Long Hot Summer

by hilzoy

It's miserable where I live, in Maryland. It's almost 100 degrees during the day, and at 9:30 this evening, as I was heading home from Home Depot, the temperature was still nearly 90. The humidity is dreadful: when I was a kid, I used to think that '80% humidity' meant that the atmosphere was 80% water, and I always wondered why, when the humidity got up around 100%, we didn't seem to be actually underwater. These days, it really is like being underwater, or perhaps like being under a huge, hot, soggy towel that some annoying deity has thrown on top of us all. But things could be worse: at least I have electricity:

"As the relentless summer heat in Iraq soars toward its August peak, electricity demand is roughly 25 percent higher than it was one year ago, while the supply to the nation's power grid is only slightly changed despite a $6 billion American program to rebuild the electrical infrastructure.

Those numbers, which come from the Iraqi Electricity Ministry, the American Embassy and the Pentagon, are being interpreted in widely varying ways by Iraqi and Western officials and the Iraqi citizens who rely on the electricity to run their refrigerators and air-conditioners.

The new electricity minister, Muhsin Shlash, believes that the losing battle with summer is an inevitable outcome of mistakes the Americans made early in the occupation, principally the decision to build numerous small generating stations instead of a few major plants.

Some American officials are acknowledging for the first time that their approach may have been flawed but put much of the blame on the decrepit state of the grid and a lack of help by the Iraqi government. Iraqi citizens appear to have slipped into a state of simmering resignation.

"We haven't seen any change in electricity supplies and we have programmed our lives to this situation," said Haydar al-Ameen, 35, an engineer whose office is in the Karada district of Baghdad. Power failures are constant, forcing residents to pay for power from jury-rigged neighborhood generators, Mr. Ameen said. (...)

The constant power failures lead to a wide spectrum of other problems: patients who die in emergency rooms when equipment stops running, office elevators that are all but useless, and what amounts to a national epidemic of insomnia in sweltering Iraqi homes."

Meanwhile, Knight-Ridder reports that the rest of Baghdad's infrastructure isn't coming along so well either:

"Talib Abu Younes put his lips to a glass of tap water recently and watched worms swimming in the bottom.

Electricity flickers on and off for two hours in Muthana Naim's south Baghdad home then shuts off for four in boiling July heat that shoots above 120 degrees.

Fadhel Hussein boils buckets of sewage-contaminated water from the Tigris River to wash the family's clothes.

The capital is crumbling around angry Baghdadis. Narrow concrete sewage pipes decay underground and water pipes leak out more than half the drinking water before it ever reaches a home, according to the U.S. military.

Over 18 months, American officials spent almost $2 billion to revive the capital ravaged by war and neglect, according to Army Gen. William G. Webster, who heads the 30,000 U.S. and foreign troops and 15,000 Iraqi soldiers known collectively as Task Force Baghdad. But the money goes for long-term projects that yield few visible results and for security to protect the construction sites from sabotage.

As a result, Iraqis have seen scant evidence of improvement in their homes, streets or neighborhoods. They blame American and Iraqi government corruption.

"We thank God that the air we breathe is not in the hands of the government. Otherwise they would have cut it off for a few hours each day," said Nadeem Haki, 39, an electric-goods shop owner in the upscale Karrada district in the east of the capital."

There are bits of good news. The new Iraqi electricity minister is reportedly competent and honest, and we seem to have provided sewer lines to Sadr City, which used to have rivers of slime running through its streets. However (KR again):

"It's sometimes a two-steps-forward, one-step-back process. At one sewage plant in east Baghdad, they'd almost finished renovations when a decaying pipe collapsed and the ground caved in. Now the work will begin again."

I once spent a summer without air conditioning in the sweltering region near the sea of Galilee. It was like having a fever all the time: the lethargy, the clammy sheets, the slightly disembodied feeling, and never, ever being able to really truly sleep. (And it got worse when my sister and I declined the advances of the rather unpleasant guy in charge of assigning people to work details, and he stuck us in the even hotter laundry, where only a few weeks before, our roommate had gotten her hand caught in the steam press; because the war in Lebanon was raging, all the burn units were full of soldiers, and her hand, untreated, was slowly turning into a claw. But I digress.) It's bad enough when the water doesn't come with little worms, and you don't take your life in your hands when you step out the door. I hope that either we or the new electricity minister get some plants up and running soon.

Comments

[Dan Nexon]

"...at least I have electricity...."

I take it you don't live in the eastern part of Montgomery County, where every thunderstorm comes with a free "no power for at least a few hours" card.

[hilzoy]

Baltimore County, just north of Baltimore. Not every thunderstorm knocks the power out, but it happens often enough that it keeps me guessing. At the moment, though, rain would be welcome.

[DaveC]

Will you ever put Iraq The Model on your blogroll? They had an interesting photo of candles that had, not totally melted, but ha drooped over in their den, about a month ago.

[Phil]

Fairfax County is no picnic in the will-we-or-won't-we during thunderstorms either. Not to mention brownouts; we've had at least three already this summer. One day last week, my wife and I were at our gym in Fairfax, and the entire strip center lost power right in the middle of a bright sunny day -- the power demand had helped blow a transformer. Nothing like every treadmill in the joint suddenly lurching to a stop, then gym users having to shower and dress in emergency lighting.

[KCinDC]

Here in DC the Metro seems to be having problems with its air conditioning. Maybe they're trying to keep it too hot for people to wear explosive vests.

[Francis / BRGORD]

there's a NPR-station program here in So. Cal called Left, Right and Center, with Robert Scheer (LA Times columnist), Matt Miller (DLC) on the pro-war center and a rotating group of righties. and Arianna Huffington doing her own thing.

shortly after the invasion was over, Miller was asking about our responsibility to provide all new infrastructure to Iraq. Information was starting to trickle in that the infrastructure was in far worse shape than expected and that the costs of putting in a new power grid, water system, sewer system and phone system for an entire country was going to run in the many billions. Miller seemed to think that the US taxpayer shouldn't have to bear that cost.

I started yelling at my radio. As Atrios points out today, the US Govt in Afghanistan has recently discovered that young men who have no jobs in a country that's totally beat down will get into trouble. wow, what a shocker.

i still cannot believe that the US wasn't running job fairs nationwide the very next day after the invasion was complete. there was a golden opportunity there to put iraqis to work rebuilding their own country, and we ... erred.

[Slartibartfast]

Are you enough of a native to pronounce Baltimore as a two-syllable word that sounds almost (but not quite) entirely unlike Baltimore?

[hilzoy]

Slarti: no. never. I am from Boston, but my actual accent is -- well, I think I don't have one, but I suppose everyone does. Let's just say that my Dad is from California and my Mom is Swedish. And I have been in Baltimore for four years, and do not plan to adopt its accent ;)

[CharleyCarp]

There's a line in the Maryland state song: 'she spurns the Northern scum.' Obviously, the weather is the primary method by which she does so, and, consequently, I take hot days -- and today looks to be worse than yesterday -- as a personal affront.

Seriously, it's really too bad for Iraq that the primary goal of the opponents is breed discontent amongst the populace by creating awful conditions. It is a personal affront there, and there's really not much that can be done about it, by the ordinary citizen, except wait the whole thing out.

[Slartibartfast]

WAY off-topic, but I'm watching the shuttle get ready to launch; video here. Scroll down, look for the Yahoo logo, and click "Watch NASA TV..." link. About 8 minutes to go, I think.

[Anarch]

Up, up and away, Junior Birdman! :D

[Paul]

Also off topic, but of marginal interest, maybe: Salam Pax has a small piece on visiting Las Vegas in the new issue of Black Book magazine. The photo is the first I've ever seen of him. He writes about how fascinated airport officials everywhere were by his Iraqi passport and how strange the Vegas nighttime crowds seemed after Baghdad, where most people try to get off the streets after 7PM.

There's a "fear and loathing in Las Vegas" remark to be made here somewhere.

[xanax]

i'd rather have snow than the Arizona heat
i'd rather have rain than another sunny day
i'd rather be skinny than famous
but i got fat anyway...

Sympathies, hilzoy. But you do recall summers in Tucson do you not? Death in the desert is an everyday event... and few are even shooting at you (unless, of course, your skin is brown). Balmier than Balmer, Merlyn? It got to 122 in Parker, AZ last week... and it wasn't even a record.

[NeoDude]

Unbearable heat, kidnappings, high crime rates and Iranian trained militias enforcing theocratic values are proof that freedom is on the march!

Only liberals are incapable of seeing that!

[ThirdGorchBro]

All I know about Baltimore is what I saw on H:LOTS and The Wire. But I'd imagine it can't beat Houston when it comes to heat and humidity. ;)

It's certainly a frustrating position we're in when it comes to the Iraqi infrastructure. It wouldn't be in as bad a state if it weren't for the insurgent attacks on pipelines, etc., and I hate that we're the ones getting the blame.

But ultimately, the buck stops with us. We occupied the country, and we have a responsibility to set it back on its feet. I'm definitely wishing we could have scraped together 300,000 or so troops for the occupation.

[Donald Johnson]

I'll go off-topic first--those of us who criticized or went along with criticism of Juan Cole for linking 9/11 (2001) with Israeli atrocities in Jenin (2002)a week ago might want to take a look at the article by Max Rodenbeck in the New York Review of Books, where he says that bin Laden may have tried to use Jenin as a retroactive justification for 9/11 in the timing of an announcement he made when Israel was killing hundreds of civilians in the West Bank (though only 22 at Jenin). Maybe Cole was referring to this when he made the connection (and either did it in a confusing way or got confused himself.)

Now back to the topic at hand. It's interesting how much more interest there is in the state of Iraq's infrastructure is getting now that America has to deal with the anger of Iraqis over it--back in the first Gulf War it was the US which deliberately blew up Iraq's infrastructure hoping to cause discontent and rebellion (see Barton Gellman, Washington Post, June 23, 1991). Same tactics by people trying to overthrow the government, and the same suffering by ordinary Iraqis--the main difference is that Iraqi engineers under Saddam and sanctions seemed to do a better job jury-rigging repairs than has happened under the occupation.

[votermom]

*cough*global*warming*cough*

[houyhnhnm]

"It's miserable where I live..."

"Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it."

[bernard Yomtov]

Michael Barone thinks you're exaggerating. What about all the good news?

[hilzoy]

The good news is: if you invest now in inland real estate in Labrador, in a few decades you could find yourself in possession of prime beachfront vacation property.

[Slartibartfast]

OTOH, depending on what happens, you might find yourself on the leading edge of a new ice shelf.