Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'Only God's Going To Get Me Out Of This House': Sick, Elderly Often Hunker Down For Storm Instead Of Leaving
The New York Times: When You’re Elderly And Ill And A Storm Is Coming
When mandatory evacuation orders are issued for natural disasters like hurricanes, it poses a special challenge for those who are frail and in poor health. Patients with disabilities or who are in hospice care may be too ill to sit in cars inching along evacuation routes for hours, and their families must face the wrenching decision of whether it is better to stay or go. For people with dementia, evacuations can be especially disorienting and overwhelming. (Rabin, 9/14)
The New York Times: Florence’s Path Is Strewn With Toxic Hazards
While people can move out of harm’s way as Hurricane Florence advances on North and South Carolina, their structures remain behind to face the storm’s full force. In the Carolinas this means not only homes, schools and towns but ponds of coal ash, Superfund sites, chemical plants — and thousands of industrial hog farms with lagoons filled with pig waste. Here is where the danger lies, and why. (Pierre-Louis, Popovich and Tabuchi, 9/13)
The Associated Press: How Hurricanes Unleash Lethal Storm Surges
Behold the awesome power of water. Already the ocean is swallowing beaches, roads and anything else in the way of Hurricane Florence's monstrous storm surge. Storm surges aren't walls of water, like a tsunami, as commonly thought. Caused by a hurricane's winds pushing relentlessly on the shore, they are more like domes of high water that form as the ocean spreads inland. The high water has destructive waves on top, and it comes in addition to normal tides. (Borenstein, 9/14)
