A new interactive tool released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Risk Index for Natural Hazards, (NRI), shows that The Bronx has the second-highest risk from natural disasters in the country.

Natural disasters aren’t something that Bronxites might think about outside of the occasional hurricane and nor’easter that hits the region but this new tool analyzes risk to 18 different natural hazards including heat waves, winter weather, cold waves, tornados, earthquakes, and more.

And coming in second in a nation of over 3,000 counties is a bit surreal.

Strong winds, tornadoes, ice storms, and winter weather pose the greatest risk to The Bronx with a 100 score for each (the highest risk rating), followed by coastal flooding (75.34), heat wave (68.36), and yes, landslides (57.33).

In 2018, a report showed that half of NYC’s 12 most heat-vulnerable communities were in The Bronx.

Hurricanes and earthquakes also pose a ‘relatively high’ risk to the borough as well with risk ratings at 30.97 and 32.41 respectively.

According to FEMA, risk index is calculated by taking the expected annual loss (which measures the expected loss of building value, population, and agricultural value per year due to natural disasters) multiplied by the social vulnerability of an area which is defined as the “susceptibility of social groups to the adverse impacts by natural hazards, and is divided by the community resilience of an area’s ability to, “…prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to the impacts of natural hazards.”

And it’s the last two that appears to be driving the risk even higher for The Bronx.

Taking all of this into the account, the South Bronx and the West Bronx overall, have a greater risk than the rest of the borough.

As for the rest of New York City, Manhattan came in behind The Bronx at 3rd place for greatest risk from natural disasters and hazards followed by Brooklyn at 6th place, and Queens at 11th placing them all together with The Bronx in the high risk category. Only Staten Island was in the moderate-risk category at 144th place.

Understanding these risks should be a blueprint for local and federal government officials to better prepare the people of The Bronx for not if a future natural disaster strikes but when.

We’ve already seen what happened to The Bronx during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic where we became the epicenter of infections and death as a result from the deadly virus but also one of economic devastation.

Given that it’s an election year, perhaps it would be prudent to question any candidate running for office what they intend to do given these findings.

To take a look at the interactive map and data you can go here or click below.

On Monday Welcome2TheBronx started a petition calling for Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council to cancel the Trump organization’s contract for running the golf course at Ferry Point Park in Throggs Neck joining the growing chorus across the city demanding for the removal of not just his name but organization on city owned property.

This morning Mayor de Blasio has announced that New York City will end contracts with the Trump organization at Ferry Point Park’s golf course, two Central Park ice rinks and carousel.

The New York Times reports:

“Inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government clearly constitutes criminal activity,” Mr. de Blasio said in an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday. “The City of New York will no longer have anything to do with the Trump Organization.”

Back in 2015, Welcome2TheBronx started a similar petition when Trump announced his candidacy and made disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants.

That petition received almost 7,000 signatures but went nowhere after the city looked into the contracts and couldn’t get out of the contract.

Six years later we finally have some closure on the issue.

The golf course itself should perhaps be renamed Lenape Links in honor of the indigenous peoples who occupied these lands prior to European colonization as suggested by Dr Mark Naison of Fordham University, however, others have pointed out that while this is a great idea, the Lenape people should be involved in the decision making of such a renaming.

Others think the golf course should be removed and the land simply returned to the people as park land.

What are your thoughts?

I’m honestly afraid for this country now more than ever.

Five years going on six of Trump fomenting lies and conspiracy theories and worse as president. His disciples believe every lie he and his fake media utters.

They believe Wednesday’s insurrection and attack on our nation’s Capitol, instigated by the most dangerous and negligent president in United States history, wasn’t caused by Trump’s calls to his supporters to storm the Capitol because they believe they are all peaceful. They legit believe it was left wing protesters and ANTIFA.

WE ARE DOOMED AS A NATION.

The World Watches White Supremacy in Action in America

They are justifying it by comparing their actions to that of protestors and looters during the Black Lives Matter marches across this nation but the two are not analogous: BLM marches and fights against the indiscriminate slaughter of Black and Brown bodies by the police while the insurrectionists are fighting for lies and conspiracy theories promulgated by a criminal and white supremacist who happens to be Donald Trump and who so desperately wants to hold onto power and become a dictator that is enabled by seditious Trump loyalists in the Senate and House of Representatives.

The entire world witnessed first hand that if you’re a white insurrectionist, you will be escorted by the police into the federal building you’re storming into and they will take selfies with you and if you’re peacefully protesting against this disgusting, racist country of ours and the murder of our people, you will get a boot to the neck and have your body physically violated and or killed.

The world saw that white terrorists and insurrectionists are not even arrested by the hundreds or thousands or met with a military force. They can walk away—even if they are responsible for the deaths of five individuals including a police officer.

It seems only Blue Lives Matter as long as the police are killing Black and Brown people and harming BIPOC communities but if they interfere with white supremacists then they no longer matter.

But here’s the thing, as mentioned before, we saw where the police stood: They allowed this to happen.

Days before January 6, the Chief of Capitol police was grilled about safety and security for what would be a tense day.

According to The New York Times, he assured Congresswoman Maxine Waters that they were on top of it.

Clearly they weren’t.

The New York Times reports:

“Policing experts noted the absence of crowd-control tools such as mounted officers, police dogs or a heavily manned perimeter.

“Pentagon officials said Thursday that the Capitol Police had turned down an offer for additional National Guard troops before Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol, and two law enforcement officials said they had initially rebuffed help from the F.B.I. as the mob descended.“

This Was a Planned, Violent Coup

It wasn’t a surprise that there were plans to storm the Capitol, I mean the chatter was all over right-wing websites which was simply ignored.

Even NATO and other European officials are seeing this for what it was: An attempted coup.

Business Insider reports:

While they did not furnish evidence that federal agency officials facilitated the chaos, Insider is reporting this information because it illustrates the scale and seriousness of Wednesday’s events: America’s international military and security allies are now willing to give serious credence to the idea that Trump deliberately tried to violently overturn an election and that some federal law-enforcement agents — by omission or otherwise — facilitated the attempt.

One NATO source set the stage, using terms more commonly used to describe unrest in developing countries.

“The defeated president gives a speech to a group of supporters where he tells them he was robbed of the election, denounces his own administration’s members and party as traitors, and tells his supporters to storm the building where the voting is being held,” the NATO intelligence official said.

“The supporters, many dressed in military attire and waving revolutionary-style flags, then storm the building where the federal law-enforcement agencies controlled by the current president do not establish a security cordon, and the protesters quickly overwhelm the last line of police.

“The president then makes a public statement to the supporters attacking the Capitol that he loves them but doesn’t really tell them to stop,” the official said. “Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle.

“I can’t believe this happened.”

Is it a surprise to the BIPOC community that what would be a mostly white gathering of dangerous right wing extremists like the Proud Boys along with members of armed militias outside our nation’s Capitol would be met with such indifference while unarmed Black and Brown protestors across the country last summer were met with militarized police forces that often utilized brutal force and tear gassed them?

No.

With the absence of the necessary safety and security precautions that one would expect at the Capitol, one can assume that this was a planned part of the failed coup.

As a person of color, it exhausts me to live in the country of my birth and the country I so love so much. I can only imagine how much worse it feels for my fellow Black friends.

I have never been so disgusted with his followers and there is no hope for relations with them there is no olive branch to extend, no working together.

They have been brainwashed into believing that the media is the enemy of the people and that we are liars and that the only media to be trusted are the ones that feed them the lies they want to so desperately believe as truth.

Stop with the kumbaya. Stop with the “when they go low we go high”. They have never reached across the aisle to work with us why should democrats along with Biden do that? Spare me the “because we are better speech.”

We are far beyond that point and will have to live with 74 million irrational, bat shit crazy people who believe in lie after lie after lie.

They have lost all grips on reality. Every. Single one. There are no good people among them as harsh as that sounds. Good people don’t lead the country they purport to care about to the brink of destruction.

Good people don’t scream communist and socialist when all the left is trying to do is make sure everyone gets the help they deserve and their basic human rights are covered versus the rich and corporations having it all without paying their fair share.

FYI it’s modern slavery with us building their wealth while we struggle to survive with crumbs.

It is OUR labor, it is OUR workers who have made that wealth yet 99% will rarely accrue and yet it is the average American that the right would rather attack and the ultimate irony is that they only hurt themselves in the process.

It will become a progressively scarier America that no wall will help because the enemy was always our fellow Americans and not some foreign threat.

This is the legacy Republicans have bestowed upon our nation. Their past destruction of our nation is nothing compared to what happened yesterday as a culmination of a wannabe dictator and his wannabee fascist army.

Let us also not forget the seditious Senate and House Republicans who further instigated this. They all have blood on their hands.

This was an attempted, yet failed coup instigated by the very president who took an oath to protect our constitution and nation against enemies both foreign AND domestic.

And as the hours and days go by in one of the darkest days of our nation’s history, we are seeing more and more that Trump, that pathetic, insecure, and poor excuse for a human being, did not act alone.

There is no hope for America, mark my words and don’t be fooled by wishful thinking and eloquent politicians telling you otherwise.

Wednesday marked an official beginning of insurrectionists not just living in our country but walking free after attacking the Capitol which has not been breached in over 200 years in 1814 during the war of 1812.

Did the Trumpism make America great again? No, we are the laughingstock of the world, friends and foes alike.

The MAGA crew handed a victory to China and all adversaries they consider a threat.

All we have left is to pick up the pieces and govern with integrity and lead by example.

Sadly, the right has become the very enemy, the very bogeyman they feared and in order to attempt to begin to heal our nation we must sever and cauturize the conduit of this hatred that festers in our country by removing Trump immediately.