HOUSTON AFTER HARVEY
NATURAL DISASTERS ARE AMORAL THINGS: neither good nor bad, malign nor kind. No matter the destruction they cause, they are processes, nothing more—exercises in geology, meteorology, physics, thermodynamics.
We don’t treat them that way, of course. We curse the tornado that tears up a town, the earthquake that topples a city. The people of New Orleans don’t so much say the name Katrina as spit it. The same is true for New Yorkers and Sandy, and Floridians and Andrew. And the same is happening with southeast Texans and a name once as harmless as Harvey.
The story of the hurricane that roared ashore on Aug. 25 and parked above the greater Houston area for five devastating days is already being writ in its numbers: in the 51.88 in. of rain that accumulated, setting a record for the continental U.S.; the 300,000 people who lost power; the 440,000 who have applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the 45,000 who sought refuge in shelters. As for the scale of the rebuilding that awaits the region? No one’s making a firm estimate yet. FEMA Director Brock Long has merely said that he expects his agency to be there “for years.”
Harvey is also becoming known for what it stole: the lives of over 70 people so far, a number that will grow as the floodwaters recede and reveal what they’ve taken. The deaths include six members of the Saldivar family—ages 6 to 84—whose remains were recovered in a van that tumbled off a bridge and into Greens Bayou. Also lost
