Disaster Relief - Tumblr Posts
If y'all had to pick a natural disaster to live with, which would it be?
If you've ever wondered why people in Hawai'i hate tourists, try to wrap your mind around the fact that there are CURRENTLY, RIGHT NOW, tourists sipping martinis and looking at fish within swimming range of the fresh corpses of local people who couldn't escape the overnight destruction of their entire town.
Try to comprehend that there are fully functional, high capacity boats passing through the waters in front of an area full of survivors who are stranded and in need of supplies, refusing to help. They are hosting snorkeling tours.
Really think about, try your best to actually picture over two thousand people unhoused and in need of shelter, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and nothing to return to. Understand that the island, stolen land, is littered with hotels full of air conditioned of rooms with beds and showers and toilets, each fully equipped to host hundreds of families for weeks, turning these people away because they're booked up with tourists who refuse to leave.
And understand that these tourists were offered free transport to return home or be hosted on other islands. Free. Courtesy of local tax dollars. 4,000 wealthy tourists were offered free flights shelter on Oahu and begged to leave the island, BEFORE the survivors were given shelter.
And enough still insisted on remaining and carrying out their vacations that people are left without shelter and resources while they enjoy "their stay in paradise".
[Edit]: This current situation, and this type of tourist behavior is horrifying beyond words. In other circumstances, the tourism situation is much more complicated, and I need to ask that people do not add on to this post unless they are local.
Responding to direct requests for aid from our contacts in the area, we are loading up a truck and heading north to support our fellow southerners this weekend. We need to make $2000 fast to cover the entire wishlist provided to us by folks in North Carolina. Can you help us? Cash-app and Venmo is @/TeamKombatikon. Donations can also be made through ko-fi.com/angelito
Thank you so much!
my best friend @expiredidealist is out with a group of people still running supplies to people in NC around burnsville and bakersville, they’re working on clearing paths and whatnot so people can get out and around. here are some places to donate if you would like to help them directly. they need it for medical supplies, oil and gas for their chainsaws, coms, and other general emergency related things. thank you!
venmo: @Jaybird-Hess
cashapp: $nallygasher
paypal: @JaybirdBlue
venmo: @whitetrashbaddie
one of my friends has been impacted by hurricane helene, and while their power is back on they’ve lost a week of work and all their groceries. they’ve been denied fema assistance as of right now because the system hasn’t updated quite yet and is auto-rejecting everybody.
they’ve set a goal on ko-fi for $500 to replace groceries and gas and lost wages. any surplus will be donated to local relief, as they’ve stated more than once.
every little bit helps. if you can’t donate, please share to hopefully get it across somebody’s dash who can. 🩷
hi please consider sharing these two trusted mutual aid funds to help with disaster relief in the appalachians/the southeast U.S. after hurricane helene. Many towns in the appalachians have been wiped out entirely and/or have been landlocked by landslides with no power or cell signal, and are only reachable by air. all roads to Asheville are blocked or gone entirely. Chimney Rock had much of it destroyed. Many places in the southeast other than the Carolina mountains, especially Florida, are facing much the same. it will take a long time to rebuild, especially the roads, but for now please considering sharing or donating to help people in need who are trapped or lost their homes and loved ones.
Appalachian Medical Solidarity
VENMO: @AppMedSolid
CASHAPP: $Streets1de
Put "Flood support" in the description
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief
PAYPAL: MutualAidDisasterRelief@gmail.com
VENMO: @MutualAidDisasterRelief
WEBSITE: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/mutual-aid-disaster-relief
i don’t care how different this is from my regular reblogging, this is my fucking home, my people, and i will not be quiet about it
we need people to look at us and help us
i cannot state just how deeply this disaster has affected everyone in wnc, places like chimney rock and swannanoa are GONE, others are still under feet of water, others still are completely inaccessible except by air because the roads washed away. hundreds of thousands are without power and water, and supplies are low.
appalachia was deeply, completely unprepared for the amount of destruction helene would cause. this is one of the poorest regions in america. please don’t look away. we need help now more than ever.
If you've ever wondered why people in Hawai'i hate tourists, try to wrap your mind around the fact that there are CURRENTLY, RIGHT NOW, tourists sipping martinis and looking at fish within swimming range of the fresh corpses of local people who couldn't escape the overnight destruction of their entire town.
Try to comprehend that there are fully functional, high capacity boats passing through the waters in front of an area full of survivors who are stranded and in need of supplies, refusing to help. They are hosting snorkeling tours.
Really think about, try your best to actually picture over two thousand people unhoused and in need of shelter, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and nothing to return to. Understand that the island, stolen land, is littered with hotels full of air conditioned of rooms with beds and showers and toilets, each fully equipped to host hundreds of families for weeks, turning these people away because they're booked up with tourists who refuse to leave.
And understand that these tourists were offered free transport to return home or be hosted on other islands. Free. Courtesy of local tax dollars. 4,000 wealthy tourists were offered free flights shelter on Oahu and begged to leave the island, BEFORE the survivors were given shelter.
And enough still insisted on remaining and carrying out their vacations that people are left without shelter and resources while they enjoy "their stay in paradise".
[Edit]: This current situation, and this type of tourist behavior is horrifying beyond words. In other circumstances, the tourism situation is much more complicated, and I need to ask that people do not add on to this post unless they are local.
Support Maui, Hawai'i Residents During the Lahaina Wildfire Crisis
A series of wildfires exacerbated by hurricane winds and climate change has destroyed homes, historical sites, and natural flora in Lahaina, Maui. Thousands have been displaced, and lives have been lost.
WWC's mod Ren has put together a page outlining resources for residents displaced and affected by the wildfires, and for those who wish to support them during this crisis.
Please share this resource and consider donating, especially if you are not local to Hawai'i and have visited or are considering visiting the islands.
Find a list of orgs to donate to HERE
Our hearts are with Maui residents during this tremendous loss.
-Writing With Color
Here’s some support on my part & a nod to part of my editor’s heritage. If anyone else would like to help, don’t hesitate to chip in some way.
A friend of mine posted this and tagged my old instagram account, asking me to share it. I figured sharing it here where I actually have a following, would be far better.
Please remember that just because the government is giving into pressure and greed, that doesn’t mean that any of this is getting any better, in a lot of ways it’s getting worse. And even if you yourself aren’t being as heavily affected anymore, there are people and communities that are.
Stay safe Darling ones, and help others remain safe too.
A week of backbreaking concrete roof repair in Catano, Puerto Rico with @NECHAMA, a Jewish disaster relief organization based in Minnesota. Earned new skills and delicious amarillos.
My hometown flooded Monday night.
Vermont has flooded.
My family and home are fine because the 7.8 inches of rain that fell in a day didn’t cause our house to slide of the ridge it sits on, but less than a thousand feet away roads have been washed out and homes are being condemned. Yesterday, our congressional delegation, the governor, and a FEMA representative, toured the town - focusing on the non-profit cat cafe turned hazardous waste site thanks to a basement full of red diesel fuel and the neighborhood that includes a ten story, low income, senior and disabled apartment building where the blacktop of the road lifted and peeled away in huge sheets. There is still only one route out of town to the interstate due to landslides and flooding. In every direction I can point to there are towns going through similar things. Our capitol, Montpelier, flooded causing most of the state government to shut down and move essential operations to a nearby airport. Many farms were in the path of flood waters and lost most of their crops. Vermont has the second largest population of unhoused people per capita, second to California, with many of them camping in the woods along our rivers. They have lost everything.
In short, we need help.
I gathered some resources if you need an updated news source or are able to donate.
It’s raining again.
I’ve also collected some photos of the flooding and it’s aftermath
It’s started raining again. We may get another two inches.
Please donate if you are able and share this post to help our brave little state.
My hometown flooded Monday night.
Vermont has flooded.
My family and home are fine because the 7.8 inches of rain that fell in a day didn’t cause our house to slide of the ridge it sits on, but less than a thousand feet away roads have been washed out and homes are being condemned. Yesterday, our congressional delegation, the governor, and a FEMA representative, toured the town - focusing on the non-profit cat cafe turned hazardous waste site thanks to a basement full of red diesel fuel and the neighborhood that includes a ten story, low income, senior and disabled apartment building where the blacktop of the road lifted and peeled away in huge sheets. There is still only one route out of town to the interstate due to landslides and flooding. In every direction I can point to there are towns going through similar things. Our capitol, Montpelier, flooded causing most of the state government to shut down and move essential operations to a nearby airport. Many farms were in the path of flood waters and lost most of their crops. Vermont has the second largest population of unhoused people per capita, second to California, with many of them camping in the woods along our rivers. They have lost everything.
In short, we need help.
I gathered some resources if you need an updated news source or are able to donate.
It’s raining again.
I’ve also collected some photos of the flooding and it’s aftermath
It’s started raining again. We may get another two inches.
Please donate if you are able and share this post to help our brave little state.
So as a Floridian, I do disagree with this statement to an extent, our government fails us regularly and when I say government, I don't mean the Biden administration. They've actually been trying to help us here - that's Biden AND Harris. When I say the government has failed us, I'm speaking about Ron DeSantis and his ragtag Republican corporate slumlords.
Not only has DeSantis written the term climate change out of our state statutes by passing HB1645, but he's also denied funding that could help from anything from researching green energy sources to fight against climate change to infrastructure (those better building codes here? yeah, this is why we don't have it) and even potentially better shelters and evacuation routes during hurricane seasons. That isn't even the tip of the iceberg regarding a lot of our problems about the incompetency that is the DeSantis administration, either. Just a few months back? He wanted to turn our state's national parks into golf courses. He isn't trying to solve the housing crisis here. He isn't trying to help us with finding reasonable insurance. Ron DeSantis has a significantly low approval rating and before anyone starts with the "but you voted him in" I'm going to disrespectfully say: fuck all the way off, because no, I did not.
And believe it or not, I doubt a lot of people who are suffering from this storm did, too. And honestly? Even if they did? No one deserves it because they were lied to by a manipulative narcissist with a little man complex flying his "anti-woke" flag.
DeSantis is doing the bare-fucking-minimum as a governor here in Florida because he shouldn't be denying infrastructure funding or refusing to acknowledge climate change. Yes, he's allowing FEMA to come in and he's accepted phone calls from Biden, but why isn't he taking the necessary steps to make it so we don't have to get to a certain point?
I've been seeing a bunch of posts about "why didn't the government do anything in advance" Here are things that were done:
Massive amounts of food, bottled water, medical supplies, and beds were delivered to strong buildings designated as shelters in every town.
The National guard was sandbagging everything they could and knocking on doors all along the coast trying to convince people to evacuate. They were literally going door-to-door.
The government paid for free Uber rides to shelters and provided free buses to evacuate. Unfortunately it appears not many people knew about it.
The government organized and prioritized getting gas stations refilled along evacuation routes. It wasn't enough but it would have been much worse without official help. They also organizes tow trucks to get dead cars off the roads.
Everyone will probably get the same aid Helen victims got - $750 instantly to anyone with ID showing they lived in a hurricane damaged area, and then thousands to tens of thousands to help rebuild or move later on, once there are more detailed damage assessments and victims fill out a request for aid.
The government also speed ran trying to get debris from Helene off the streets before Milton so it wouldn't become projectiles (again not enough but they managed waaaaay more than expected), and will be the ones clearing roads tomorrow ASAP.
Heck, the government runs NOAA and is what told people approximately where it would hit and with what power days ago. They were the ones that did all the research to build the devices that let them make predictions like that. They were the ones flying into the storm to get windspeed measurements every couple hours.
Tomorrow the government will be delivering more generators and gas and bottled water, and a fleet of ambulances and firemen to rescue people.
Yeah we could do better. We could always do better. Florida needs better building codes in storm surge zones for one thing.
But to say the government did nothing? Nah, that's not true. It's not true at all.
Disaster Resource
A helpful resource I learned about today for those affected by Hurricane Micheal is crisiscleanup.org they will match you with a group to help clean up once it is safe to send people in.
Pass it along!
crisiscleanup.org
I’m very tired. you probably heard that Russia destroyed the Kakhovka Dam to slow Ukraine’s counter offensive. here’s something I didn’t quite realize: since this February, the Russians operated the dam in juuuuust the right way so that as much water would build up as possible when the snow melted and spring showers started. and then they blew the whole thing up.
40,000 people may need to be evacuated. I don’t really have the energy to say anything else right now.
Hospitallers Medical Battalion: actual angels can confirm. they’re combat-zone medical services - you know how humanitarian groups like MFS and Red Cross have to pause operations due to the Russians fucking shooting at humanitarian zones? yeah, these guys don’t pause for bullets, they fucking walk into them and they bring out anyone they can.
Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation: you can choose from a number of various fundraiser projects here, if you’re feeling particularly picky. for those of you who balk at the idea of supporting anything military just please remember that things like vehicles and drones aren’t just for military use, they’re also for evacuation and finding the wounded and they’re fucking vital.
KSE Foundation: similar to the above, KSE has multiple projects you can choose from to donate to. looking at it right now, one of the projects with the lowest amounts of money raised thus far - despite being started in April - is Seeds for Ukraine, which will help Ukraine recover from the ecological devastation Russia has been wreaking (and with Ukraine, the countries that rely on Ukraine’s grain exports that Russia keeps trying to steal).
Come Back Alive: do these guys even need the introduction? they’re Come Back Alive. I’m kissing all of them.
United24: Zelenskyy’s brain child, and the official fundraising platform of Ukraine. Mark Hamill recommends the fundraisers for drones in particular.
UAnimals: Nova Kakhovka’s zoo got… pretty much completely swept away. all zoo residents except the birds have drowned. UAnimals has tried throughout the occupation to keep the animals safe, and they’ve been reporting on the status of the zoo. I don’t really know what to say except that I hope they’re able to save the pets and strays in the towns along the river.
You can find NGOs specific to evacuation efforts in this post; please signal boost it as well. I’ve listed them but am leaving the links for the op post.
Ukrainian FireFighters Foundation
Helping To Leave
VOSTOK SOS