Obama Inflicts Deadly Insult to Louisiana Flood Victims' Injury

By Deborah Dupré

Tuesday, President Barack Obama dealt what might be a final blow to oil-cursed flooded Louisiana. The president visited the wrecked state for the first time since the flood catastrophe that killed 13 people and damaged over 100,000 homes during what locals say has been worse than Hurricane Katrina. While most climate scientists tie the historic floods in Louisiana to climate change and fossil fuel usage, Obama made no link to that during his visit remarks. Environmentalists protested him and his Interior Department auctioning for lease sale up to 24 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration and development.

The sale was held in the Superdome, the building officials had ordered thousands of displaced New Orleans residents to take refuge during Hurricane Katrina 11 years ago. There, they found inhumane conditions and gun violence bloody carnage. Since Katrina, the same region was also plagued by BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil crime, the nation’s largest environmental disaster. Most of its damage and human injuries were hidden from the public at great cost. (Vampire of Macondo)

As Dupré reported last week, Louisiana activists had been preparing for Tuesday, before knowing the president would dare arrive during the auction and amid secret refinery problems associated with the flood.

In South Louisiana, as sea level rises and erosion continues, endless miles of tangles of pipeline are exposed to corrosive seawater. Those pipelines, refineries, tank farms and ports are at risk. That means, as this author highlighted again this week, that in turn, residents throughout South Louisiana also are at risk.

“Refinery accidents often happen during severe weather; flood waters causing the most damage, overflowing treatment tanks, sending oil and its toxic chemicals into nearby canals and neighborhoods. The worst, most deadly damage from Hurricane Katrina was from flooded oil refineries. Media has kept a tight lid on refinery incidents throughout this event to date.

“The petrochemical industry continues to  lack transparency and accountability regarding emergency preparedness in a region tested time and again by catastrophic events,” reports Anna Hrybyk, Louisiana Bucket Brigade program manager in a commentary on the present Louisiana flood.

READ MORE: $100B Louisiana Oil Industry Flooding Sets Fossil Fuel Profiteers Crazy

The Chemical Safety Board, the most important independent investigative body that researches disasters stated in its most comprehensive analysis of the BP catastrophe that the chance of another Deepwater Horizon-like event is very likely, and that lessons have not been learned. Former oil workers interviewed by Dupré have stated that “oil mafia” is an apropos term for oil and gas business in the Gulf of Mexico.

Antonia Juhasz, an oil and energy analyst and author of Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill joined Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! from San Francisco to speak about Tuesday’s events as south Louisiana flood victims experience depression and trauma.

“So, you know, just the timing of all of these events couldn’t be more devastating, really,” Juhasz told Goodman. “So, you have this historic flood. You have the president there to offer assistance from FEMA and to, you know, hopefully try and assist those on the ground, while at the same time the Interior Department is continuing the problems that help excel this storm in the first place, help make it more ferocious, help make these storms more frequent. And that, of course, is the burning of fossil fuels, leading to climate change.”

The sale at the Superdome was for 24 million new acres in the Gulf of Mexico.

“This sale will complete, if all the leases are sold, all unsold leases in the western part of the Gulf. So that’s basically federal waters offshore of Texas,” said Juhasz. “And these include some ultra, ultra-deepwater leases, so leases that would be at twice the depth of that which BP was drilling when the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened. It’s 4,400 blocks. It’s a big sale, a sizable sale.”

South Louisiana is destined for even rougher days as global warming, possibly triggered by geoengineering, brings more “Natural disasters” and  disaster capitalists profit from residents’ misery.