
Expert predicts a major hurricane hitting Houston would be “America’s Chernobyl” - onetimemanytime
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/houston-hurricane-ship-channel-orourke/
======
NoOneNew
The danger mentioned is realistic and should be taken seriously. However, for
those who dont live in a hurricane danger zone (I'm in Florida), these
doomsday articles are a normal, everyday thing. Every single year since I was
12 and paid attention/tracked hurricanes (that's 21 years ago), "Experts
predict ~3 major hurricanes will make landfall this year..." killing everyone,
washing away Florida, flattening civilization, ending life as we know it,
yadda yadda. This is the Weather Channel as well.

It gets old.

What's sad, the 2 or 3 honest concerned studies are drowned out by the
millions of fear mongering, wolf criers. Do I think this article is honest?
Other than the unneeded slow burn beginning, yea. But at the same time,
hurricane zones have different building codes. This isn't as big of a
"surprise" problem as people imagine. No one is really surprised that anything
is "vulnerable" on the gulf coast. The American Chernobyl is just clickbait.

~~~
xg15
> _Every single year since I was 12 and paid attention /tracked hurricanes_

As a non-US resident, I'd like to ask: International news make it appear as if
the situation has worsened in the last years (Katrina used to be a once-in-a-
lifetime event, now hurricanes of similar size occur every few years) Is this
impression correct or overblown?

Also, going by news coverage, the US seem to be hit by at least four large-
scale destabilizing events simultaneously this year (hurricanes, wildfires,
COVID, political tensions). Does this influence the general outlook on the
hurricane season?

~~~
wtvanhest
Covid is the only destabilizing event, and it looks as though the US system of
decentralization resulted in a variety of outcomes, but overall non-
destabilization.

Wildfires make the news bc they are inconvenient, but largely impact rural
areas.

Hurricanes are local events that cause damage, but US building codes largely
prevent loss of life. Katrina is still a once in a lifetime event due to the
flooding caused by failed levees.

Political tension is nothing more than the rise of news entertainment. The two
political parties are extremely similar. In 4 months or 4 years, Trump will be
out of office and the news entertainment business will manufacture other
controversies.

The 3 big ‘problems’/destabilizing factors in the US are, student loans,
massive prison pop, a great, but vastly overpriced health care system.

~~~
NoOneNew
I'm mostly going to split hairs here. I mostly agree with you. But I'd say the
real destabilizing problem in the USA has been the partisan attitudes in
politics. You could almost claim that America is 2 countries, Democratia and
Republica. That's how ridiculous our politics have become and why some of our
problems, especially the ones you mentioned, have gotten so bad. I think they
would always be "problems", but no where near as bad if all of our Congress
would remember, "Oh wait, we are all Americas. We should be working together,
not against each other."

Edit: Why the hell are you getting downvoted so much?

~~~
dcow
Yep. Just yesterday I encountered a pocket of “radical” anarchists that
literally want to “utterly destroy the other side before rebuilding a good
society”. Since when is that normal?

~~~
pnw_hazor
It is normal thinking for Marxists.

~~~
adamsea
Of course there are some who fit the description you imply. But there’s a huge
range of political ideologies which have been influenced by Karl Marx and his
intellectual successors - aka Marxism.

Lol I think there was a Marxist hiding under my bed to get me the other night
;).

Such an easy boogie-man word to use.

Even scarier are those “cultural marxists.”

Here’s some fact-based information:
[https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php](https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> In American capitalism's latest crisis, the combination of growing
> unemployment and worsening inflation has confounded all the usual experts.
> The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full
> employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care
> to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Only Marxism, as an account
> ofthe rational unfolding of a basically irrational capitalist system, makes
> sense of our current chaos. In class struggle, it also points the way out.
> The rest is up to us.

I'm calling baloney on the "fact-based information". That's not an objective
source; that's a true believer being a cheerleader.

~~~
adamsea
Ahhh, I see your point. Fair. I read about the first third and assumed the
rest was just as neutral.

TBH I should have looked at the author more carefully - I thought the page was
like the NYU equivalent of Stanford’s online encyclopedia of Philosophy, sort
of an anodyne online primer.

Thanks for pointing that out.

However based on my understanding I will say that most is the article seems
pretty on point as being a description of the basics of Marx / Marxist
thought.

I’ll also throw in that I think this is the thought that should demand our
attention:

> The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full
> employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care
> to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer.

Don’t have to be Marxist to see that.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
>>> The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full
employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care
to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer.

> Don’t have to be Marxist to see that.

No. And you can see the consequences that are plastered all over the evening
news.

Whether Marx has the right solution is a different question. But the problem
is real. (Myself, I'd be inclined to say that Germany has a better solution
than either the US or Marx. But I've never lived and worked in that system, so
I don't really know.)

~~~
adamsea
I agree : ). Don't think I'd call myself a Marxist but I think the school of
intellectual thought he spawned (as opposed to the totalitarian governments
mis-using his name) makes valuable contributions to understanding our politics
and economy.

And yeah I like the German social-democrat model too.

Also, big-ups to us for having a fairly civil conversation : ).

------
roenxi
Chernobyl is like terrorism - pretty much everything is more damaging if a
risk adjusted data-driven comparison is done.

It is hard to describe a major disaster that is less damaging then Chernobyl.
There are train wrecks that are comparable to Chernobyl by deaths [0]. On that
note; wow, what a horrific rain wreck that must have been.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disaster...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll)

~~~
andruby
Hold on.

The number of deaths due to Chernobyl is grossly underreported. And deaths
don't cover the full "cost" of Chernobyl. Displacing thousands of people lead
to poverty, depression and suicide. The economic and social damage was huge.
The Soviet Union doesn't have statistics on this because they didn't want
those numbers to exist.

I'd be willing to argue that the Chernobyl accident caused (or at least
precipitated) the fall of the Soviet union. This case was also made by the
Netflix "Chernobyl" series.

If you look at it from that perspective: No, I don't think that a hurricane
hitting Houston would be as damaging as Chernobyl and cause the United States
to collapse.

~~~
simias
>I'd be willing to argue that the Chernobyl accident caused (or at least
precipitated) the fall of the Soviet union. This case was also made by the
Netflix "Chernobyl" series.

You're not helping your argument when you make it sound like a bold new theory
and use (good) TV fiction to bolster it up. I propose a quote from a certain
Mikhail Gorbachev instead:

> He states flatly that the Chernobyl explosion was “perhaps the real cause of
> the collapse of the Soviet Union.” According to Gorbachev, the Chernobyl
> explosion was a “turning point” that “opened the possibility of much greater
> freedom of expression, to the point that the system as we knew it could no
> longer continue.”

[https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/chernobyl-and-the-
fall-...](https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/chernobyl-and-the-fall-of-the-
soviet-union-gorbachevs-glasnost-allowed-the-nuclear-catastrophe-to-undermine-
the-ussr.html)

But note that here it's more about how Chernobyl exposed deep dysfunctions
within the Soviet system and how it might have contributed to precipitate its
collapse. I don't really know if that counts as "damage".

~~~
sukilot
"Here's more evidence to support your idea" is perhaps the pettiest possible
retort. Is agreeing with someone so hard?

~~~
simias
Re-reading my comment I can see how it could be interpreted that way, I meant
it more as playful jab but such are the woes of a textual medium...

I just thought it was amusing to present that theory in that way, when it's
been brought up by Mr СССР himself.

~~~
andruby
I didn't want to make it sound like it's a new theory at all. I applaud your
addition with the quote and I didn't read it as negatory at all.

------
codyswann
I wonder who will hold political office when this happens so they can say "no
one could have foreseen this type of devastation."

~~~
tosser0001
I remember Scientific American had an article about what would happen to New
Orleans if a hurricane hit several years before Katrina [1]. I recall having a
bit of a hard time believing it could really be as bad as they said: surely
people would have planned for something like this given its inevitability?
Obviously I was wrong.

Also, Katerina wasn't even the direct hit that they had modeled so it could
have been much, much worse. I still wonder, even in the wake of Katrina, if
New Orleans is truly prepared for the storm that is inevitably going to come.

[1] paywalled, but this is the link from 2001:
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drowning-new-
orle...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drowning-new-orleans/)

~~~
skykooler
I remember reading that article too. When I saw the news about Katrina, I was
blown away to learn that nobody had addressed any of the issues yet.

~~~
dehrmann
Isn't being a coastal city below sea level in a hurricane-prone region just a
recipe for disaster? It seems like it would take an absurd about of
infrastructure to protect the city.

------
jupp0r
In the meantime, tropical storm Laura is both possibly becoming a major
hurricane and potentially making land fall near Houston:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@/data=!4m4!15m3!1m1!1s%2Fg%2F11...](https://www.google.com/maps/@/data=!4m4!15m3!1m1!1s%2Fg%2F11hjjy3f_b!2e1?hl=en)

------
arethuza
On the subject of the release of dioxins, it's worth considering what happened
at Seveso:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveso_disaster)

------
totetsu
And in 34 years we will get social media videographer gig workers releasing
"Illegal cross country trip into the Galveston zone" VR experiences.

This reminded me of the Arkema Inc. Chemical Plant Fire.
[https://www.csb.gov/arkema-inc-chemical-plant-
fire-/](https://www.csb.gov/arkema-inc-chemical-plant-fire-/)

I wonder if it is still not required by federal regulations to analyze the
risk of flooding creating process safety hazards.

~~~
EdwardDiego
God I love CSB videos, such good post-mortems.

------
StanislavPetrov
As an older person, I remember similar articles written about the dangers of
such a hurricane hitting New Orleans and the disaster that would result due to
the vulnerable levy system. Like this piece, those articles were lightly
regarded and ignored. Unfortunately its not a matter of if, but when.

~~~
redis_mlc
Yup, and Galveston was literally scrubbed off the face of the earth by a
hurricane in 1900.

There's something weird in politics/organizations that everybody feels
compelled to be a yes-man and put a positive spin on what is certain to
happen. Often I'll hear, "Didn't somebody handle that?" when they already know
that nobody was assigned for that.

An illustration is provided by corona, where everybody tried to draw
conclusions when there was literally no useful data for months, and even in
Aug. 2020 there's precious little that one can say conclusively.

------
nkingsy
Just looking at the numbers, the damage from Harvey (which they call
small/lucky) was something like 6x the cost of the cheaper "artificial island"
option proposed.

The arguments for UBI have the implication that we have too many people with
not enough to do, but that's not the case. We could employ the globe 1000x
over in activities for the betterment of humanity, but the system for
allocating non-profit-driven work is reliably corrupted by profit-driven
enterprises.

------
caro_douglos
Texas tea is a mainstay of the economy so it’s not terribly surprising that a
member of the southern ivies has some groups and alumni decrying oil refinery
waste as a big issue. While reading the article try not to judge the people or
political structures involved since a huge chunk of the population is tied to
the price of oil. It’s a fool’s errand to try to convince everyday people of
the dangers involved with an industry which pays their bills.

~~~
fractal618
I wouldn't say it's a fools errand. I normally have a laugh sending my fools
to get things that don't even exist like a dozen mouse eggs, or some quartz
oil.

This is more like "a hermits dream"

------
paulcole
Less of a pollution issue, but a major earthquake hitting St. Louis would be
absolutely devastating. I’ve seen estimates saying it would be the biggest
natural disaster in US history.

[https://www.kansas.com/news/nation-
world/national/article223...](https://www.kansas.com/news/nation-
world/national/article223049475.html)

------
engineer_22
Hurricane Ike, a category 4 hurricane, made landfall on the eastern end of
Galveston Island in 2008.

Wikipedia has an article detailing the damages, including a mention of
chemical pollution:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike)

------
todd8
There is a widespread belief that hurricanes and tropical cyclonic storms in
general have increased in frequency and strength. This is a justified concern
due to the existence of global warming and the potential loss of life and
property damage generated by these immense storms.

I'm not a climate scientist, but I have read about climate change and
hurricanes (and cyclones):

* In 1886 there were 7 major hurricanes that year, four hit Texas and three that hit florida. (See the hurricane tracking map for that year[1].) This was the most active year on record for hurricanes in the US, see[8].

* Barack Obama had the best record for hurricanes, only four hurricanes over eight years. Taft (1909-1913) had 13 in just four years over five times the rate that Obama had. Bush had 18, and Trump has had 7. The numbers are all over the place.[2]

* Claims that increasing ocean surface temperature will clearly generate more intense hurricane activity need to be tempered by an understanding of the energy source that drives hurricanes. It is not temperature; it is the temperature delta between the surface temperature and the overlying air that provides the energy for hurricanes, see [3], and the troposhere is warming faster than the surface according to climate scientists [4]. Wouldn't this mean that there should be less powerful and or less frequent hurricanes.

* Global climate-related deaths have dropped _dramatically_ over the last century according to data from Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters [5] and cited with a figure on p. 74 of [6].

* The IPCC 5 Summary Volume Final report technical summary (TFE.9, Table 1 on page 110) has this to say concerning the statement: "Increases in intense tropical cyclone activity". "Low confidence" that changes occured (since 1950), "Low confidence" of a human contribution to observed changes, and "Low confidence" of further changes in early 21st century. See p. 110 [7].

The IPCC, in general, has _low confidence_ that climate change is currently
responsible for changes in hurricane intensity.

* We can't rely on our own personal experience for understanding hurricane frequency, obviously.

[1] [https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tracks/tracks-
at-1886.png](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tracks/tracks-at-1886.png)

[2] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/26/us-
hurri...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/11/26/us-hurricanes-
by-president-since-1900-trump-tops-obama-but-bush-beats-them-
both/#74647be821d0)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone)

[4] [https://www.washington.edu/news/2004/05/06/troposphere-
warmi...](https://www.washington.edu/news/2004/05/06/troposphere-warming-
faster-than-earths-surface-new-measurement-shows/)

[5] [https://www.emdat.be](https://www.emdat.be)

[6] Bjorn Lomborg, False Alarm, Basic Books, NY, 2020.

[7]
[https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WG1AR5_Summa...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WG1AR5_SummaryVolume_FINAL.pdf)

[8] [https://rogerpielkejr.com/2019/01/17/global-tropical-
cyclone...](https://rogerpielkejr.com/2019/01/17/global-tropical-cyclone-
landfalls-updated-1970-2018/)

~~~
ajnin
I see that in the face of overwhelming evidence the narrative is changing from
"climate change does not exist" to "climate change is not that bad", so that
the conclusion remains that "we don't need to do anything about it".

About that "belief" about hurricanes, here's one piece of data :
[https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:North_Atlantic_Hurri...](https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:North_Atlantic_Hurricane_History.png)

------
ghostcluster
Fukushima would be a better metaphor because it was triggered by a natural
disaster

~~~
Noughmad
Yeah but every hurricane is already worse than Fukushima. Remember that the
only damage to health in Fukushima came from the evacuation itself.

~~~
throwaway5752
The earthquake and tsunami killed almost 20,000 people. Your point might be
about the nuclear power station incident, but you might be forgetting what
caused it.

~~~
Noughmad
Only the nuclear disaster gets called "Fukushima" though. The earthquake and
tsunami impacted a much larger area.

------
johnohara
One would think Deepwater Horizon would be mentioned by comparison.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill)

------
ryanmarsh
If you're interested in sane weather reporting on Houston you can do no better
than Space City Weather
[https://spacecityweather.com/](https://spacecityweather.com/)

Also of use, the Space City Weather Flood Scale, now widely in use.
[https://spacecityweather.com/the-space-city-weather-flood-
sc...](https://spacecityweather.com/the-space-city-weather-flood-scale/)

------
simplecto
Brooklyn has many issues with the Gowanus canal, also a Superfund site. It
flooded parts of Brooklyn in 2012 during hurricane Sandy.

------
monadic2
Chernobyl is already a tiny disaster compared to the covid19 handling.

Hell, Puerto Rico's being devastated by Hurricane Maria already qualifies as
an event that has caused more preventable destruction than Chernobyl did. You
don't have to use your imagination.

~~~
culopatin
Are you accounting for all the kids born in Easter Europe in the early 90s
that either have developed cancer in the last 10 years or are dealing with it
now? Or at least all the 90's kid from Belarus that are still dying to this
day because of cancer?

~~~
Noughmad
Are you counting _every_ kid that dies of cancer in Eastern Europe as caused
by Chernobyl?

The reality is that only one kind of cancer rose noticeably because of
Chernobyl, this is thyroid cancer. And note that the base rate is one per
million per year, so even a "statistically significant increase" doesn't mean
a lot of cases.

------
buck4roo
Did @onetimemanytime find this article to submit after reading

The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24266056)

Because I did.

------
mschuster91
> A detailed inventory of hazardous chemicals around the Ship Channel remains
> difficult to come by, thanks to a Texas law that restricts public disclosure
> of information that could be utilized by terrorists.

Am I the only one who has to immediately think of the Beirut explosion
disaster when reading this?!

> At an estimated cost of $5 billion to $7 billion, the project would be far
> cheaper than either the Ike Dike or the cost of recovering from an epic
> natural disaster.

And here we have the classic game of political incentives: whoever sponsors it
now will be out a couple billion dollars even if the specified event never
hits, so as there is no incentive for preventative work, why should it be
done?

------
sschueller
And thanks to the inaccurate and sensationalized depiction of radiation
poisoning/exposure by TV shows like HBOs Chernobyl people will be in
additional panic causing more harm.

------
acvny
Clickbait title. If it doesn't involve radiation leak, it cannot be compared
to Chernobyl.

~~~
Hnrobert42
I think you misunderstand how metaphors work.

------
ryanmarsh
This article is major clickbait hand-wavey garbage. There’s so many
exaggerations and half truths I don’t know where to start. Peter Holly has
been in Houston long enough to know he could have called the guys who designed
those storage vessels and other refinery equipment (they’re likely neighbors)
and get a quote about the tolerances they were designed for. He could have
included a map showing the placement of the various container ports (there’s
more than one, this isn’t Long Beach) and refineries or storage. This
information is all easily obtained in Houston.

Every time something happens here with a hurricane people here and across the
country see fit to write inflammatory articles that are pure bullshit.

Is there some risk of a LOPC (loss of primary containment) somewhere near the
coast? Yes. How big? Which facilities? What category storm? What storm track?
Would it be like Chernobyl? No.

