tv Houston After Harvey Al Jazeera November 9, 2017 12:32pm-1:01pm AST
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the constitutional process is on hold the president is refusing to accept his resignation saying that the way in which he resigned announcing his resignation on saudi television and to outside the country cannot be accepted and he wants to sit down and talk to the prime minister to understand the circumstances behind the resignation there's been a new wave of arrests in what saudi arabia is calling an anti corruption crackdown dozens of royal family members officials and prominent business men have already been detained since the purge was announced on saturday around seventeen thousand bank accounts of now been frozen critics say the crackdown as a bid to consolidate power by the crown prince mohammed bin sama syria's army and militia from iraq have surrounded the eisel controlled city of al book a mile it's close to syria's border with iraq and is the armed groups lost of an area in syria the u.s. president says he's found common ground with the chinese leader over the crisis on the korean peninsula donald trump is in china where he called on president xi jinping to apply more pressure on pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program and
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the u.k.'s international development secretary pretty patel has resigned after it was revealed that she failed to disclose meetings with israeli officials while on holiday police patel said her actions had fallen below the high standards expected of her position. so he will be here with a news hour a little over twenty five minutes on al-jazeera right after faultlines next. germany is hosting this year's climate talks the president from the united states out of the paris agreement what now for the global efforts to tackle climate change in that fanaticism live reports from the climate conference and bottom line from the front lines of global warming climate s.o.s. one on jessie it out. this is the play station we bought one remember the young women and young sons of
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mine and. all my kids and my mom here five girls i took boys. remember. i love most 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 melancon and august twenty seventh teen. when the water started coming in the kitchen and i went in and i was walking in battle and supposedly it is in the air i couldn't believe it and look at the bank doing it was just like a lake of flame so much as. 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 ring with the stuff like we were at noah's ark or something. really. it's just pretty good at. this time
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we had to eat and we lost everything again. for having to say that any mammal known as you know passes me that i don't have writers. from so high if not most of them and they're not really. in houston hurricane herbie hit everywhere but after the waters. receive it will there be an equal recovery. we can go with a clean slate assuming that harvey affected everybody with it because if they. 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 plan. are you worried about losing your home minister. it's time.
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to leave they're going to recall them. have to see these haves and have nots that also 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. also i mean the mother that my last two but i mean you know i want to have the last time i want to give up now but i will. also you must come to me at some most times i'm going to leave us again the muslim my life i mean it when i was with was on that i mean now. this is clayton homes it's
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a public housing development for some of houston's forced residents. are reeling their center 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. 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 e-coli 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 maria's house 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 and. people that had to get out they they left everything. that they had and you about. what that was. you see what a lot of the hole was. three to four feet easily what when you look at this one this is someone's life is. 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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become one their life and live a good everything is gone out of here good school 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 tokens you're being denied by the head crossing the mark if that's going to help you. maintain a normal way of life what will you be able to move back into the home. 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 long haul.
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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 are located. this is where houston and. channel me event are you know works for the texas environmental justice advocacy services or take the tanks the storage tanks that are lying flat that's manchester the group believes that environmental 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 is 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. to 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 including 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 is streets away from where children play. after the hurricane this facility reported to the state environmental agency but 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. look for 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 there 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
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living out here in this in this environment but it's home like you here one floor as works for a group that wants to start training residents to test air quality for themselves during hurricane harvey there was a big storm build the happen right over here and i'll show you right now from my gel and dana just billion almost half a million barrels of gasoline gas 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 smell before in the area magellan said that they contain the spill but they acknowledge that there were arab nations including vinci 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 and i can feel bad for some of the people in live in his apartment complex quite a few people 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 to her 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. then i just say dissolve. you see the areas is. 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 and 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's imbalance. greens point in north houston is one of the pores labor hoods 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 is the normal food stamp program all these people to qualify had to be affected by hurricane harvey. i mean it was kind of want to do everything. to even the situation like i mean you. have to stand out right now to lose their license when. we're not home hasn't three weeks just three weeks then you got hardly
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headaches it's problems it's strangest were you surprised you came out all the way as i was and shocked and i'm still unsure if 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 today and 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 a call. i have a lot of older people they need water and i don't know how to say don't nobody she's an undocumented immigrant so she can apply for the food disaster program or self even though this is the second time brought 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 really no money. are you serious at. this to have that uniform and be honest about it. this close to eight o'clock tomorrow. night i'm not going to let them know what i did because they would have let me find hard to. bring new lives in 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 the right. we're going to have dinner together there was good news there right here. and i'm like a river 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 them and. live your lives. you worried about staying in this apartment and being flooded again yeah i guess
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that. when i finished doing little course on real estate. start playing. there's a third close where every have it ok you don't ok. because my husband this is my husband my husband. and i never have the nerve to lose three . a month i. never thought i mean. you wouldn't choose to have somewhere else you used to if you just but there's not like affordable housing choices all over to. play to that don't get started flying
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. there. tomorrow farm income. you'll be a good choice for some wadi or. better five children better environment. born is a poster child for vulnerability when it rains when i talk. being the 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 died. in some areas or greens point 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 were interested like they don't have the house thing choices in houston to move out of the flood plains and that's found we're building housing units now there are several that will be coming online you know family so 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 quickness with him and what i said when i came in as a man 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 and then. so you know you can run away from it storm the biscay 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 and 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 reduce the 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 just shut the county prioritize efforts to help communities who have a hard time recovering from a party like i think the coverage is one thing mitigation is something else recovery they 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 this is just more question of ideology 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 when he 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
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money to follow money and money to 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. herbie was the third major flood to hit houston in as many years but it was far more destructive than the ones before. as a 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 build in this case a city that's more prepared and out a lot more reason 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 talk about weird weather this and weird weather that because we really don't
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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 this woman for in this time it was real. anything to get from your house down here for the first thing i don't like tank in and around so 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 too many. before we left euston we came back to green's point no. 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 don't have it all. on the bed on the mind of my family
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and i mean i think that if they do. but to me. 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. has no no they're not in this city there's real fear that the most vulnerable residents will be left behind and. this is the best way 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. in the united states rights activists are still being targeted you have enough in
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making that you felt. what raising surveillance from both the police and the f.b.i. this is not law enforcement and. hold lines investigates the scope of these agencies tactics and the impact on civil society. confidential surveilling black lives at this time on all jazzy of business updates brought to you by cattle they always going places together.
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