Hurricane Harvey Destroyed Lives: How We Help and How the Government Helps

yahoo.com Stranded Pets Rescued Amid Hurricane Harvey Flooding

Right now in this moment, thanks to media, it would be hard not to feel our heart strings pull with concern for our fellow Americans in Houston, Texas and the next targets of Hurricane Irma. 

If you want to help the people displaced, left hungry, and in need of medical care by Hurricane Harvey, NPR put together a list of organizations you can donate to.

For example “Send Relief and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief says its teams began responding before Harvey made landfall and continues on-the-ground relief work,” NPR said. While the “American Kidney Fund has set up a disaster relief fund to help dialysis patients affected by the storm,” and so on.

Even Airbnb has taken part in setting up an urgent accommodations site "where people can open their homes to evacuees from the storm or find shelter themselves. Service fees are waived through Sept. 25," NPR said.

However, for most of these organizations except for United Way of Greater Houston  and SBP, most of these funds are for current problems plaguing the victims of the disaster. While it is important that these people get immediate health care, food, and shelter, these organizations and people in general won’t be able to give forever.

Hurricane Harvey didn’t just destroy homes and property, it destroyed lives. It took away jobs, displaced communities, shopping centers, parks, schools.  Houston needs to be rebuilt, people’s lives need to be rebuilt. 

This also begs the question, “why rebuild in a place where we know disaster could strike again?” To relate this to California, building homes on an active fault-line could mean the destruction of homes, property, and lives, so it is very illegal. Although technically the whole of California is in an earth quake zone so...

But can we relate this to hurricane zone's and whether or not people should be re-building there? Hurricanes do re-occur every year after all.

In the article by the Huffington Post "Rebuilding After Hurricanes: The Publics View", author Kathleen Weldon finds that most Americans, although “often considered highly mobile," do not want to move. They "have strong ties to their communities, which means relocation could take a major emotional toll,” Weldon said. Not to mention the emotional toll they would already be suffering after losing everything.

So rather than being fed up with the location for being vulnerable, American's still hold enough of an emotional tie to their home's, destroyed or not, that they'd rather rebuild in what could be a dangerous zone where disaster could happen all over again.

Weldon found that in a 2003 poll, that these emotional ties that come from the majority of Americans choosing to stay in one place for a longtime. 

“41% of Americans had lived in their current communities their whole lives. Another 29% had lived there more than ten years. Connections to particular neighborhoods also run deep. In a 2013 poll, 46% of respondents said they had lived in their current neighborhood for over 10 years,” Weldon said.

As it turns out when people put down roots, they don't want to plan to pick them back up. 

In the case of Houston, Texas, hurricanes are not very common and most of the way the land was built upon (with lots of concrete which does NOT absorb water) is what caused there to be such a major disaster. The following video by South Florida PBS shows where the manmade landscape in Houston went wrong and the ways in which it can be rebuilt to prevent a catastrophe like this again. 

Now, if people do decide to return to an area and have it rebuilt, just the idea sounds like an overwhelming task. You have to rebuild your house, your business, or find a new job, remake your schools, and even reinvent the landscape. Where do people even start? It turns out the big ol government is a disaster victims biggest friend in the aftermath of a hurricane.  

In a disaster guide by Ready.gov, they list the Federal government as your turn to pal. He helps you re-build, gain loans and grants, and even checks on your mental health. 

"In the most severe disasters, the federal government is also called in to help individuals and families with temporary housing, counseling (for post-disaster trauma), low-interest loans and grants, and other assistance. The federal government also has programs that help small businesses and farmers,” the guide said. 

However this assistance only becomes available when the President of the United states declares a "Major Disaster" which is why it was so important when President Trump made that declaration for Texas.

But the country still needs our help in taking care of Texans now. There are so many people displaced and in crisis, and the government is not almighty enough, fast enough, and encompassing enough to reach them all effectively and in good time. And perhaps the more we give towards these victims immediate troubles, the more the government can spend later in helping them re-build their lives and homes in the long term.