In the past month, we have seen multiple concerning disasters, both “natural” and byproducts of human error: the Rockdale County BioLab fire, Hurricane Helene, and now Hurricane Milton. We have watched as entire towns are swept away, clouds of smoke plume overhead, and people die and lose loved ones. Often we are left feeling helpless and angry. How are we unable to have enough aid for people when the United States has sent $17.9 billion to Israel over the past year, a record-breaking amount? Think of what that money could have done to help people instead of murder them. The state has shown time and time again that it does not care about us.
This institutional neglect reaches its most potent form in the treatment of incarcerated people during disasters. In 2005, during Hurricane Katrina, over 600 people incarcerated in Orleans Parish Prison were left to die in their cells as guards and officers evacuated. The stories from those incarcerated in the prison while waiting for evacuation are chilling, with accounts of toilets flooding, generators failing, no food, and rising water levels that reached up to their necks. Inmates reported that when they were finally evacuated a few days later, some inmates were left behind, and bodies were seen floating in the water. There is no official number given for the inmates who died in Orleans Parish Prison, but 517 were unaccounted for in the evacuation process.
Now, we are seeing a pattern. In North Carolina, as Hurricane Helene hit last week, incarcerated people were once again left behind. 550 incarcerated men in Mountain View Correctional Institution did not have running water, power, or contact with anyone outside the prison for five days. One man named Sammy Harmon Jr. reported developing sores on his legs due to the lack of sanitation. When a North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections representative was asked about the impacts and the response of the NCDAC, he stated, “When it became apparent that power and water outages would be long-term, we made the decisions to relocate offenders.” In addition, when asked about the fact that inmates were forced to defecate in plastic bags as all plumbing had failed, he described it as, “a solution [the inmates] devised on their own.” This kind of response is disgusting — why must inmates, or anyone, devise survival solutions in such inhumane conditions?
The pattern continues, even a week later. Several jails in Florida have no plans to evacuate the people incarcerated in their walls for Hurricane Milton, despite them falling within evacuation zones of a category five storm. The state does not just fail incarcerated people, but consciously and directly leaves them behind. And we let them.
The treatment of incarcerated people in times of crisis is emblematic of larger systemic poisons and a disregard for human lives. We must care because, despite how you feel about criminality and people who have been criminalized, they are still people. In these times, we are shown which lives are deemed to be disposable, which includes inmates and other systematically marginalized, targeted, and disenfranchised communities. We see this in the country’s response and failure to prevent the BioLab fire in Rockdale County, GA, which those living in the area described as due to a “pattern of negligence.” We see this in the decade-long failure to address the water crisis in Flint, MI, a majority Black community.
When these moments happen, what do we do? When shelter-in-place is ordered, what do we do about our elders; low-income, disabled, and unhoused community members; and those who cannot afford to either be on their own or stock up on food early? When a hurricane is imminent and evacuation orders go out, what do we do about those who cannot afford to leave, those who have nowhere to go, and people the state leaves behind, such as inmates? How do we take care of one another?
I bring these up not to spark fear or hopelessness, but because there is hope. We are already doing the work to care for one another. Over the past few weeks, my social media feed has been full of people offering advice on masking and sheltering in place for those near the BioLab fire. Mutual aid efforts, such as Beloved Asheville, have been circulating online to get hurricane relief to victims. I saw a video of a mule pack that traveled to bring people their insulin in the wake of Helene, as many roads are still unusable. There are even fliers around the Oberlin campus encouraging people to donate to hurricane relief funds. We are filling in the gaps that the state refuses to look at.
I would be remiss not to acknowledge that there is grief in this, so much grief that it can overwhelm you. I cannot think of Flint and not think of Mari Copeny, or “Little Miss Flint,” a 17-year-old who has been advocating for her community and providing water filtration and support resources where the government refuses to. I know I am making an argument about the importance and power of community support here, but I also want to acknowledge that this is not just something to be heralded; she was seven years old when the water crisis in Flint began — a child having to step in where the government has failed is truly heartbreaking. That any of us must do this shows that there is something systematically wrong with the response of our government to disasters.
We are already doing this work, and it must continue, grow, and expand. We must find ways to support incarcerated people, unhoused people, those without the means to move, or those who have been intentionally stripped of those means. Multiple thinkers, activists, and scholars have touched on the notion that a society is defined by how it treats its most vulnerable. Never is this more clear than in times of crisis. It is clear what it says about our government and structures of power. But what do we want it to say about us?
