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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/10/2013 11:56:23 PM
Haiti's growing starvation catastrophe: three years after the earthquake, two out of three people suffer from hunger.

2 out of 3 people face hunger as Haiti woes mount

Associated Press/Dieu Nalio Chery - In this May 22, 2013 photo, a malnourished 5-year-old Dieufort Jean stands in his kitchen holding a spoon as he waits for a meal in the community of Mabriole near the town of Belle Anse in Haiti. Mabriole town official Geneus Lissage fears that death is imminent for these children if Haitian authorities and humanitarian workers don't do more to stem the hunger problems. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

In this May 22, 2013 photo, a malnourished 2-year-old Jerydson Baltazar is weighed by a community volunteer in Belle Anse, Haiti. The United Nations' World Food Program reports that nearly a quarter of Haiti's children suffer from malnutrition, though that figure is higher in places such as Guatemala and the Sahel region in Africa. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

BELLE ANSE, Haiti (AP) — The hardship of hunger abounds amid the stone homes and teepee-like huts in the mountains along Haiti's southern coast.

The hair on broomstick-thin children has turned patchy and orangish, their stomachs have ballooned to the size of their heads and many look half their age — the tell-tale signs of malnutrition.

Mabriole town official Geneus Lissage fears that death is imminent for these children if Haitian authorities and humanitarian workers don't do more to stem the hunger problems.

"They will be counting bodies," Lissage said, "because malnutritionis ravaging children, youngsters and babies."

Three years after an earthquake killed hundreds of thousands and international donors promised to help Haiti "build back better," hunger is worse than ever. Despite billions of dollars from around the world pledged toward rebuilding efforts, the country's food problems underscore just how vulnerable its 10 million people remain.

In 1997 some 1.2 million Haitians didn't have enough food to eat. A decade later the number had more than doubled. Today, that figure is 6.7 million, or a staggering 67 percent of the population that goes without food some days, can't afford a balanced diet or has limited access to food, according to surveys by the government's National Coordination of Food Security. As many as 1.5 million of those face malnutrition and other hunger-related problems.

"This is scandalous. This should not be," said Claude Beauboeuf, a Haitian economist and sometime consultant to relief groups. "But I'm not surprised, because some of the people in the slums eat once every two days."

Much of the crisis stems from too little rain, and then too much. A drought last year destroyed key crops, followed by flooding caused by the outer bands of Tropical Storm Isaac and Hurricane Sandy.

Haiti has had similarly destructive storms over the past decade, and scientists say they expect to see more as global climate change provokes severe weather systems.

Klaus Eberwein, general director of the government's Economic and Social Assistance Fund, said: "We are really trying our best. It's not like we're sitting here and not working on it. We have limited resources."

He attributed Haiti's current hunger woes to "decades of bad political decisions" and, more recently, to last year's storms and drought. "Hunger is not new in Haiti," Eberwein said. "You can't address the hunger situation in one year, two years."

In the village of Mabriole, Marie Jean, a 33-year-old mother of six, looked helpless as her naked son Dieufort sat cross-legged in the dirt, a metal spoon in hand that was more toy than tool. The 5-year-old boy barely looked 3, his gaze unfocused and glassy eyes lifeless. His stomach was distended.

Jean said she lost 10 goats and several chickens to Isaac. The goats could have sold for about $17 apiece, the poultry for about $2.80. She could have used the animals for food or the money to hold her over until the new harvest season.

"You depend on this, because it's all you have," Jean said.

Many people have been forced to buy on credit, or look for the cheapest food available while eating smaller and fewer portions. Some families have asked relatives to take care of their children, or handed them over to orphanages so they have one less mouth to feed, humanitarian workers say.

Political decisions already had hurt the ability of Haitian farmers to feed the country. One example: Prodded by the U.S. government, Haiti cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice, driving many locals out of the market.

Eighty percent of Haiti's rice — and half of all its food — is imported now. Three decades ago, Haiti imported only 19 percent of its food and produced enough rice to export. Factories built in the capital at the same time did little to help: They led farmers to abandon their fields in the countryside in hope of higher wages.

At the same time, Haiti has lost almost all of its forest cover as desperately poor Haitians chop down trees to make charcoal. The widespread deforestation does little to contain heavy rainfall or yield crop-producing soil.

With so much depending on imports, meals are becoming less affordable as the value of Haiti's currency depreciates against the U.S. dollar. Haiti's minimum wage is 200 gourdes a day. Late last year, that salary was equivalent to about $4.75; today it's about $4.54 — a small difference that makes a big strain on the Haitian budget.

One hard-hit area is Ganthier, an arid stretch between the dense capital of Port-au-Prince and the Dominican border a few miles (kilometers) to the east. It's among 44 areas identified by the government as "food insecure," meaning too many tables are bare.

Here, villagers tell of an elusive rainfall that stymied crop production and then the hurricane that followed.

"That is when the misery began," said pastor Estephen Sainvileun, 63, as he sat with friends in the shade of a rare tree.

Hurricane Sandy ravaged the bean crops, leaving a three-month gap until the harvest resumed in December. With no beans to sell, farmers couldn't buy rice, corn or vegetable oil.

"Some people eat by miracle," said Falide Cerve, 51, a part-time merchant and single mother of five.

That has hurt education, too. The Ganthier schoolhouse, with its tin walls and dirt floor, can hold 100 students, but only 43 enrolled. The children are too hungry to learn.

"They're too distracted, and I have to send them home," said Sainvileun, the pastor who runs the tiny schoolhouse.

Especially hurt are children in Haiti's hard-to-reach villages. Directly south of Ganthier is one of the most remote zones in Haiti. The area is one of craggy mountains, the highest in the country at 8,772 feet (2,674 meters). Only the sturdiest off-road vehicles can climb the steep, twisting and rocky roads.

Some villages, such as Anse-a-Boeuf on the southeastern coast, are solely accessible by foot or donkey.

On a recent oven-hot afternoon, a team of Associated Press journalists hiked down a hill, past a thicket of mangroves and into the beachside hamlet. They found several dozen children waddling among the wood huts with the usual signs of malnutrition.

"This child is not malnourished," insisted 45-year-old grandmother Elude Jeudy as she held in her arms 2-year-old Jerydson, naked and crying, too frail to stand a few minutes earlier. "I feed him."

The mother had left the little boy so she could find work in Belle Anse, a nearby village on the ocean.

Neighbor Wilner Fleurimond added: "People shouldn't be living like this."

Villagers say they vote for people they hope will improve their lives but in the end find disappointment.

"We vote for the deputy we know and nothing works," Fleurimond fumed. "We vote for the deputy we don't know and nothing works."

Shortly after taking office, President Michel Martelly launched a nationwide program led by his wife, Sophia, called Aba Grangou, Creole for "end hunger." Financed with $30 million from Venezuela's PetroCaribe fund, the program aims to halve the number of people who are hungry in Haiti by 2016 and eradicate hunger and malnutrition altogether by 2025. Some 2.2 million children are supposed to take part in a school food program financed by the fund.

Eberwein, whose government agency oversees Aba Grangou, said 60,000 mothers have received cash transfers for keeping their children in school. A half million food kits were distributed after Hurricane Sandy, along with 45,000 seed kits to replenish damaged crops, he said. Mid- to long-term solutions require creating jobs.

But the villagers in the Belle Anse area say they've seen scant evidence of the program, as if officials have forgotten the deaths in 2008 of at least 26 severely malnourished children in this very region. That same year, the government collapsed after soaring food prices triggered riots.

USAID has allocated nearly $20 million to international aid groups to focus on food problems since Hurricane Sandy, but villagers in southern Haiti said they have seen little evidence of that.

Despite the discrepancy, one public health expert said there's sufficient proof that at least some of the aid is reaching the population. Were it not, Richard Garfield said, Haiti would see mass migration and unrest.

"Overall aid has gotten to people pretty well. If aid hadn't gotten to people that place would be so much more of a mess," said Garfield, a professor emeritus at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and now a specialist in emergency response at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "You'd see starvation and riots ... The absence of terrible things is about the best positive thing that we can say."

Government officials concede that not all of the 44 areas have received food kits and other goods as part of the Aba Grangou program.

"It hasn't arrived here yet. It's nothing but rhetoric," said Jean-Marc Tata, a math and French teacher and father of two who lives in Mabriole.

His 18-month-old son's hair began to turn orange after Tropical Storm Isaac knocked down trees, chewed up crops and killed livestock, leaving the family with little to eat.

"We had beans that were ready to pick but everything was lost. This has been a major cause of malnutrition," Tata said in a courtyard ringed with stone homes.

Tata said he had given his son a cup of coffee with a bit of bread, his only meal so far that day as dusk began to fall. The day before: a single bowl of oatmeal.

Haiti in general and the mountain villages in particular have long suffered from chronic hunger. Child malnutrition rates have been high for years. The United Nations' World Food Program reports that nearly a quarter of Haiti's children suffer from malnutrition, though the figure is higher in places such as Guatemala and the Sahel region in Africa.

Isolation doesn't help. A doctor in Belle Anse said his hospital has treated five children who were diagnosed with malnutrition this year. He said more parents would come if they could afford transportation and hospital fees, or take away time from work to make the journey on foot.

"The future is really threatened here," Tata said. "Our life is really threatened here."

___

Associated Press videographer Pierre-Richard Luxama contributed to this report.

___

Trenton Daniel on Twitter: http://twitter.com/trentondaniel.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/11/2013 12:01:37 AM

Teenager, 15, Executed By Islamist Rebels in Syria


ht Mohammed Qatta salmo killed syria thg 130610 wblog Teenager, 14, Executed By Islamist Rebels in SyriaTeenager, 14, Executed By Islamist Rebels in Syria

A teenager selling coffee in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was arrested by Islamist rebel fighters for insulting the Prophet Mohammed, beaten and then executed in front of his family, a watchdog group claims.

The boy, Mohammed Qatta, 14, reportedly refused to give a customer coffee, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Sunday.

"Even if [Prophet] Mohammed comes back to life, I won't," the boy said, who was known by his nickname "Salmo."

Extremist rebels driving past in a black car overheard the comment, the opposition Aleppo Media Center said. Qatta was taken away by the fighters and later brought back, his head wrapped with his shirt and his body covered with marks from whipping.

The rebels then read out the boy's sentence - not in a Syrian accent, but in classical Arabic. They accused the boy of blasphemy and told the crowd - which included the boy's parents - that anyone who insulted the Prophet would suffer a similar fate.

Qatta was then shot in the mouth and neck. A graphic photo was released late Sunday of the dead boy clearly showing wounds that matched the reports.

The boy's parents confirmed the accounts in an interview posted online on Monday by the Aleppo Media Center. In it, his father stoically recounted the execution while his mother wailed.

"Why did they kill my son," she cried. "We are not for or against anybody in this conflict, may God take revenge on them."

The Islamists and their group have yet to be identified. Large swathes of rebel-held Aleppo are under the control of al Qaeda-linked rebel groups who have set up Sharia courts and welcomed large numbers of foreign fighters into their ranks. The United States and its allies have struggled with the question of whether to arm an extremely fragmented opposition force whose strongest elements have pledged allegiance to al Qaeda.

Aleppo is expected to become of the focal point of Syria's two-year civil war in the coming days as Syrian forces look to take back full control of Syria's most populous city in a new offensive reportedly dubbed "Northern Storm."

ABC News' Nasser Atta contributed to this report

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"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/11/2013 10:21:54 AM

Swollen Elbe River breaches new levee in Germany


Associated Press/Jens Meyer - A power shovel transports people in a flooded area by river Elbe in Magdeburg, central Germany, Monday, June 10, 2013. Weeks of heavy rain this spring have sent the Elbe, the Danube and other rivers such as the Vltava and the Saale overflowing their banks, causing extensive damage in central and southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)

German soldiers and volunteer helpers fill and load sandbags to protect areas from Elbe river floodwater in Doemitz, northern Germany, Monday June 10, 2013. Residents of the city fight against high water. Weeks of heavy rain this spring have sent the Elbe, the Danube and other rivers such as the Vltava and the Saale overflowing their banks, causing extensive damage in central and southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. (AP Photo/dpa, Axel Heimken)
Water is pumped from a flooded area by river Elbe in Magdeburg, central Germany, Monday, June 10, 2013. Weeks of heavy rain this spring have sent the Elbe, the Danube and other rivers such as the Vltava and the Saale overflowing their banks, causing extensive damage in central and southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)
BERLIN (AP) — The swollen Elbe River breached another leveeearly Monday on its relentless march toward the North Sea, forcing German authorities to evacuate 10 villages and shut down one of the country's main railway routes.

As the surge from the Elbe pushed into rural eastern Germany, there was some relief further upstream as the river slipped back from record levels in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhaltstate.

To the south, the Danube hit a record high Sunday evening in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, then began to ease back Monday. Officials said the city escaped significant damage, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban said soldiers and rescue workers would shift their focus further south.

Weeks of heavy rain this spring have sent the Elbe, the Danube and other rivers such as the Vltava and the Saale overflowing their banks, causing extensive damage in central and southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. At least 22 flood-related deaths have been reported.

The German city of Magdeburg grappled over the weekend with water levels more than 16 feet (five meters) above normal, but the Elbe retreated by about a foot (30 centimeters) on Monday. More than 23,000 residents had to leave their homes on Sunday. Officials said an electricity substation in the city was no longer in danger of flooding — which would have made the situation worse by cutting off power to the drainage pumps.

Further downstream, a levee at Fischbeck, west of Berlin, was breached overnight, prompting officials to evacuate 10 villages in the area.

Germany's national railway said it had to close a bridge near Fischbeck that is used by trains linking Berlin to Cologne, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Some trains were being diverted via other bridges to the north and south, causing significant delays, and others were canceled.

The low-lying old district of Lauenburg, a riverside town east of Hamburg, was evacuated as authorities prepared for floodwaters to peak there later this week.

Soldiers and volunteers have worked frantically over the past week to fill sandbags and reinforce flood defenses across central Europe.

Even with all those efforts, "we should accept that we humans should be humble, that even in the 21st century we don't completely control nature — that is one lesson from this situation," Saxony-Anhalt's interior minister, Holger Stahlknecht, told ZDF television.

He said it was too early to analyze what, if anything, might have been done to prepare better for flooding.

In Budapest, the Danube peaked late Sunday about a foot (31 centimeters) above the previous record, set in 2006.

"The capital city has pulled through the crest of the flood," Orban said while inspecting areas close to the Danube in northern Budapest.

The Danube widens noticeably below Budapest, reducing the threat of flooding, although Orban said flood walls and other defenses were being strengthened in several locations downriver.

River levels across the Czech Republic were falling Monday, although thunderstorms during the night caused some local flash floods. The national police chief, Martin Stovicek, said the country's death toll reached 11 after a Slovak man drowned in a river near the southwestern town of Susice.

_____

Pablo Gorondi contributed to this report from Budapest.


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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/11/2013 10:29:13 AM
By now we are all familiar with this brave guy's story, but this is how Reuters presented it ten hours ago.

Contractor who leaked NSA files drops out of sight, faces legal battle


Reuters/Reuters - U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, an analyst with a U.S. defence contractor, is pictured during an interview with the Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong June 9, 2013. REUTERS/Ewen MacAskill/The Guardian/Handout

By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A contractor at the National Security Agency who leaked details of top-secret U.S. surveillance programs dropped out of sight in Hong Kong on Monday ahead of a likely push by the U.S. government to have him sent back to the United States to face charges.

Edward Snowden, 29, who provided the information for published reports last week that revealed the NSA's broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook, checked out of his Hong Kong hotel hours after going public in a video released on Sunday by Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The disclosures by Snowden have sent shockwaves across Washington, where several lawmakers called on Monday for the extradition and prosecution of the ex-CIA employee who was behind one of the most significant security leaks in U.S. history.

There were some signs, however, that Snowden's stance against government surveillance and his defense of personal privacy was resonating with at least some Americans.

Supporters flocked to Snowden's aid on the Internet - more than 25,000 people signed an online petition urging Obama to pardon Snowden even before he has been charged. A separate effort on Facebook to raise funds for Snowden's legal defense netted nearly $8,000 in just a few hours.

In Hong Kong, officials were cautious in discussing a spy drama that could entangle U.S.-China relations just a few days after U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at a summit in California where cyber security was a prime topic.

Snowden told the Guardian that he went to Hong Kong in hopes it would be a place where he might be able to resist U.S. prosecution attempts, although the former British colony has an extradition treaty with the United States.

On Monday, some local officials suggested that Snowden might have miscalculated.

"We do have bilateral agreements with the U.S. and we are duty-bound to comply with these agreements. Hong Kong is not a legal vacuum, as Mr. Snowden might have thought," said Regina Ip, a Hong Kong lawmaker and former security secretary.

Snowden said he turned over the documents to The Washington Post and the Guardian in order to expose the NSA's vast surveillance of phone and Internet data.

The former technical assistant at the CIA, who had been working at the NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said he became disenchanted with Obama for continuing the surveillance policies of George W. Bush, Obama's predecessor.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded," Snowden told the Guardian, which published the video interview with him, dated June 6, on its website.

In Washington, several members of Congress and intelligence officials showed little sympathy for Snowden's argument. The U.S. Justice Department already is in the initial stages of a criminal investigation.

"Anyone responsible for leaking classified information should be punished to the fullest extent of the law," said Republican Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

'A SACRED TRUST'

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told NBC that the leaks "violate a sacred trust for this country. The damage that these revelations incur are huge."

Some lawmakers were more cautious, however, saying the surveillance programs revealed by the Guardian and The Post raised concerns not just about citizens' privacy, but also whether the Obama administration had done enough to keep Congress informed about such surveillance, as required by law.

"The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing," said Ron Paul, a former House member and unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate in 2012 who has long said that the U.S. government is too intrusive into Americans' daily lives.

"We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden," Paul said.

At the White House on Monday, Obama spokesman Jay Carney sidestepped questions about Snowden. Responding to questions about the White House's efforts to brief Congress about the NSA's surveillance programs, a senior administration official released a list of 22 briefings that had been conducted for lawmakers over a 14-month span.

There will be more briefings on Tuesday, when a half-dozen national security, law enforcement and intelligence officials will meet with House members. The Senate will be briefed on Thursday.

Snowden, who the Guardian said had been working at the NSA for four years as a contractor for outside companies, told the Guardian he had copied the secret documents at the NSA office in Hawaii three weeks ago and had told his supervisor that he needed "a couple of weeks" off for epilepsy treatments. He flew to Hong Kong on May 20.

Staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong told Reuters that Snowden had checked out at noon on Monday. Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian journalist, said later in the day that Snowden was still in Hong Kong.

"He didn't have a plan. He thought out in great detail leaking the documents and then deciding rather than being anonymous, he'd go public. So he thought that out in great detail. But his plans after that have always been vague," MacAskill said.

"I'd imagine there's now going to be a real battle between Washington and Beijing and civil rights groups as to his future," MacAskill said. "He'd like to seek asylum in a friendly country but I'm not sure if that's possible or not."

HONG KONG ASYLUM POLICY 'IN LIMBO'

Legally speaking, where does Snowden go from here?

If Snowden is charged on criminal counts as many lawmakers and officials expect, the focus will turn to the extradition treaty that the United States and Hong Kong signed in 1996, a year before the former British colony was returned to China.

The treaty, which allows for the exchange of criminal suspects in a formal process that also may involve the Chinese government, went into effect in 1998.

It says that Hong Kong authorities can hold a U.S. suspect for up to 60 days after the United States submits a request indicating there is probable cause to believe the suspect violated U.S. law. In Snowden's case, such a request could lead Hong Kong authorities to hold him while Washington prepares a formal extradition request.

Snowden could try to stay in Hong Kong by seeking political asylum. Simon Young, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said there are strong protections for people making asylum claims under Hong Kong's extradition laws.

A decision this year by Hong Kong's High Court requires the government to create a new standard for reviewing asylum applications, putting the cases on hold until the new system is finished.

"He's come really at probably the best moment in time because our asylum laws are in a state of limbo," Young said.

MORE REVELATIONS TO COME?

Snowden's revelations launched a broad national debate on privacy rights and the limits of security programs in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

On Monday, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian's lead reporter on the Snowden case, used Twitter to chide Clapper for claiming that Snowden's disclosures harmed national security. Greenwald also suggested that there were more revelations to come.

"Clapper: leaks "literally gut-wrenching" - "huge, grave damage" - save some melodrama and rhetoric for coming stories. You'll need it," Greenwald tweeted.

Many members of Congress have expressed support for the surveillance program but raised questions about whether it should be more tightly supervised and scaled back.

"In my mind, things that may have been appropriate in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the weeks and months and even years after that, may no longer be appropriate today," Republican Representative Luke Messer of Indiana said on MSNBC.

Some officials said the U.S. government might need to reconsider how much it relies on outside defense contractors who are given top security clearances. As of October 2012, about 483,000 government contractors has top-secret security clearances, according to a report issued in January by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"We do need to take another, closer look at how we control information and how good we are at identifying what people are doing with that information," said Stewart Baker, former general counsel at the NSA and former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, David Ingram, Mark Hosenball, Susan Heavey, Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David Lindsey, Jim Loney and Mohammad Zargham)

Article: NSA leak prompts questions over U.S. reliance on contractors

Article: If past is any indicator, ex-NSA contractor may escape long jail term

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
6/11/2013 10:30:35 AM

Are You Ready for Even More Katrinas and Sandys?


Climate change is not a particularly hot topic among residents of Midland Beach, a seaside enclave of middle-class families in New York’s politically conservative Staten Island.

Six months after Superstorm Sandy propelled a 10-foot wall of ocean over the low-lying community, most people are too busy reconstructing their shattered homes and lives to talk about greenhouse gases and extreme weather patterns.

But eventually, they know the subject must come up.

“Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe it will bring up that conversation, and something good can come out of all this,” says Thomas Cunsolo, an 18-year resident of Midland Beach whose three-story home was totaled by Sandy.

Cunsolo, a 52-year-old retired carpenter, needs no convincing that human-caused climate change contributed to the lethal fury of Sandy. “Any person who really thinks about it honestly has to know the proof is in the pudding,” he says. “Katrina was the first big eye-opener.”

If Katrina was a once-in-a-lifetime storm, Cunsolo asks, “Then how do you explain Sandy? Something’s going on to get these storms to this magnitude. Do we all believe in it yet? Publicly, people aren’t talking about reducing emissions…but they know it’s a big issue that we need to start talking about.”

Experts and scientists overwhelmingly agree.

“I don’t think anybody would try to correlate one event to global warming,” says Tim Barnett, a research marine physicist at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. “But it does make things worse. “With Katrina, Gulf temperatures were the highest on record,” he notes. “That’s what gave Katrina its kick.” Barnett also estimates that half of Sandy’s force can be attributed to global warming.

The probability of bigger storms, meanwhile, “shifted in one direction: the 100-year storm is now a 20-year storm. There’s an increasing probability it will happen again.”

***

On the morning of October 29, 2012, Cunsolo, his wife Karen, his sister, two sons, daughter, and 18-month-old grandson were at home. And though Sandy loomed on the southern horizon amid talk of evacuations, they weren’t particularly concerned.

“We didn’t think Staten Island would be hit,” Cunsolo recalls. “They cried wolf the year before with [Hurricane] Irene. Everybody evacuated and nothing happened. So with Sandy, we thought, ‘This is baloney.’ ”

By 7:30 that night, Cunsolo had changed his mind. As he frantically packed his family and dog into the car, power went out everywhere. Terrified, the Cunsolos fled, but two-foot-high floodwaters slowed their escape.

“Then I look back in the mirror and see an eight-foot wall of water coming at us,” Cunsolo says. “Only by the Grace of God did we make it out.”

His neighbor was not so lucky: He was still home.

Cunsolo brought his family to a nephew’s house on higher ground. He hoped to rescue his neighbor, but wind, rain and darkness made it impossible. At dawn, he tried driving home, but Midland Beach was under water.


“Trees were down, houses were down, cars were piled up and sand and raw sewage were everywhere,” Cunsolo recalls. He spent the next several hours shuttling shell-shocked neighbors to safe ground. Both evacuation centers he tried had themselves been evacuated, so he opted to drop them at a BP station under construction. “Kids were screaming, people were bloody,” Cunsolo says. Elderly couples were wrapped in blankets and rags.

There was still no sign of his neighbor. Crews checked the house and said nobody was there. Unconvinced, Cunsolo waded through freezing-cold muck to reach the home. His neighbor, hit by a floating refrigerator, had collapsed upstairs. Cunsolo rescued his friend and managed to reunite him with his wife, who was sheltering at their daughter’s house.

The last person Cunsolo saved was a man bleeding from his leg, one hand clasped under his shirt. “He just had a liver transplant and his health aide never evacuated him. I brought him to the firehouse. It was the only thing I could think of. I don’t know who he was, and I don’t know if he made it.”

Human deaths, of course, were Sandy’s bitterest legacy. At least two dozen died on Staten Island, though Cunsolo believes the death toll to be much higher. Either way, the hell and high water unleashed on Midland Beach, like so many communities, affected everyone. It will take years to recover.


Housing was the first crisis. Many homes, now condemned, were buckled or pushed off their foundations. Boilers and electrical systems were corroded by saltwater. Cunsolo’s house was structurally twisted, its foundation footings compromised. Repairs will cost more than tearing it down and starting over. What’s worse, work is stalled due to zoning codes and ever-changing BFE’s, or base flood elevation: the height to which homes must be raised. “Right now, mine is 15 feet,” Cunsolo says. “I’d literally have to take an elevator to my first floor.”

Now, the Cunsolo family, unable to find a space big enough to accommodate everyone, is camped out in two apartments located about 25 minutes apart. Their plight isn’t uncommon: Sandy triggered unprecedented rental demand in New York, with some rents spiking 65 percent.

Some residents have managed to return, but many houses remain empty, some still plastered in synthetic spider webs for a Halloween that never came. Of the 71 businesses that lined Midland Avenue, “maybe 20 are up and running,” says Cunsolo, who has since formed the Midland Beach Alliance to assist Sandy victims.

Midland Beach waits, and languishes, half-empty. Looting is a problem: Copper pipes are often ripped from gutted houses under renovation.

And summertime brings new horrors. “Once it reaches around 80 degrees, the mold is going to spread,” Cunsolo warns. “If one home that didn’t have mold remediation is next to one that did, that home will get infected again. Spores can travel.”

In one report, 420 of 690 households surveyed had visible mold; remediation attempts failed in more than a third.

***

It’s worth noting that while rising global temperatures warm the oceans, giving rise to more extreme weather events, they also cause the ocean levels themselves to rise, which adds to the destructive effects of storms like Sandy.

In April, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report stating that, “Sea level is rising, and at an accelerating rate, especially along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico.”

Average levels rose about eight inches from 1880 to 2009, with the rate increasing from 1993 to 2008, at 65 to 90 percent above 20th-century averages.

Global warming is the primary cause of current sea level rise,” the UCS warns. “Human activities, such as burning coal and oil and cutting down tropical forests, have increased atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases and caused the planet to warm by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.”

Global warming, of course, unleashes far more than superstorms and coastal devastation. The grueling impact of climate change has been well documented, and it will only get worse. Heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, rainstorms and blizzards seem to grow more severe each year.

***

The debate that hasn’t yet hit the shores of Staten Island continues to rage in the political and scientific community. Despite the evidence, a very small minority of scientists and their political allies argue that climate change is not caused by human activity.

Many such opponents balked when President Obama proclaimed in his 2013 State of the Union address that more needs to be done to combat climate change. “We can choose to believe thatSuperstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen, were all just a freak coincidence,” he said, “Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science.”

Critics cite concerns that the government’s attempts to curb emissions will damage the economy and shrink the job market; Forbes columnist Peter Ferrara called Obama’s “threats” a “global warming regulatory jihad” and said his assertion of more severe weather was “a fairy tale.”

Most scientists reject this rhetoric as self-interest masquerading as reason.

“People who make those arguments generally come from the energy industry,” says Barnett. “They are not published in this area. They take facts and twist them, like the era of ‘safe’ cigarettes, when the industry’s men in white coats were just a bunch of yahoos off the street.”

Back on Staten Island, Cunsolo, a registered Democrat who has voted for both parties, insists, “politics are out the window. This isn’t a Democratic or a Republican thing.”

The stormy weather is only projected to worsen.

“We expect that the overall intensity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin will continue to increase with higher sea surface temperature, but there is no strong consensus about how the warming atmosphere and ocean will affect the number of tropical storms,” says Dr. Virginia Van Sickle-Burkett, chief scientist for global change research at the U.S. Geological Survey.


She adds, “There is presently no mechanism for humans to stop global warming, at least for the remainder of this century. Changes that have already been made in greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to warm the climate for decades to come.”

Scripps’ Barnett is equally gloomy. “Sandy destroyed the waterfront with a storm surge,” he says. “Imagine if the normal level was a meter higher. Those beaches wouldn’t be there. At every high tide, the water would run everywhere.”

New York State has offered to buy out homes destroyed by Sandy, and Cunsolo says that option is becoming increasingly attractive. But most people want to stay.

Bad move, says Barnett. “They can rebuild all they want, but it’s the dumbest thing in the world. As the ocean gets higher, it will win.”

Humans, he warns, “are effectively creating another planet, whether we like it or not. And if your kids don’t like it 20, 30 years from now, there’s not a damn thing you can do. The problem is not unsolvable, but greed and power will be the downfall of the human race.”

It’s still too much for many Midland Beach residents to ponder. Even as they rebuild, they’re casting a wary eye on the Atlantic Ocean.

“Hurricane season is just a couple of weeks away,” Cunsolo says, who’s currently working on establishing evacuation routes. “I got people calling me, saying what do we do if we get hit again?”


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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