Naturally we’re all interested in hurricanes around here, and worry for those in the path. Dolly hit the Texas coast with about 100 mph hour winds but so far the damage is light.

On the ground in South Texas and northern Tamaulipas & Nuevo Leon, the situation is probably getting chaotic. Rural Texas (even many municipalities) and most of Mexico don’t enforce wind resistant building standards. Evacuations from Padre Island and the beaches should have gone well because of accurate track forecasts and plenty of ad-time. That means that people throughout the area are sitting in school cafeterias and gymnasiums listening to the rain and wind. Some of their houses will have leaky roofs or no roofs when the wind dies down. Since Dolly is moving slowly, the rain will have plenty of time to drop a deluge. Once the people who live in the storm surge zone are safely in those cafeterias and gymnasiums, the next big danger to life is fresh water flooding. Let’s hope that everybody stays in the shelters while the wind is raging, and that once it dies down, the ones who decide to drive around stay out of flooded arroyos.

So here we are at the “D” storm, and it isn’t August yet. If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s not going to be a restful August-November.

Then there’s this:

Senator John McCain had splashy plans on Thursday intended to steal at least a little attention from Senator Barack Obama’s big speech in Berlin: He was to take a helicopter to an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and meet with Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who is being mentioned as a possible Republican vice-presidential pick.

But Hurricane Dolly thwarted Mr. McCain’s plans to raise the issue of offshore oil drilling and the technology that he says has made it safe.

By midday Wednesday, just as blogs were trumpeting Mr. McCain’s coming campaign stop on the rig, the McCain team canceled the trip and postponed the meeting with Mr. Jindal.

McCain Unconditionally Withdraws

Then, as if a plot by the gods of Not McCain is taking over, we have this 400,000 gallons of fuel oil spilling into the Mississippi River near New Orleans. McCain of course just got finished swearing that off-shore drilling was safe…

This, according to McCain, is NOT an oil spill.

In an energy speech recently, McCain said that: “As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.”

In fact, Katrina and Hurricane Rita caused damage to oil rigs and storage facilities in the Gulf, according to press reports and government studies. The hurricanes totally destroyed 113 oil rigs, according to the government’s Minerals Management Service, and damaged 457 pipelines. The resulting oil spills were large enough to be seen from space, according to several reports….

McCain — Ignorant or Ignoramus?

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