Pivoting Into The Unimaginable
Big Chaos Big Change Series, Part 5
Milton
I’m on an interstate in Kansas (and now Missouri) (and now Iowa) — far from any kind TV news broadcast. Still, I’ve got access to enough news to know that another huge disaster is hitting these United States right now as I type… and through Thursday.
Hurricane Milton is currently a Category 3 blowing right straight into Florida, and already this afternoon was spinning tornadoes off around the peninsula. Here’s the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center’s Milton page from the last hour —
...MILTON CLOSE TO MAKING LANDFALL ALONG THE COAST OF WEST-CENTRAL FLORIDA... ...LIFE-THREATENING STORM SURGE, DAMAGING WINDS, AND FLOODING RAINS OCCURRING ACROSS PORTIONS OF CENTRAL AND SOUTHWESTERN FLORIDA...
Here’s an update-to-the-update from half-hour ago —
...EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE MILTON MAKES LANDFALL NEAR SIESTA KEY FLORIDA.... LIFE-THREATENING STORM SURGE, EXTREME WINDS, AND FLASH FLOODING OCCURRING OVER THE CENTRAL FLORIDA PENINSULA...
This is happening as we’ve already got an unprecedented catastrophe happening in the Southeast after Hurricane Helene.
The weather and emergency management folks are all up in a flutter about this new storm because it is so… breathtaking.
I’m not a meteorologist so I won’t pretend to be, but the speed at which this hurricane has gained strength in a very warm gulf is really not good. The hurricane itself has been wicked powerful and just today has weakened a bit. The ability for storms to get so powerful so fast is indicative of the kind of weather we’re seeing more of now with climate change.
The damage potential of a powerful storm in a low-lying state where lots of insurance companies have already left is very high. The challenges of evacuating or not evacuating vulnerable areas add complexities — especially in very dense population places like Florida communities. Plus, not everyone has the capacity or resources to evacuate.
Who can survive a storm surge of 8-12 feet? Especially if it hits at high tide?
I saw memes this morning that a very experienced Florida meteorologist has been emotional on live TV in talking about the Hurricane Milton threat. I’m hearing similar trepidation and awe from emergency management colleagues.
What if this is The Big One? That is… after the last Big One that just hit Appalachia?
The Unimaginable
What’s been scaring meteorologists and all kinds of other folks this week is what if Hurricane Milton is an absolutely devastating disaster for Florida?
What if it wipes out whole urban areas? What if thousands are lost? What if people have to go without water or power or both for extended periods? And so on.
The unimaginable is the stuff that’s so bad we generally didn’t think it would happen.
That’s the era we’re in now.
It could happen in Florida. Like, tonight.
I’m not being casual or dismissive. Like thousands of Americans, I know and love people across all of the areas of Florida that could be hit by this storm. This stuff is deadly serious.
We have a certain amount of denial, though, as a country.
There’s been so much talk about how what’s happened with Hurricane Helene in Appalachia was “unimaginable.”
Was it, though?
It was not unimaginable for land management people. Not for emergency management folks. Probably not for geologists who keep their eyes on land stability and landslides. Probably not for hydrologists and wildland fire folks and all kinds of other people who think about risk, who pay attention to the land, and who are tracking climate change.
What’s happened with Hurricane Helene is hard to understand in the general public, though. We’re not doing much collectively to help us all understand The Unimaginable any better. We’re sure as heck not doing much to be seriously more ready — at scale, and as a country.
Where’s The Pivot?
When is the big pivot?
When do we realize as a society that we’re across some sort of threshold and solidly into an era of climate change and widespread transformation?
IT’S HERE.
You can say it in the Poltergeist movie voice — “They’re heeeere” — if that helps it be more haunting.
But we don’t need a big pivot to get us to more scared.
We need to make a pivot to get us more empowered.
It seems that humans tend to wait until there’s big drama or big tragedy to make big changes. In the 100 days after Pearl Harbor was attacked, this country made a huge big pivot in order to fully and thoroughly engage in World War II. Our efforts helped turn the tide in the war, and to later reshape the entire international order to the post-World-War-II era that we’ve been in since.
What Would It Take?
What would it take for us to make a big pivot now? Or several?
In 2017, a mass shooter in Vegas “fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing 60 people and wounding at least 413. The ensuing panic brought the total number of injured to approximately 867” according to Wikipedia.
But then name any mass shooting crisis in the US — we’ve pivoted to more common-sense gun laws after exactly zero of these godawful assaults. Including that Unimaginable one in Vegas.
What will it take for us to overhaul how we’re making climate damage less bad? What we’ve done so far as humans has not made much of a dent.
What kind of crises, death, trauma, tragedy, and destruction will it take before we’re ready to get aggressive and proactive about the tremendous and transformational changes climate change is bringing?
Will the Hurricane Helene damage in the Southeast push it?
Will Hurricane Milton cause the kind of disaster that makes us rethink things like living in Florida in a time of climate change? Like not just a couple of individuals rethinking it, but hundreds of thousands.
Is US news media covering any of this in ways that explain what in the heck is actually going on in an array of ways that can help us make a decision about when to make big pivots as a society?
Are our politicians? At least the far-right ones are not, including the candidates for the presidency and vice presidency. That’s not helping.
Things to think about. Things to talk about — especially with the election approaching. Which candidates will take on these huge, enormous risks realistically? Which ones give us the best chance of surviving future disasters that are absolutely guaranteed with climate change.
In the meantime, godspeed to all those Americans dealing with disasters and tragedies this night and this week.
There are more to come. Now’s a good time to start thinking about how we can do things differently. All of us.
Forward.
Vanessa Burnett is the Executive Director of Shift the Country, a unique nonprofit set up to drive civic engagement, public pressure, and voter turnout to create a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable democracy. Vanessa is a former homeland security professional with 25+ years experience in resilience, big disasters, wildland fire, emergency management, land management, continuity of operations, and disaster information sharing.
While the rise of Trump’s misinformation and the power of the alt-right have been evident since before Obama’s presidency, warnings about the impacts of climate change have been prominent for several decades. The denials and misinformation found in both are curious.