Disaster

You can't say they didn't warn us: this afternoon, the VP of US manufacturing Daryl Roberts at French chemicals giant Arkema, said the company was on "high alert" as more fires could start at the doomed facility at any moment. Well, that moment took place around 6pm ET, when ABC Houston reported that the doomed Arkema plant has exploded, causing a "massive" fire and "sending dark, black smoke into the air."

Wow. Chemical plant catches fire in Crosby, Texas. Take a look. #ABC13 #hounews pic.twitter.com/ZXT1MVKVHo

With evicted Russian diplomats scrambling to collect their baggage and vacate the San Francisco consulate in hours ahead of the September 2 deadline, the AP reports that "acrid, black smoke" was seen pouring from a chimney at the Russian consulate on Friday.

However, instead of sabotage, it appears the Russians were engaged in some last minute creative document "redaction."

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

It wasn’t until more than a week after Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans in 2005 that the full extent of the damage was recognized and so it will go with the hot mess where Houston used to be. Mostly, it is inconceivable that the business activity which made Houston the nation’s fourth largest city and, according to Chris Martenson, equal to the 10th largest economy in the world, will ever return to what it was before August 26, 2017.

One day after two explosions rocked its flooded plant in Crosby, Texas, French chemicals giant Arkema said it was on "high alert" as more fires could start at the doomed facility at any moment, according to VP of US manufacturing Daryl Roberts who spoke to reporters on Friday morning. In a separate statement, that company said that "we continue to monitor the temperature in the remaining trailers and there is evidence suggesting that other trailers will soon burn, but there have been no reports of any fires or smoke."

Scientists have confirmed what one renowned weather forecaster has suspected for days: Hurricane Harvey was a “1-in-1,000-year flood.”

That’s according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center, who claim there is nothing in the historical record that rivals the devastation resulting from the flooding in southwest Texas, which has forced more than 30,000 Texans into temporary shelters.