{"id":102466,"date":"2023-03-15T17:05:06","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T15:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=102466"},"modified":"2023-03-09T08:32:01","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T06:32:01","slug":"05-05-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=102466","title":{"rendered":"America on Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>America on Fire<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n


\nSEAN COOPER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Vehicles including a Port Authority bus are left stranded after a bridge collapsed along Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh on Jan. 28, 2022JEFF SWENSEN\/GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span>
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Across the United States, critical infrastructure is breaking down and blowing up in plumes of toxic smoke<\/strong><\/h4>\n

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Last year the Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed hours before a planned visit by President Joe Biden; he was scheduled to give a speech addressing America\u2019s infrastructure. About an hour\u2019s drive northwest of Pittsburgh sits East Palestine, Ohio, where a train carrying hazardous materials derailed earlier this month, leading to the town\u2019s evacuation and causing a public health crisis that has yet to be resolved. The two incidents, one year and roughly 50 miles apart, are not disconnected: They point to a widespread rot afflicting America\u2019s transportation networks, public schools, health care facilities, energy grid, and other critical infrastructure that is already causing dangerous failures like the ones in Pittsburgh and East Palestine, and which appears likely to get worse before it gets better.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Because your electricity might not stay on long enough to reach the end of an article of any greater length, here is a brief survey of the current crisis afflicting America\u2019s critical infrastructure.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Rail<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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The American rail system was given a respectable grade of \u201cB\u201d by the American Society of Civil Engineers in the organization\u2019s most recent analysis of U.S. infrastructure in 2021<\/a>. But that grade doesn\u2019t fully reflect the dysfunction in the rail system. There have been<\/a> 12,400 train derailments over the past 10 years, including 6,600 tankers holding hazardous liquids or gases with 348 of those tankers spilling their contents and at least 18,600 people forced to subsequently evacuate affected areas. As the Doomberg Substack<\/a> recently reported, the transport of chemicals is a potentially explosive issue within the industry because \u201cfreight rail companies are forced by the federal government to transport dangerous materials regardless of the peril such cargoes represent.\u201d At the same time, \u201cthe chemical industry all but accuses the big four Class I freight rail companies\u201d of \u201coperating as a de facto oligopoly, routinely using their excessive market power to extract disproportionate profits despite offering deteriorating service, risking public safety in the process.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not an ideal recipe for safe and efficient service \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Education<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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If you put aside the current culture war over book bans and ideological purity tests for teachers, the crumbling physical infrastructure of America\u2019s school buildings and the chronic absenteeism of America\u2019s students should give you plenty to worry about.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While public school campuses currently account<\/a> for the second biggest allotment of all public infrastructure expenses, the physical buildings and utilities that make up the school system at large were found to be nearly failing, receiving a \u201cD-plus\u201d grade<\/a> from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2021. Citing at least 53% of all districts that required upgrades to multiple core building systems like HVAC and water pipes, the most recent Civil Engineer analysis of American schools also noted that at least 30% of all schools are so overcrowded that they now rely on trailers and other temporary structures.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Poorly weatherized classrooms are only part of what\u2019s keeping students from showing up to class. After years of remote learning left kids with tenuous feelings of connection<\/a> to their studies and stunted the development of social skills crucial for navigating the stress of adolescence, students across the nation have simply stopped showing up to class.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The latest data from New York City\u2019s public school officials shows that at least 350,000 students<\/a> are regularly missing school, with almost half of all students in the Bronx and 3 in every 5 students in Harlem chronically absent. Absenteeism \u201cis something that is being experienced across the board [in California]\u201d said Jacqueline Mora, an assistant superintendent in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. In Mora\u2019s district, chronic absenteeism (a designation given to students who miss at least 10% of the school year) essentially doubled from 10% before the pandemic to 20% during the 2020-21 academic calendar. The most recent attendance record shows a 31% rate<\/a> of chronic absenteeism. In Pennsylvania, \u201chabitual truancy rates\u201d more than doubled<\/a> during the 2020-21 school year while Mississippi reported that 28% of its students<\/a> missed at least 18 days during the 2021-22 calendar.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Though the statewide 30% absenteeism rate in Illinois is a little better than Chicago\u2019s 45% chronic absenteeism in 2022<\/a>, the poor attendance is nonetheless exacerbating a swift decline in academic performance across the entire Illinois school system. Almost 20% of the state\u2019s schools reported that only 1 out of every 10 students can read at grade level. Statewide, 53 schools lack any<\/em> students currently proficient in math<\/a>. Remarkably, the Illinois State Board of Education rated several of these schools with zero math proficiency as \u201ccommendable,\u201d the second-highest accountability rating it gives to its schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

Balloons are placed next to a sign displaying information for residents to receive air-quality tests from Norfolk Southern Railway on Feb. 16, 2023, in East Palestine, Ohio. On Feb. 3, a Norfolk Southern Railway train carrying toxic chemicals derailed causing an environmental disaster.MICHAEL SWENSEN\/GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Energy Grid<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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Over the past several years, extreme weather events have revealed an energy system that\u2019s neither ready to transition to renewable sources nor able to rely on its existing facilities, which are long overdue for upgrades and repair. Last December, Winter Storm Elliott took coal and natural gas plants in Tennessee and North Carolina entirely offline and came close to leaving 65 million people with rolling blackouts<\/a> as temperatures dipped below freezing. Despite hundreds of people dying during a similarly catastrophic winter storm in Texas in 2021, the Dallas Federal Reserve said in January that the state\u2019s power grid remains entirely susceptible<\/a> to another cold snap. \u201cWind and solar are the leading share of planned capacity additions in Texas over the next several years,\u201d the Dallas Fed noted, \u201cbut with utilization rates that are well below installed capacity due to weather and time of day, their expected contributions are limited.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It might not be a blizzard, however, that next knocks out your electricity. Poorly secured power stations and resentment toward inept government has led to a 71% increase in physical attacks on energy system infrastructure<\/a> in 2022 compared to the year prior, according to a new Wall Street Journal<\/em> analysis. Pointing to \u201cpeople frustrated by the onset of the pandemic, social tensions and economic challenges,\u201d the Journal<\/em> projects 2023 will only see more strikes like the set of firearm attacks on several substations across North Carolina last December that left 45,000 residents without power.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere seems to be a pattern where people are targeting critical infrastructure, probably with the intent to disrupt,\u201d Manny Cancel, the chief executive of Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, told The<\/em> Wall Street Journal<\/em>. \u201cGoing back to the 2020 presidential election, as well as the recent midterm elections, we\u2019ve seen an uptick in chatter and an uptick in incidents as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Health Care<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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While the roughly 1.5 million health care employees<\/a> who quit their jobs during the pandemic left the medical field with widespread staff shortages<\/a> and hospitals reporting<\/a> extensive delays for emergency care<\/a> and surgical procedures<\/a>, routine doctor visits have become their own bureaucratic nightmare. A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that almost 1 in every 5 claims<\/a> by patients with insurance purchased on the federal exchange were denied coverage. As high as that might be, some plans in the report were denying as many as 80% of claims for insurance coverage, a discrepancy that might be wider still, Kaiser said<\/a>, if only insurance company data was uniformly collected. \u201cThe federal government has not expanded or revised transparency data reporting requirements in years and does not appear to conduct any oversight using data that are reported by marketplace plans.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Water<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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Residents downstream of East Palestine, Ohio, have learned that while the nation\u2019s train system might be able to maintain the appearance of infrastructure integrity despite the occasional chemical spill, the water distribution network is far more susceptible to toxic encroachments. \u201cI think it was not in the best interest of human health and welfare and the environment to simply cover [contaminated soil] up and keep going without at least a preliminary evaluation to determine if the level of vinyl chloride that was present in the soil was going to create a potential contamination threat to surface or groundwater,\u201d Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice, an environmental consultant, told Ohio\u2019s WKBN after Norfolk Southern simply dumped dirt over the trench<\/a> used to burn off vinyl chloride that spilled from derailed train cars.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s a minor consolation for those in eastern Ohio to learn they\u2019ve joined the ranks of dozens of communities across the nation struggling to access clean water and functional water treatment systems. Communities with dirty water, however, arguably have it better than the 2 million Americans<\/a> who lack basic indoor plumbing altogether. \u201cBecause septic systems cost more than most people earn in a year and tend to fail anyway in the impervious clay soil of [Lowndes County, Alabama],\u201d Catherine Coleman Flowers writes in Waste: One Woman\u2019s Fight Against America\u2019s Dirty Secret<\/a>.<\/em> \u201cFamilies cope the best they can, mainly by jerry-rigging PVC pipe to drain sewage from houses and into cesspools outside.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While proper wastewater systems elude several rural regions, clean water in urban areas remains a perennial problem for many American cities. Last fall, old pipes ushered in an E. coli outbreak across Baltimore\u2019s water system<\/a>, and Michigan residents in Flint are still receiving advisories to boil their water as recently as this month<\/a>, after a 2014 lead poisoning crisis impacted the drinking water of more than 100,000 homes. As one recent analysis found<\/a>, \u201ccounties with elevated levels of incomplete plumbing and poor water quality in America\u2014which are variously likely to be more indigenous, less educated, older, and poorer\u2014are continuing to slip through the cracks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bridges<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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The Biden administration\u2019s recent $26.5 billion package<\/a> to address the American bridge crisis was among the largest federal interventions in the road system since the federal government began building interstate highways in 1956<\/a>. Though with 43,000 bridges<\/a> in need of immediate repair and a total of 220,000 bridges in need of upgrades<\/a>, much of that money will be used to play catch-up on long neglected bridges. Politically important states like Pennsylvania<\/a>, meanwhile, are scheduled to receive disproportionate chunks of the aid.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The reason why hundreds if not thousands of damaged bridges will ultimately be left untouched speaks to some of the larger issues afflicting American infrastructure decline writ large: No one person or agency is accountable, leaving public officials, utilities, and public servants the opportunity to say it\u2019s someone else\u2019s problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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From Broken Infrastructure to Brokenness<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
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Much is made of the collapse of trust in America\u2019s public institutions like Congress and the press, but the country\u2019s decrepit physical infrastructure seems to be contributing to the larger sense of national brokenness<\/a>. In 2020, Pew found that national pride had dipped to a record low, with 21% of Americans<\/a> either \u201conly a little proud\u201d or \u201cnot at all proud\u201d to be an American.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Maybe national pride is too much to ask for when so many communities are struggling to maintain safe roads and clean drinking water. Last week, Vermont\u2019s chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers took a look at nine categories of the state\u2019s major infrastructure systems before granting an overall grade of a \u201cC.\u201d Mediocre as that might be, the report<\/a> put Vermont a notch above the national average: a \u201cC-minus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Sean P. Cooper<\/strong><\/a> is a staff writer at Tablet and editor of The Scroll<\/a>, the magazine\u2019s afternoon newsletter. His first book, about an unsolved murder and the 1980s farming crisis, is forthcoming from Penguin. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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America on Fire SEAN COOPER Vehicles including a Port Authority bus are left stranded after a bridge collapsed along Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh on Jan. 28, 2022JEFF SWENSEN\/GETTY IMAGES . Across the United States, critical infrastructure is breaking down and blowing up in plumes of toxic smoke . Last year the Fern Hollow Bridge in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102466"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102621,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102466\/revisions\/102621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}