighborhood had demanded that the drainage system actually drain rain water into nearby Lake Washington. However, between Madison Valley and Lake Washington is a ridge covered from the top to the shoreline with lavish houses and estates. The wealthy, politically-connected owners of these million dollar properties objected to storm drain culverts disturbing their views and beaches. The drain culverts—that could have diverted the flood away from Madison Valley—were never built.
Even neighborhoods with reasonable drainage systems flooded because the storm drainage infrastructure, like all basic U.S. public infrastructure, is poorly maintained.
While the storm in the Northwest was serious, it was not a record breaker. Many more severe storms have hit the Pacific coast. In 1880, five feet of snow fell on Seattle in one storm. If a storm of this magnitude occurred this winter, millions could find themselves in life-threatening conditions.
U.S. infrastructure vulnerable
Every city and town in this country is equally vulnerable to some kind of natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina showed unequivocally that people cannot count on the capitalist government in times of crisis. The most affected by natural disasters are working-class people.
The same governmental entities that can mount military invasions, maintain a huge prison-industrial complex, and build a sophisticated space station, cannot provide basic emergency response services.
The capitalist state—the government, military, police, courts and prisons—serves the ruling capitalist class. In the eyes of the capitalists, the rest of us also exist to serve them. Their institutions will never serve us, the working class.
In the September 2006 edition of Socialism and Liberation Magazine, Malik Rahim, founder of the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans, discussed the need for people to organize preemptively in preparation for a disaster.
He explained that in a situation when the normal order breaks down, there is a need and an opportunity for progressive organizations to step in and organize the people for their own survival and the rebuilding of their communities.
Revolutionaries prepare for revolutionary situations. In addition, revolutionaries look for struggles or instances where the fa?ade of capitalism’s omnipotence comes crashing down.
It is in those moments when class consciousness can burst open and sweep through the landscape. A revolutionary organization with a spotlight on the truth behind the facade, a generator to run it with, and a plan makes the most of those moments.
