By Leon McDougle, MD, MPH — As I view the reaction to the novel coronavirus unfold in the United States, I’m reminded of lessons learned during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina…
By Edwidge Danticat, The New Yorker — This past December, as what would have been my mother’s eighty-fourth birthday approached, I kept dreaming of death. In the most frequent of these dreams, my mother, who died, of ovarian cancer, in October, 2014, in Miami, is telling me to run out of the single-story house where I spent most of my childhood, in Port-au-Prince, before the house falls on top of me…
Congressional Black Caucus Slams the Trump Administration for Refusing Temporary Status to Bahamians
As reported by NBC News, the Trump Administration has announced it will not provide temporary protected status to Bahamians who fled Hurricane Dorian. If granted, this status would have let Bahamians…
Vantage Point Radio September 16, 2019 Edition of Vantage Point with host Dr. Ron Daniels aka The Professor Topic “Keep Hope Alive” Mobilizing Resources for Relief and Recovery in the…
The country has a tiny carbon footprint but carries the burden of being ground zero for global warming. By Erica Moiah James, The New York Times — MIAMI — Whoever thought Dorian might be a good name for a hurricane has some explaining to do. In the Bahamas, when we have to deal with difficulties, we try to make the saddest people among us laugh, knowing that they will return the…
The storm evolved swiftly and unpredictably. But it was other weather phenomena that caused Dorian to stall, devastating the island nation. By Eric Niiler, Wired — Jason Dunion has been flying on “hurricane hunter” planes for the past 20 years to collect data on tropical storms. Yet Sunday’s flight into Hurricane Dorian was the first time he had felt the awesome power of a Category 5 storm. Dunion, a scientist at…
The All Healers Mental Health Alliance and the Institute of the Black World 21st Century Black Family Summit Presented the National Conference on Culturally Competent Disaster Response on June 28-29,…
Post-flood satellite images of Mozambique show that Cyclone Idai submerged about 835 square miles of homes and fields — an area larger than New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Boston combined. By Eric Holthaus, Grist — Aid workers in Mozambique describe the floodwaters as “inland oceans extending for miles and miles.” Idai’s official death toll in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi reached 761 on Monday, but that total will surely rise. There are…
By The Real News Network — A corruption scandal in Haiti has ignited a massive protest and thrown the Haitian government into crisis. At issue is the misuse of nearly…
By Lauren Lluveras, The Conversation — Puerto Rico was in crisis long before Hurricane Maria hit on Sept. 20, 2017. For years, this U.S. territory had been struggling with debt, economic crisis and drought. In May 2017, the government defaulted on US$73 billion in loans and declared bankruptcy. Then Hurricane Maria slammed the island with 155-mph winds and coastal flooding that rose to 6 feet within 30 minutes of landfall. The storm caused the longest power blackout in…
People in the U.S. and the Caribbean share vulnerability to climate change-related disasters, but only in the Caribbean is the public truly worried. Why? By Elizabeth J. Zechmeister and Claire Q. Evans, The Conversation — During the 2017 Atlantic basin hurricane season, six major storms – all of which were Category 3 or higher – produced devastating human, material and financial devastation across the southern United States and the Caribbean.