Storms of all kinds disrupt lives, plans

Published: 09.12.08

A couple of news items from recent weeks beg for comment.

First, we had the incessant rain from Tropical Storm Fay, and watched the folks in Louisiana prepare for Hurricane Gustav. Then Hanna and Ike and Josephine lined up in the Atlantic. Often we look at the “cones of uncertainty” and projected paths and breathe a sigh of relief when Florida is spared the full force of a hurricane’s wrath.

The problem is that unless the storms spin off into the Atlantic (few do), they have to hit land somewhere and often places are far less prepared. Take Haiti. It endured the impact of Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. More than 300 deaths are blamed on Hurricane Ike, and more than 500 lives were lost in these last four storms.

U.S. NAVY PHOTO
Port de Paix, Haiti — Sept. 9, 2008

The terrain and the buildings in Haiti cannot handle that much rain. Their homes are often little more than huts. What buildings there cannot resist a hurricane; they would never pass muster in any city with a stronger code for hurricane-resistant construction materials and techniques as we have in Florida. Most of the trees in the country have been cut down to be used for fuel, so when the rains come, water pours down the landscape, creating floods and mudslides. Sewage systems – mostly culverts running alongside roads – overflow and mingle with the storm waters.

Four years ago, after Tropical Storm Jeanne (a hurricane by the time it hit Florida) ran through Haiti, I visited there to see the aftermath. Weeks after the storm in Gonaïves, the residents were still digging out more than a foot of mud from their streets and homes. And now? The whole city of more than 100,000 people has flooded again. In a country where the poverty rate hovers above 90 percent, this storm will bring more pain and more suffering to people already in desperate situations.

Over on the Turks and Caicos Islands, the prime minister notes that 80 percent of the homes were damaged. How would we deal with it if four of every five homes in our area were damaged? How will they?

On a second, unrelated matter, the Florida Supreme Court created a storm by shearing two amendments from the November ballot. The state’s Catholic bishops say the two proposed constitutional amendments would have enhanced religious freedom and education and protected vital human services.

The decision made Florida Catholic Conference Executive Director Michael McCarron “sick to my stomach,” he said. Amendment 7 would have removed existing language in the Florida Constitution that bars religious entities from participating in government programs or receiving public money directly or indirectly. Amendment 9 would have allowed for public funding of school-choice alternatives, including religious schools. And since the recommendations for the amendments came from the tax commission, which meets only every 20 years, that opportunity to correct the injustice in state law through this process cannot be utilized for another two decades, if at all.

These amendments could have finally removed the so-called Blaine Amendment that prevents direct or indirect aid to religious institutions, but that in essence grew out of anti-Catholic sentiment of its time in the mid-1880s. Instead, the state and its citizens can continue to benefit from the huge presence of Catholic and other faith-based providers of health care, social services and education, while those faith-based agencies take a significant burden off state agencies that would otherwise have to provide the services at taxpayer expense.

The court’s ruling kills those amendments for this fall’s ballot. The only options available to bring it back in the future would be a citizen’s initiative requiring about 612,000 valid petition signatures or having the Legislature place the amendments on the ballot. Either option would be a tough battle. Stay tuned. As your local weatherman would say, “This storm is still brewing.”

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