That’s just spin, and it’s no comfort to the 1 in 4 Louisiana residents who live within 25 miles of a dangerous chemical plant. The massive corporations that own and operate these plants claim that such potential calamities are merely worst-case scenarios that won’t happen. Chemicals like chlorine gas, once used as a chemical weapon in the First World War, could quite literally choke, burn or even kill innocent bystanders living all the way in another parish from the damaged plant. In additional reporting by The Advocate, it was revealed that many of these facilities could spread toxic, even lethal chemicals through the air anywhere across a 25-mile radius, were they to be damaged or destroyed in a hurricane. While most have weathered storms in the past, there’s no evidence to show they will be able to withstand the storm surges of the powerful superstorms that are becoming the new norm. Tragically for Louisiana, the state has 740 petrochemical plants that are vulnerable to tropical storms, according to a new report by The Times-Picayune and The Advocate. Residents evacuated as far as other states nearly two decades later, many have never returned. In New Orleans, I saw the city’s Lower 9th Ward all but razed by fierce ocean waters. They occur when a storm pushes a wall of seawater several feet high onto the land, causing lethal flooding and costly property damage. I don’t have to tell you that storm surges are the deadliest part of a hurricane making landfall. At the same time, rising sea levels, caused by the melting of the South Pole’s ice caps and Arctic glaciers, mean higher storm surges. Heat is energy, and the more of it there is in the ocean, the more fuel for increasingly destructive storms. The science is clear: the warmer the oceans, the stronger the storms.
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