The World and Everything in It: October 1, 2024 | WORLD
Logo
Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth | Donate

The World and Everything in It: October 1, 2024

0:00

WORLD Radio - The World and Everything in It: October 1, 2024

Communities pick up the pieces after Hurricane Helene, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shares his plan for victory, and a U.S. president’s hometown comes to grips with fading attention. Plus, a heroic reporter, Brad Littlejohn on hurricane devastation, and the Tuesday morning news


A vehicle sits outside of its garage after Hurricane Helene, Saturday in Madeira Beach, Fla. Associated Press/Photo by Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times

PREROLL: Across the Southeast US this morning, millions of people are still without power, and many aren’t sure where to go for help. But people everywhere are doing what they can to make a difference for those right next door. They’re being neighborly…we’ll have a report in a few minutes.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Devastation from Hurricane Helene has turned lives upside down, but loving neighbors are turning things right side up. 

AUDIO: I've never known my neighbors so well. Helping each other out with water, food.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today Ukraine’s path to victory is the plan selling in Washington?

And former president Jimmy Carter turns 100 today. We’ll pay a visit to Plains, Georgia.

AUDIO: I say, I wonder if the Carters really live here. Well, no sooner than that came out of my mouth, they were coming in to welcome us to the community.

And World Opinions commentator Brad Littlejohn on a painful lesson.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, October 1st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news with Kent Covington.


KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Helene aftermath » A crisis has unfolded in Asheville, North Carolina, with authorities pledging to get more water, food and other supplies to flood-stricken areas as the death toll rises. Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller:

MILLER:  We can confirm 35 losses of life in Buncombe County. Devastation does not even begin to describe how we feel, but my teams will be continuing to help in recovery. 

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper says efforts are underway to locate hundreds of people that loved ones say still have not been heard from.

COOPER:  We're doing door to door welfare checks on people to make sure that they are accounted for. We know there will be more deaths because this was an unprecedented, uh, devastating storm.

At least 125 people are now confirmed dead across six states.

And many throughout the region remain without power days after Hurricane Helene and its remnants ripped across the southeastern US.

Harris/Trump on storm/VP debate » The destruction from Hurricane Helene is scrambling the campaign schedules of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris this week.

Vice President Harris cut short a campaign visit to Las Vegas to return to Washington for briefings. She spoke Monday at FEMA headquarters.

HARRIS:  Our nation is with you and President Biden and I and all of the folks behind me are with you. We will continue to do everything we can to help you recover and to help you rebuild.

Former President Trump, meantime, traveled to south Georgia to meet with storm victims.

TRUMP: We're here today to stand in complete solidarity with the people of Georgia and with all of those suffering in the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Meantime, their running mates have been preparing for tonight’s one and only vice presidential debate.

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will face off against GOP Sen. JD Vance tonight in New York. CBS News will host the debate at 9pm Eastern Time.

SOUND: [Iranian demonstrators]

Israel » Iranian demonstrators gathered in Tehran Monday to mourn the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah died Friday during an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah's headquarters in Beirut.

All of this comes as the Biden administration says Israel has begun limited ground incursions in Lebanon near the Israeli border. Israel says the goal is to neutralize Hezbollah infrastructure.

President Biden was asked yesterday if he was aware of any potential ground invasion by Israel and if he was comfortable with that.

BIDEN: I'm more aware than you might know, and I'm comfortable with them stopping. We should have a cease-fire now!

Hours later, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller reiterated that while the president hasn't given up on diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tension in the region…

MILLER: This conflict started because it was Hezbollah on the day after October 7th that started launching rocket attacks across the border that had not stopped until this day. And Israel has a right to defend itself against those attacks.

Biden has said that an all-out war in the Middle East must be avoided, and that he plans to speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But he has not said when that will be.

Georgia abortion ruling » A Georgia judge has struck down protections for the unborn after 6 weeks of pregnancy. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in his order Monday seemingly borrowed language from pro-abortion activists. He stated that “liberty in Georgia” means protecting—his words—“the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it.”

The judge ruled that the law is unconstitutional.

But Kara Murray, a spokesperson for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, said he would immediately appeal to the state supreme court. The state high court earlier reversed a separate ruling by Judge McBurney that had struck down the law on different grounds.

Claire Bartlett with the Georgia Life Alliance called it ironic that the judge based his ruling on Georgia’s constitutional protection against a person being deprived of life, liberty, or property.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Kristofferson obit » Singer, songwriter, and actor, Kris Kristofferson has died.

AUDIO: Well I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt …

His country music albums sold more than 8 million copies over several decades. As an actor, he played the leading man opposite Barbra Streisand and also starred in shoot-out Westerns.

A family spokeswoman says Kristofferson died at his home in Hawaii at the age of 88.

Pete Rose obit » And baseball icon Pete Rose has died. Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader was banished from the sport in 1989 amid a gambling scandal. With that, he was barred from baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. But he was inducted into the Cincinnati Reds’ Hall of Fame in 2016.

ROSE: I can honestly tell you that to date, this is the biggest thing ever to happen to me in Major League Baseball.

His 4,256 hits broke his hero Ty Cobb’s long-standing record.

Pete Rose was 83 years old.

Mutombo obit » And the NBA is mourning the loss of 4-time Defensive Player of the Year Dikembe Mutombo at the age of just 58.

He’s heard here at his basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 20-15.

MUTOMBO:  I'm fortunate and blessed to be able to play 18 years and see my name being called today in Springfield, Massachusetts. 

The league announced that he died Monday from brain cancer.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: clean-up efforts are underway across the Southeast. Plus, the town of Plains, Georgia, prepares for life after former president Jimmy Carter.

This is The World and Everything in It.


NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 1st of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up, life after Hurricane Helene.

SOUND: [STREAMS/RIVERS WATER RUSHING]

For most of the Southeast United States, streams and rivers are almost back to normal. But evidence of abnormal is everywhere you look.

SOUND: [HEAVY EQUIPMENT CLEANING UP] 

Overturned cars, piles of debris, washed out roads, and mountains of muck and mud. Cell phone coverage is slowly coming back, but many areas are without clean water, and it may still be days or weeks before the power’s back on for everyone.

SOUND: [PEOPLE STANDING IN LINE FOR WATER / TALKING]

EICHER: Many cities and towns were not prepared to deal with this level of devastation. State and federal aid will also be slow in coming, given the roads washed away or undrivable.

Even so, as people begin to dig out, many are rediscovering that a neighbor in times of need, is a neighbor indeed.

WORLD’s Paul Butler has this report.

SOMMERVILLE JOHNSTON: So the community is, I think, coming together like never before…

PAUL BUTLER: Asheville resident Sommerville Johnston and her husband have been without power since Friday, but that isn’t stopping them from being hospitable.

JOHNSTON: We are hosting a potluck tonight. Everybody bring your own bowl and spoons and we're sharing food…

Right now, drinking water is probably the biggest challenge facing their block, as it’ll be at least a week before water service is back on. So for now, they’re pooling their resources to help one another while they wait.

JOHNSTON: … a lot of us had water on hand. We're sharing if needed…and then for flushing toilets we’re going down the street to the spring, and collecting rainwater if it comes. And just kind of figuring out our systems.

Communication has also been challenging. Many, for the first time in a long time, are realizing that they need each other to make it through.

JOHNSTON: I've never known my neighbors so well. The first couple of days were really scary without information from the outside world. And we're just passing information around to each other... Like the more we understand the severity of the situation, we are then adapting and saying, “OK, how are we going to make it work?”

One way they make it work is by sharing the resources they do have with those who don’t… 

SOUND: [PEOPLE AROUND A CARD TABLE CHARGING THEIR PHONES]

…like these Asheville neighbors who set up a card table along the side of their street with hand-painted a sign welcoming anyone to plug in and charge their phones. Carrie Owenby is grateful:

CARRIE OWENBY: We did not have cell service for the first, like, three days here, but it's just coming back and everybody's wanting to get their devices charged so we can let our family know that we're safe.

And it’s a scene playing itself out all across the region…

JANALEA ENGLAND: I've turned my retail seafood market into a donation center…

Janalea England is the owner of the Steinhatchee Fish Company in Steinhatchee, Florida. She set up temporary shelves and tables outside her restaurant as a make-shift donation center. And donations are pouring in…

ENGLAND: And we will take it all. Whatever you got, whether it is generators or Pepsi-Cola, a piece of wood or a bottle of water, you know what I mean? Like, we’re, we're here to take it all, because … I've never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now. Not in my community.

Hurricane Helene is the third serious storm to come through Steinhatchee within the last 12 months. The last was in August. The town is reeling.

ENGLAND: I saw them suffer. I saw the tears. I saw the panic. I saw the shaking. As people that have lost their homes. Knowing now, after what we went through that with Idalia there were no there was no help that they're they're not hopeful. Why would you be hopeful?

Well, turns out the question is somewhat rhetorical for England as she goes on to say that there is at least one reason to be hopeful, they have each other.

ENGLAND: We can come together and we'll be back. This one's going to take us a little longer. But we'll be back. I feel helpless, honestly. So, I'm just doing what I can do, and it just means so much to me. I was born, raised here, you know, and I'm still here because I love these people.

For those who escaped the worst effects of Hurricane Helene it is difficult to know exactly how to help those who have lost so much. The scale of the destruction is overwhelming.

AMY BOLLINGER: When we saw Asheville, it looked like the Apocalypse hit it. It was really, really scary…

Western Carolina University employee Amy Bollinger lives in Cullowhee, North Carolina. She lost cell phone signal early in the storm and didn’t grasp the severity of it until she and her husband left town for a wedding shower and saw just how bad it was. Now they’re on their way back with aid for people they know:

AMY BOLLINGER: And so for us now it's just like, how can we, how can we save ourselves and keep gas and keep food, but also, how can we use what we have to save our neighbor? So we're bringing money, we're bringing four full gas cans, and … we're going to get some jugs of water and baby formula and diapers and just some non-perishables that we can help support our community with.

Bollinger says that Hurricane Helene was a shock. But it’s taught her something she’ll never take for granted again.

BOLLINGER: I feel like it's so easy when you see hurricane damage happen in Florida and you think, “Oh no, that's terrible.” And you think about them for a moment, but then you scroll on and life goes on, but it's different when it happens to your community. It changes your whole perspective on on what it means to really band together with people and survive.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler, with additional reporting from Mary Muncy.

EICHER: Thanks so very much for an encouraging Monday following such a sad weekend for our team at the Asheville headquarters. We’ve got a long road ahead for a new or restored headquarters … but right now, really, just a word of thanks to you. What an encouragement to receive gifts so quickly to our special wng.org/SOS online gift portal. One thing I neglected to say yesterday: Please don’t try to send a check right now. That’s how bad things are in Asheville. We literally cannot receive mail. So if you can give online, please do that … wng.org/SOS … and, again, thanks!


NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next: Ukraine’s endgame.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to the U.S. last week to address the United Nations, meet with both White House hopefuls and try to instill some confidence with Congress that he’s got a winning plan.

Also, President Joe Biden received Zelenskyy at the White House.

BIDEN: Let me be clear: Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail and we'll continue to stand by you every step of the way. … Right now, we have to strengthen Ukraine's position on the battlefield. And that's why today I'm proud to announce a new $2.4 billion package of security assistance.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The Department of Defense says the package includes some long-range munitions, which is not without controversy as these are meant to strike inside Russia.

ZELENSKYY: Today we have a new support package. This will be a great help. And I raised with President Biden the plan of victory…

So what is that plan? Details aren’t public yet, but foreign policy observers have an educated guess.

IVANA STRADNER: Zelenskyy believes that we should definitely allow Ukraine to hit deep inside Russia, that’s the number one thing.

Ivana Stradner is a Russia expert with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She says one of Zelenskyy’s goals is to convince the U.S. to allow Ukraine to fully use Western weapons. And Biden’s not on board with that yet.

Zelenskyy also wants assurances from the West that Ukraine will get its territories back and be invited to join the NATO security alliance.

EICHER: But Stradner says Zelenskyy has another motive for selling his “victory plan” to Washington.

STRADNER: It seems to me that Zelensky also believes that we do not have also a victory plan for Ukraine.

On Capitol Hill, some House Republicans agree, including Rich McCormick of Georgia who spoke with our Leo Briceno.

REP. RICH MCCORMICK: …for him to come in here and give us a plan without us giving him a plan what we're going to support him with, that's unfair. How does he know what he's gonna be able to do if he doesn't even know what he's going to get?

REICHARD: Congress approved more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine back in April. But when it did, it was on the condition

that the White House submit a plan for what that aid would do.

The White House has not done that. It’s laid out no clear objectives beyond saying that Ukraine needs to “win this war.”

Before meeting with President Biden, Zelenskyy briefed members of Congress on his plan. Congressman McCormick thinks it’ll work, but it’s up to Washington.

REP. RICH MCCORMICK If we gave them everything they need to win this war, it'd be over within a year.

EICHER: Other Republicans say the U.S. should back off and let Ukraine’s neighbors step up. Here’s former President Donald Trump last week.

TRUMP: And one of the things that are very bothersome to me is the fact that Europe is paying only a small fraction of the money that the United States of America is paying. And we have an ocean between Russia and ourselves. They don't.

Zelenskyy met with the former president in New York at Trump Tower, one day after meeting with vice president Kamala Harris.

ZELENSKYY: I think we have common view that the war in Ukraine has to be stopped and Putin can't win, and Ukraine have to prevail…

REICHARD: Trump repeated his commitment to making a peace deal.

TRUMP: We have a very good relationship. And I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin. And I think, if we win, I think we're going to get it resolved very quickly.

Stradner of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies doubts it.

STRADNER: He believes that he can actually sit with Putin and shake hands and to claim the war will be over, which is exactly what Putin wants. Because for Putin, this is a protracted war. He doesn't want to end it anytime soon, but he needs a pause. He needs a pause to replenish his army, he needs a pause to strengthen his military…make no mistake, Putin is not willing to negotiate.

EICHER: Stradner says Putin is likely focused on economic sanctions that are starting to bite. And she thinks he’s also concerned about manpower and the political cost inside Russia.

STRADNER: So far, he has been using people coming from mostly ethnic minorities and sending them to the front lines. But if he starts knocking on the doors of kids in places such as Moscow and St Petersburg, that is going to be a very problematic thing for him, and he understands that.

REICHARD: Stradner believes that Putin’s goal is to get a temporary pause and keep the territory Russia has already occupied…and continue the conflict later.

But Zelenskyy achieving his goals requires regime change.

STRADNER: I do believe that there is a path to victory to Ukraine, and that is actually the collapse of Putin's regime and and the collapse of of the Kremlin.


NICK EICHER, HOST: Meteorologist Bob van Dillen was doing a live broadcast near floodwaters in Atlanta on Friday when he heard a woman in distress nearby. He called for help, then continued his live report on the local Fox affiliate:

BOB VAN DILLEN: She drove right into the flood waters. This is the Peach Tree Creek, and it is rising at the moment. We got you! 911 they're coming! (Screaming for help) 

But with the woman trapped in her car and water levels up to her neck, Van Dillen felt he needed to do something … even if it meant breaking company protocol.

VAN DILLEN: (Screaming) Uh, man. It's it, it's a situation. We will get back to you in a little bit. I'm going to go see if I can help this lady out a little bit more you guys.

Video shows Van Dillen wading through high water to reach her.

She was panicking because he couldn’t get the door open. Thankfully the car was still running and she could put the window down, get her out, and get her to safety.

Heroes among us.

It’s The World and Everything in It.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, October 1st. This is WORLD Radio. Thanks for listening. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Former President Jimmy Carter. Today he’s a centenarian, 100 years old, surpassing the presidential longevity record by almost six years.

After his term in office Carter devoted the rest of his life to humanitarian work, the arts, and church. He did all that from a small town in southern Georgia.

REICHARD: WORLD Radio’s Lindsay Mast has our story.

LINDSAY MAST: To get to Plains, Georgia, you have to drive miles of South Georgia backroads. With a population of 573, it’s known for one thing: being Jimmy Carter’s home.

AUDIO: Our top-selling button is this, and this.

It also happens to be home to the self-proclaimed largest political memorabilia store in the country—2500 square feet of trinkets and mementos.

PHILIP KURLAND: Truman, Taft, Cleveland, Millard Fillmore.

That’s Philip Kurland—a guy with a specialty. He’s showing off his collection of presidential campaign buttons inside the Plains Trading Post. The buttons span the time from Harris and Trump back to before the Civil War.

KURLAND: Harrison, Teddy Roosevelt, Bull Moose, Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge.

And of course, Jimmy Carter. Kurland’s store sits on Main Street, nestled between an antique mall and a shop selling all things peanut: fried peanuts, peanut brittle, peanut souvenirs, a rich peanut butter soft serve.

SOUND: [Downtown Plains]

Outside, songs from the height of Carter’s political career play over a loudspeaker—disco and yacht rock. Ten evenly spaced American flags wave under the town’s trademark sign, proclaiming it the home of the 39th President.

For a long time, the chance to catch a glimpse of the former president was enough to bring visitors to town.

JIMMY CARTER: And if you take a seed peanut, which I used to grow and sell, by the way, the best, best seed peanuts in Georgia. (laughter)

But as he marks his 100th birthday, it’s hard to know what lies ahead for the town.

Carter was born and raised in Plains, and moved back after college and a career in the Navy. He and wife Rosalynn took over the family peanut farm before getting into politics. He became Georgia’s governor, then president. He could’ve lived anywhere, but again, he picked Plains.

In this clip from 2006, Carter walks down Main Street with a crew from CBS.

CARTER ON CBS: Yeah, the folks in Plains, they don’t ever think about calling me anything but Jimmy, and Rosalynn…

REPORTER: Some of them call you Mr. Jimmy.

CARTER: Some of them do. In fact some of the tiny kids call me Jimmy Carter, and if they are Baptist they may call me Brother Jimmy.

Post-presidency, he started the Carter Center in Atlanta and worked with humanitarian causes around the globe. But he has spent the last 40-plus years of his life deeply invested in the community of Plains.

Phillip Kurland says he saw that investment firsthand when he moved here.

KURLAND: I turned to my wife, and I say, I wonder if the Carters really live here. Well, no sooner than they came out of my mouth, I looked up and they were coming in to welcome us to the community, and it was standard for them to welcome new people to the community.

Carter taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church for decades. People came from everywhere, camping out in the parking lot to get a seat and a picture with the former president. Audio here from the last class he taught, in 2019.

CARTER: Oregon, Nevada, Washington D.C., Robert Good to have you here…

But a lot has changed. Crowds that used to number upwards of 500 have dwindled to fewer than 20. Maranatha went without a pastor for two years, left the Southern Baptist Convention, and hired a new female pastor. Audio here from a recent sermon.

GUTHAS: The church, our church, Maranatha, it is a place that is meant to lead people out of bondage and yet all too often I have found the church has caged the human spirit.

The town is different, too. Rosalynn passed away last November. Plains’ mayor of 4 decades stepped down in January. With changes and the passing of time, what will become of Plains, when the main attraction is gone?

KIM FULLER: We've had people say, “Oh, when he dies, it's going to blow away and storefronts are going to close.”

Kim Fuller is Carter’s niece. She serves as head of the Friends of Jimmy Carter. They hold events like last weekend’s Plains Peanut Festival. August’s annual Butterfly Daze festival, to honor Mrs. Carter.

FULLER: We're trying so hard, not only for us, but once again, we don't want to disappoint them, you know.

Fuller says she’s confident the town will stay relevant. Her group–and others–have spent years working to ensure Plains remains of interest.

SOUND: [Train pulls into Plains]

A few days a month, a train rumbles along between nearby Americus and Plains, rolling by Southwest Georgia’s pecan groves and peanut farms. The train stops on Main Street, giving the town a brief boost of visitors.

Additionally, several places in town have been designated National Historical Park sites—including Carter’s alma mater and boyhood home. This visitor stopped in on his way from New Orleans to South Carolina.

VISITOR: I was always interested in learning about Jimmy Carter, all the work he did for the environment and international peace, and has continued to do that after his presidency, so wanted to see where he grew up.

SOUND: [Downtown Plains]

Back on Main Street, Philip Kurland looks over his inventory. He’s currently trying to sell the Plains Trading Post, but he has hope for the future of his adopted hometown.

KURLAND: We're evolving, but in my 30 years here, we just keep getting better and better. I love the community spirit here.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Mast in Plains, Georgia.


NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, October 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

In the nearly 20-years since Hurricane Katrina, gathering storm data has improved a lot. But data alone isn’t enough, as shown by the devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene.

BRAD LITTLEJOHN: Six months ago, I stood on Main Street in Chimney Rock, NC, marveling at this postcard-perfect southern Appalachian tourist town that had become a favorite family haunt. Flanked by towering blue-green mountain ridges, it nestled along a frothy whitewater stream where laughing children collected salamanders, and sported a BBQ joint, a magnificent ice cream shop, a gem store, and an array of little shops walking the fine line between kitschy and charming. Today, Chimney Rock is gone, wiped off the map—along with so many of the western Carolina towns and landscapes where I spent my childhood. As we watched the aerial footage of a valley choked with the fragments of upstream towns and shattered lives, my daughter wept silently beside me.

This week, the nation is slowly waking up to the scale of the apocalypse that Hurricane Helene unleashed over 8000 square miles of the southern Appalachians. Hundreds of thousands struggle to find food, water, cell service, or just a way out of a wrecked and twisted landscape where almost every road was turned into a raging river. Our broken political system has struggled to respond, with private citizens forced to organize helicopter rescues and insulin drops. Perhaps more than any disaster in recent memory, Helene highlights the increasingly yawning gap between our technical knowledge-gathering prowess and our capacity to act upon it. Our tech titans tell us all we need is more data. Appalachia begs to differ.

From a forecasting standpoint, Helene was a marvel, one of the best-predicted storms in history. New supercomputer weather models allowed forecasters to pinpoint the storm’s track, strength, and likely impacts days in advance—including the risk for high winds and historic flooding in the Appalachians.

But that is all data. People do not think in data. People think in pictures. It’s hard to form a mental picture of what it is like to flee a crumbling mountainside along a winding road choked with fallen trees beside a raging torrent higher than you have ever seen it. Forecasters warned of extended power outages, but it is hard to form a mental picture of being trapped with an ailing parent for days with no water, no electricity, no communication, and no way out because the roads no longer exist.

Two decades after the horror of Katrina, our technical, data-crunching, predictive capacities have advanced at the speed of light. But our practical, people-mobilizing, political capacities have, if anything, regressed. Most citizens did not—or could not evacuate—and most political leaders did not adequately urge them to. Most local governments didn’t stage in advance the massive disaster response resources the crisis would call for. It does not matter what the experts know if they no longer have the people’s trust. And if they don’t, politicians will hardly stick their necks out to mobilize for an apocalypse that may not materialize—not after COVID.

Even to say this, however, may be to point too many fingers. Silicon Valley likes to think that more information means more control. And to a certain extent, they are right; just ask the dam operators managing unprecedented flows on major rivers right now. But Helene shows us that decoding nature is not the same as mastering it…that the analog world cannot be bent to our will as readily as ones and zeros.

The power of places like Chimney Rock lies in how they emphasize our smallness and transience next to the great mountains. As they rebuild from this tragedy, may they continue to remind us that we live in a world that we do not control.

I’m Brad Littlejohn.


NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The vice presidential candidates square off. We’ll have analysis on Washington Wednesday. And, a pregnancy resource center in Springfield, Ohio faces a new challenge and opportunity. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The prophet Isaiah wrote: “Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.” —Isaiah 8:16, 17

Again, WORLD is going to need your help to recover from the flooding that has devastated our headquarters. If you can help, please do. wng.org/SOS

Go now in grace and peace.


WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

COMMENT BELOW

Please wait while we load the latest comments...

Comments