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tv   Houston After Harvey  Al Jazeera  November 9, 2017 1:32am-2:02am AST

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the iraqi border in the oil rich their resort province state media says iraqi forces helped syrian troops around the town on friday the iraqi army proclaim victory over the armed group in the border town of its last stronghold in iraq well the u.n. security council is holding a closed session on the humanitarian situation in yemen saudi arabia's blockade of yemeni air land and sea ports is inflating the prices of basic goods and worsening a major fuel shortage saudi authorities announced the measures in response to an attack by yemen's who's the rebels who fired a missile towards riyadh earlier this month spain's constitutional court is officially in all the catalan parliament's declaration of independence the ruling comes as pro independence protesters blocked roads and some public transport routes into barcelona calling for the release of sacked ministers who were jailed after last month's recession vote and britain's international development secretary has resigned over undisclosed contacts with senior israeli figures pretty patel is the
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second minister that needed to resume a has lost now in a week to tell failed to report twelve meetings with prime minister benjamin netanyahu and other figures on what she says was a holiday well those are your top stories that's it for myself and the team here in london much more news coming out from doha in twenty five minutes time that's after faultlines which starts now. germany is hosting this year's climate talks president trump told united states out of the paris agreement what enough of the global efforts to tackle climate change and that the not a system live reports from the climate conference in bonn and from the frontlines of global warming climate s.o.s. one on jessie it out. this is the play station we bought when remember the young women and young sons of
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my thanks to. all my kids and my mom here five girls and two boys. remember. a little more and i'm going to stay now until i'm back. rizzi new whitfield has lived in this house in houston texas for nearly seventy years. than hurricane harvey me lampel and august twenty seventeen. when the water started coming in the kitchen and i went in and i was woken him out of most of the way it is and i couldn't believe it i looked at the bank there when it was just like a lake or so much of. one trillion gallons of water bill in the houston area over a four day period by far the most rainfall in u.s. history more than ninety people died in the room with the stuff like we were at noah's ark or something. really. it's just good. this time
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we had the keys and we're not standing in the game. for the i think i'll say that i mean my mom noticed you know passes by me that i don't have writers. doesn't have to hide it i must get them and then natalie. in houston hurricane herbie hit everyone but after the waters. will there be an equal recovery. you can't go with a clean slate assuming that harvey affected everybody with you because of that. have you gotten help from the red cross or fema or the city you know we have a witness who. lied to the red cross and i haven't heard from him and the money has denied me so you've received no assistance no assistance no. are you worried about losing your home mr. stein.
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believe that we're going to recover and. have two cities have and have nots that awful translates into who gets the best of things when it comes to flood protection and who gets left out. a month after her be hit when media attention had moved elsewhere faultlines travel to houston just to the storm will deepen the city's social and economic divide. bill something the mother that my last superman you know i want to have the last time i'll give up now but i. will tell you must come to me at this time last time i'm going to leave us again i mustn't i want i mean it when i was with was on that i mean now. this is clayton holmes it's
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a public housing development for some of houston's borst residents. a real an heiress and her family lived here. she was nine months pregnant when the hurricane hit she escaped with her husband mother and four kids days after evacuating she gave birth and where you living now said one of the most of. these houses were some of the worst hit. residents were left to look for a new place to live. and to go home to reverend james caldwell is a community leader who's helped residents clean up their homes. the health study funded by the new york times found that floodwaters in one home here contain toxins . the levels of eco life bacteria were over a hundred times higher than what's deemed safe. in one family's kitchen they also found high levels of lead arsenic and other horrible metals. during the hurricane twenty million gallons of sewage water overflowed from plants all over the region.
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reverend caldwell took us to see various house floor well read here take a look at in this hall what you'll see here is just like every unit in this area in this section. people dead had to get out they they left everything. that they had and you about. what that what. you see what a lot of levels. three to four feet easily what when you look at this one this is someone's life history everything now who they are the identity of a while for a while longer while she have a lot of good options in terms of where to go or where to move to. that is still up in the air one and it's not just for her of of the thousands of others i will they
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recover when their life live a good everything is gone i would hear it. and i mean how do you read purchase regain some of the mom one how did you do that one on me without any assistance and invited thank oaken you're being denied by the head crossing team on anything that's going to help you to maintain a normal way of life what we've been able to move back into the store. do you know where you'll go. during the hurricane cleaned homes was especially vulnerable because it sits on the edge of this waterway the buffalo by you. might say ever so before.
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further downstream is manchester a majority latino community one third of the residents here live in poverty. it's located near houston shipping channel one of the largest petrochemical complexes in the world. well over a dozen plants in the region reported spills or leaks gerry harvey. dr robert bullard is known as the father of the environmental justice movement. he's found that minority neighborhoods are at more risk to industrial pollution than other communities it's ok to put a landfill incinerator garbage dump refinery in black and brown communities to say somehow that even in a city like houston where we don't have zoning but if you look at and map vulnerability and proximity of these dangerous facilities they're not randomly distributed. race maps with vulnerability and pollution maps with race and
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class and race is the most potent factor that determines where these facilities a located. this is where houston and. channel me over are you know works for the texas environmental justice advocacy services for take up to see the tanks the storage tanks that are lying flat that's manchester the group believes that in burma no protections are not in place for the people living here you have huntsman chemical on the chemical. refining texas port recycling and then twenty six lanes of union pacific rail transporting chemical and crude oil products. this is. it houses over ninety three steel carbon storage tanks of nothing but chemical and crude products you can notice the tanks themselves are right next to these homes there are homes all around these tanks were. there are so as the rains were hitting all of these tanks
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the floodwaters were flushing their way into people's yards. this year here selling mentoring and years in the top one percent of most toxic schools in the entire nation so all those kids they're going out playing during recess are completely exposed. you know what's going on right next to them. during natural disasters emergencies maintenance and start up and shut down events you have just a reckless amount of the missions that make their way into the local communities. we've basically tracked her have been tracking. over five million pounds of the missions that were released in the impacted areas and hydrogen cyanide so for dioxide one three you deem all of these are
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extremely toxic and hazardous to human health there are absolutely no permissible amounts. of things like benzene the valero energy refinery a street away from where children play. after the hurricane this facility reported to the state environmental agency that it leaked chemicals including cancer causing vincy. but no one's going to get a ticket no one's going to get a fine no one's going to. go for it because of any of these emissions. communities near the shipping channel there's a feeling that there's little accountability when leaks happen. and after the hurricane it was a sense of urgency to change that. we call this company right here the stinky one because every time you drive through here you'll smell how bad it is i've been here for thirty seven years and i know how many how many years of my life i've lost i
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mean i here in this in this environment but it's home like you here one florist works for a group that wants to start training residents to test air quality for themselves during hurricane harvey there was a big build a happen right over here and i'll show you right now from my g.l. and dana just billion almost half a million barrels of gas laying us bill in the area and that goes back to what people were smelling during harvey was a very heavy petrol gasoline smell that we had never smelled before in the area magellan said that they contain the spill but they acknowledge that there were arab nations including been seen are there are known respiratory issues for kids who grow up in this area there's a lot of people who would say their kids have asthma as was a big big thing i hear i kind of feel bad for some of the people in live in his apartment complex quite a few people who live here and a lot of times people don't really understand what's going on or don't know what the dangers are. the bucket we
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were doing are testing because it's our our planet trying to educate the residents and how they can do samples at home and get those samples to us and we can find out exactly what it is they're smelling and what's. going on so it's a vacuum taking more air in it then i just say dissolved. you see the air is is going up but we've got more than enough in there right after you can see this definitely. the right to breathe is a basic human right to talk about every day occurrences and that's what makes harvey and environmental justice issue in that we have to address some of the preexisting. conditions that that many communities had to grapple with. how fast you recover from a natural disaster has a lot to do with where you live. low income and minority neighborhoods
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a pure resources to help them. when you talk about who has resilience who has the money the resources and who has historically had the level of investments that go to protecting very wealthy neighborhoods you can see that there is imbalance. greens point in north houston is one of the pores neighborhoods in the city. the shopping mall here has turned into an emergency relief center. this lie which goes on and on and on can only be measured in the thousands and thousands of people have it out here in the sun for hours waiting to get basically food stamps this isn't the normal food stamp program all these people to qualify had to be affected by hurricane harvey. i mean it's nice to kind of want it. to be in the situation i got meaning. you have to stand out right now to lose their license when. we're not home has been three weeks just three weeks then
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you got hardly headaches it's problems strangest were you surprised you came on top of all yes i was in shock and i'm still in and he's going to take you can't i didn't realize we had that many people and we don't really line up i mean everybody's heard. many of the people lined up will be seem to that in this line will close in just days whatever oh. my i feel you i know. marina and her stepchildren have been doing what they can to help people affected by the hurricane when. my friend is in the line he takes me simmering i call. because they have a lot of older people they need water and i don't know how to say no to nobody she's an undocumented immigrant so she can apply for the food disaster program or self even though this is the second time drive home is flooded and she's lost everything i get donations my own and when i do i think my my people food off. me
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not good enough that you know. we're. getting really you know i'm running out. are you serious that. has to have that in a moment to be honest about our case. it's close to eight o'clock tomorrow. night i'm not going to let him know that i didn't say that. i'm not going to. bring to listen green's point because they were in here is cheap but that comes at a cost the majority of apartment buildings here like inside the flood so. the areas
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flooded at least five times since two thousand and one. i'm fixing to make a right. we're going to have dinner together there were right here. and i'm like a river out here. that's when i started coming in. the water to start the rice. i mean my husband was sitting outside watching just a lot of. i was crying. that the state. we were just. recovering from the last one. hurt. by the name. of your life. you're worried about staying in this apartment and being flooded again. for your
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stuff. we're not punishing you doing little go somewhere else you. start playing. there's a third close where every have it ok he's the ok. because my husband this is my husband my husband. and i know i have the most of those three . a month i. never eat so i think. you would like to sleep somewhere else you used to if you just but there's not like affordable housing choices all over to. places that don't get flooded flying.
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there. tomorrow farm income. will be a good choice why some why do you. better find children better environment. point is a poster child for vulnerability when it rains when i talk. harvey rain we talking when it rains flash floods they get flooded. for the last three years we're talking about a community that has been disrupted where people are losing you know everything and when you start losing everything in a repetitive way you have to ask the question why isn't something die. in some areas or greens way over one third of the population lives below the poverty line. if the aftermath of harvey is anything like that of hurricane katrina new orleans in two thousand and five housing prices will go up low income residents will be
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pushed out and inequality will grow. houston is already one of the most segregated cities in america and it could get worse what about bring to reflect they don't have the house thing choices in houston to move out of the flood plains and that's why we're building housing units now there are several that will be coming online you know. and they don't this year and next year the city's mayor sylvester turner the democrats campaigned on a promise to provide more affordable housing and the mayor of the fourth largest city in this country to be the third city is doing very very well but they're still twenty four percent of the people in my city of working poor. and they are living in the shadows of course this time and when i said when i came in as a mayor twenty two months ago is that i didn't want to be the mayor of two cities have and have not now what we have to do is that we have to move with
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a greater sense of urgency to meet the need that's meant as abated by by harvey and to put people in a better place in their lives so you know you can run away from it storms of this cat so you can't ignore it you can't turn a blind eye to it. after the hurricane questions were raised about what if anything officials could have done to mitigate the flooding in some of the hardest hit areas . in houston people look to the harris county flood control district which is one of the agencies tasked with reducing flood risk for the larger metropolitan area. since harvey it's been focused on recovery clearing debris making repairs and preparing for the next door. while we were in town the agency which is headed by a judge at image held a press conference for those residents who experienced the flooding two dozen
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fifteen. a flood in two thousand and sixteen and now flood in two thousand and seventeen are you doing enough for those residents know that's our hope or. should the county prioritize efforts to help communities who have a hard time recovering from a party like i think recovering is one thing mitigation is something else recovery there are prioritized but in terms of mitigation you know it's a question of making our community safe and so we're people who live just more question of hydrology you know so we need to look at. but critics say that approach focuses on scientific technicalities and ignores the reality that some communities have been historically neglected. because the judge is saying there's no equity lands then those of us who are out here in the public are saying that must be an equity lens because we cannot reproduce the any quality we cannot allow money to
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follow money and money power when it comes to the investments that have only made in flood protection that would be not only in morrow on ethical but we think would be illegal. harvey was the third major flood to hit houston in as many years but it was far more destructive than the ones before. as the city tries to recover there's fear that the worst is yet to come knowing that another storm will come and another storm will come and the intensity of these strong seem to be getting getting a bit greater we have to change course. and we have to be on in this case a city that's more prepared and a lot more recent there yet the next time around. we kind of have a code word for climate change in texas called weird weather so you hear people in texas talking about weird weather this and weird weather that because we really
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don't feel. well talking about climate change frankly houston had seen the worst case storm the worst case storm is one that has a surge that comes in from the coast. the last texas was hit with a major storm surge was hurricane ike in two thousand and eight which hit the coastal city of galveston a surge storm is her horrifying because it would come up to houston ship channel and we have projected at least a twenty five foot surge in the shipping channels only protected to about fifteen feet so there's forty four hundred storage tanks for all and hazardous substances there we think twenty two hundred of them would be flooded and we think it would be the worst environmental disaster in united states history which shut down the economic engine of the region so it's a big do. you talk about thousands of lives that will be lost because of the flooding and the surge in the ways that would hit those communities that are low lying and adjacent to now there's been scenarios on that but again lifting
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that vulnerability and how do we address that. i think allison has been through in this time it was real. anything that gets in your house stand your ground the first thing i don't like tank in and around they know he's in his flooded area just like louisiana they need to do and they need to do something about this too many people to me. before we left euston we came back to green's point mo. it was the day before the disaster food stamp program was going to end here so people came to stand in line overnight. when a young woman told them that all. of this but on the bottom i am
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now mommy never say no. yes. this is. billions of dollars in recovery aid are headed to texas to rebuild. but it's unclear how much of that money will trickle down to those who need it the most. asinine out there in this city there's real fear that the most vulnerable residents to be left behind. then when to doff right now and the fight is to make sure that resources get distributed in a way this equitable and that's why i think it's important that that low income people and people of color working class people rich people poor people we all work on this post harvey recovery in houston and get it right. everything you do is being analyzed it's being weighed and measured.
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and it's not just i phones that's all things i mean most nothing's out these days at the moment we are in a state of the universe that redwood started something that was for a week act i would rather take the risks of democracy to the risks of dictatorship digital dissidents at this time on al-jazeera. it's minus fifteen celsius outside that doesn't stop this team of biologists launching a five million dollar robotic submarine and dropping it down seven hundred meters to the ocean floor while busy taking samples something they've never seen before happens we have this little star crawling on the seafloor which we believe any
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model or scavenger but certainly of a fish crawling at the fish with a poison we don't know yet but it's quite amazing just to see that this and the exciting to see new and surprising behavior for the first time but the significance of this is much greater antarctic so overfished frequently feed on the surface so in a brittle star in the bottom those traps the carbon in their bodies on the sea floor this has implications for understanding how carbon is being removed from the atmosphere it's a process that could be playing a role in slowing down manmade climate change. al-jazeera.
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well i'm richelle carey this is the news hour live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes. it will be the largest famine in the world to see for many decades with millions of victims a dire warning from the u.n. as the situation worsens again then too to the blockade by the saudi led coalition plus. syrian troops join iraqi forces to drive out of the last town it holds and syria. china rolls out the red carpet for donald trump as the u.s. president seeks to push beijing to rein in north korea. and embattled british prime minister theresa may loses her second catherine minister in a week as pretty as hell quits over secret meetings and israel.
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the un's aid chief.

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