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Hurricane Katrina: A Disaster
in the Making for Decades
by Christine Frank / October 2005 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper
Katrina
made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, one of the strongest ever to
strike the United States. In the aftermath of the storm, hundreds were
found dead in the rank flood waters, their bloated bodies often
unrecognizable. A million people have been left homeless and jobless in a
vast diaspora spread out over at least 26 states.
Although
Katrina is considered a "natural" disaster, many aspects of the
catastrophe are human-made. The devastation has grossly amplified the
chronic ills of capitalist society in economic, social, ecological, and
human terms.
After
leaving the Florida coast in the final days of August, the storm increased
in force to a Category 5 as it gathered momentum over the Gulf of Mexico
and headed toward Louisiana. The unusually high temperature of the Gulf of
Mexico’s water, a result of global warming, fed the hurricane and gave it
added force.
New
Orleans lies, on average, six feet below sea level in a bowl surrounded by the
waters of the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain. Because its flood
defenses were designed to handle only a Category 3 hurricane, a state of
emergency was declared and the immediate
evacuation
of the city was ordered as Katrina built up steam and drew near the coast.
Those who had private transport were able to escape. Those who did not were
trapped.
New
Orleans, with a large percentage of its population living in poverty, has
the smallest percentage of car owners of any city in the United States,
including New York. Yet neither city and state nor federal authorities made
any attempt to get them to safety, even though they were well aware of the
dangers facing anyone left behind if the levees were overwhelmed by a storm
surge and the city flooded.
Instead
of being mobilized onto hundreds of municipal and school buses, military
vehicles from local bases, and cars from dealership lots that could have
spirited them away to safe havens, the poor were shunted into the Louisiana
Superdome as a refuge of last resort. As
time
wore on, the stadium became woefully inadequate as a shelter, with no beds,
hardly any blankets, few medical supplies, stinking garbage piled up, four
feet of water outside the walls, and a shortage of food and potable water.
As
provisions ran out, people began to faint from hunger. Several infants died
of dehydration. The bodies of those who had perished for lack of proper
medical care were left in corridors.
One
refugee, Daniel Edwards, commented on the glaring disparities in the way
the poor were treated, "You can do everything for other countries, but
you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the
military, but you can’t get them down here!"
The
rest of the nation watched horrified as it became apparent that federal and
local governments and the big business interests behind them had abandoned
the poor of New Orleans and made only the most token effort to launch
rescue and relief operations.
President
Bush and his cabinet took their sweet old time returning from vacation and
pretending that they cared.
The
people of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida felt equally forgotten. James
Gibson, a resident of Lakeshore, Miss., bemoaned the small town’s
situation: "There’s no FEMA.
No Red Cross. No help. People are sick. The water is like toxic gumbo.
We’re the forgotten little town that got blown away."
Racism at the heart of the matter
The
Gulf Coast Region has a large population of poor people. This is especially
true in New Orleans, which is 67 percent Black, with 5l-57 percent of Black
people living below the poverty level.
Historically,
there have always been enormous divisions along both race and class lines
in New Orleans society. As was pointed out by Steve Kroll-Smith, a
sociologist who used to reside there, "The truth is that people living
in the Garden District got out, and those in the 9th Ward and other poor
neighborhoods didn’t." The contradictions are clear in the fact that
well-off hotel guests were put on buses and driven to safety.
With
conventions and tourism being a major industry, many of the worst paid
workers are marginally employed as hotel maids, janitors, waiters, kitchen
help, cab drivers, and in other service positions, placing them in the
lowest rungs of the working class. There has been a huge resistance by
employers to raising the minimum wage, so that people can improve their
lot. New Orleans bosses prefer to maintain their privileges and the
economic status quo.
Urban
sprawl and "white flight" has also contributed to the problem.
Before that began to occur, New Orleans had been one of the most integrated
cities in the South because of the relatively tolerant legacy of French
rule in its early history. As the white population left for the suburbs,
the Black majority was left to occupy the low-lying areas such as the Ninth
Ward and East New Orleans.
Invisible
to the rest of the country and never mentioned in the mainstream news
coverage is the significant Spanish-speaking population (as many as 125,000
in the New Orleans area), made up largely of Honduran exiles—many of whom
survived Hurricane Mitch in 1998 when it ravaged Central America.
It
is obvious that George W. Bush and his cohorts share the same views about
impoverished Black people as the Louisiana ruling class (both
Democrat/Dixiecrat and "southern strategy" Republican). Their
lackluster attitude about saving the indigent and their indifference to the
hurricane victims’ plight are driven by deep-going racial prejudice.
That
is why the relief operation was executed in such a slapdash manner. Bush’s
wealthy campaign supporters in the area will be well looked after with
plenty of government handouts and subsidies now that the rebuilding of the
industries and businesses they own and control has begun.
Disaster relief a disaster
There
was an utter lack of planning, and the resources allocated were abysmally
inadequate. Rescue teams stood around for hours waiting while those in
command couldn’t make up their minds as to where to send them.
With
14 federal agencies involved with what was supposed to be a coordinated
relief effort, the right hand barely knew what the left was doing. The head
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown (who has
since resigned), and the director of the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS), Michael Chertoff, were unaware that there were 20,000 languishing
and dying in the convention center, so they were ignored by the relief
drivers. Louis Martin Sr., a refugee at the site stated, "The trucks
kept passing us up, they just kept going further east."
Members
of the police force became overwhelmed by the situation. Up to one-third
resigned. When a woman asked a cop for help, he flatly refused her and
declared, "It’s every man for himself." The New Orleans police adopted a siege mentality, took over a
hotel, commandeered people’s vehicles, and stole food and necessities
themselves. Two officers
committed
suicide out of despair over the loss of their families and homes.
With
huge numbers of National Guard troops waging war against Iraq, the
personnel stateside were stretched to the limit, and the Bush
administration stubbornly refused to recall any combatants to aid in relief
efforts. Likewise, Louisiana’s National Guard is the only state unit with
amphibious equipment, which was indispensable in this case, and all of that
was in
Iraq.
It was only late in Week Two that some Gulf Coast soldiers were allowed to
return from the Middle East and reunite with their families.
The
30,000 federal troops promised did not arrive until the end of the first
week of the crisis. It took two days before a hospital ship finally set
sail from Baltimore.
The
Rev. Al Sharpton pointed out the disparities between the haves and
have-nots when he compared last year’s experience of Hurricane Ivan in
Florida, where a largely white, middle-class area was affected. There, supplies and personnel were
prepositioned, and relief agencies had no problem moving in quickly and
efficiently.
Insufficient equipment for the job
The
three gaping holes in the levees urgently required closing up, so that the
pumps could begin expelling the floodwaters. However, the day after the
levees broke, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) was forced to give
up attempts to drop giant sandbags and
concrete
blocks from helicopters into the 300-foot breach on the 17th Street Canal
because additional equipment needed to complete the task had not arrived.
They
lacked 250 slings for holding the materials, which were still sitting at
the Baton Rouge airport. Medical
teams wandered for days trying to find nonexistent triage centers that had
not been placed in readiness. The New York Times reported that the USS
Batten hospital ship had been anchored in the Gulf all along, holding
100,000 gallons of fresh drinking water, but it was not deployed in the
crucial stages of the crisis.
FEMA
blocked aid workers from giving assistance. Red Cross spokesperson Ryland
Dodge stated that the reason they had not been in New Orleans when Katrina struck
was because DHS officials thought their presence would keep people from
evacuating!
When
Wal-Mart attempted to deliver basic supplies, they were turned away.
Likewise, when the Coast Guard tried to bring in 10,000 gallons of diesel
fuel, FEMA prevented them. FEMA also cut the local communication lines,
leaving city officials without telephone service. Scores of local
volunteers who know their own towns and neighborhoods were also frustrated
in their
attempts
to help.
After
seeing what a mess the United States was in, more than 100 countries
offered aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The State Department
readily accepted help from the UN and cash donations from about 16 nations.
They even took $1 million from Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries on
earth, as well as $25,000 from tsunami-devastated Sri Lanka.
Gifts
of crude oil were also given. The European Union released 2 million barrels
of petroleum per day from strategic reserves, and Kuwait gave $500 million
worth of oil. U.S. officials also accepted equipment such as cargo and
troop transports, which were not available because they were being used in
Iraq.
Assistance
in the form of other technical support, personnel, or supplies was often
not taken advantage of, however. The tiny nation of Cuba offered to send
1600 doctors with specially equipped medical backpacks. Their offer was
rebuffed. The U.S. government’s hostility to the revolutionary and
humanitarian policies of that country was the sole reason.
President
Hugo Chavez exhibited Venezuela’s generosity when he offered 1 million
gallons of free gasoline to be distributed from its nationally-owned Citgo
filling stations. He also extended assistance in the way of
water-purification plants, rescue volunteers, and 50 tons of canned food
and water.
However,
instead of giving the fuel straight from the pumps directly to storm
victims, the U.S. insisted that it be sold on the market. Obviously, they
did not want to set a bad precedent for the greedy North American oil
monopolies, who cannot stand any action that threatens their super-profits.
A police state
To
draw attention away from the gross default in responsibility on the part of
the Bush Administration and FEMA, the corporate media chose to focus on the
looting. Although there was some opportunistic grabbing of TV sets, guns,
and the like, most people were acting out of dire need and took basic
necessities such as food, juice, diapers, medication, and toiletries so
they could care for themselves and their families—a fact that was acknowledged
by many reporters on the scene.
President
Bush set forth a policy of "zero tolerance" for looting. Governor
Blanco mercilessly ordered, "Shoot to kill!" She and Mayor Nagin
took Louisiana National Guard troops and police officers off vital search-and-rescue
missions to protect private property and restore law and order, thus
costing even more lives by slowing down the rescue effort.
One-third
of the National Guard troops that were deployed from neighboring states
were military police, indicating how much more the government values
private property over human lives. New Orleans looked like a war zone, with
humvees and tanks patrolling the streets and soldiers marching in formation
as if they were occupying Baghdad rather than conducting disaster relief.
Instead
of using gentle means to persuade people to evacuate New Orleans, by
educating them about the health and safety dangers, the chief of police
threatened to withhold food and water, thereby starving people out. While
sitting on his front porch, a man had a gun put to his head, and in tears
he related to the press how he was terrified the soldiers were going to
shoot him.
The
administration could not bear the truth being told. During Week Two of the
disaster, as national disgust with the situation increased and the death
toll rose, FEMA began rejecting requests from journalists to ride in rescue
boats, and they were told not to photograph the decomposing corpses
floating in the water. National Guard troops aimed their weapons at
reporters if they digressed from the restrictions. As one journalist put
it, "The First Amendment sank with the city."
New Orleans flood defenses inadequate
A
half million people have been displaced from New Orleans—a tragedy that
could have been avoided if proper attention had been paid to maintaining
the city’s decaying flood-control system. Over two centuries ago, the
French Quarter, the historic center of the city, was built on high ground.
As a result of steadily pumping out ground water, the delta subsided over time
and the city sank lower as the water built up around it, hence the
"bowl" much of New Orleans sits in that puts it below sea level.
As
settlement progressed, people struggled to halt the periodic natural
flooding of the Mississippi River, so an elaborate network, 1200 miles in
length, of earthen, concrete, and steel levees, flood walls, and pumps was
constructed in the 20th century to hold back the waters of the river, lake,
and sea.
The
aging levees have been sinking and in need of shoring up for decades,
barely able to endure a Category 3 hurricane, let alone one of Katrina’s
magnitude. Because the storm veered off toward the east, the city was
luckily spared deadly storm surges—this time.
Louisiana
Congress members have pleaded for years for adequate funds, warning of the
hazards. At its last budget request from Congress, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers (USACE) fell $71 million short of what it needed to repair the
levees. The money went instead to the Department of Homeland Security and
the war in Iraq.
The
New Orleans flood-control system has always been chronically
under-financed. To withstand a Category 5 hurricane, $2.5 billion would
have been needed to upgrade it. Despite numerous caveats that the "Big
One" was inevitable and if it came the levees would be topped by a
storm surge, the Bush administration refused further monies. It claimed
that the Corps’s "pork-barrel spending" had to be curtailed.
George
Bush lied when he said, "I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach
of the levees." As Senator Mary Landrieu (D, La.) pointed out,
"Everybody anticipated the breach of the levee, Mr. President,
including computer simulations in which this administration
participated."
Environmental consequences of over-engineering
For
years, ecologists have been critical of the Corps’s misguided flood-control
efforts. The existing Louisiana shoreline is a result of the deposition of
Mississippi River sediments over 6000 years and action by the waters of the
Gulf of Mexico. An important component of the coast is the 6.5 million
acres of wetlands (40 percent of the nation’s marsh ecosystem).
The
Louisiana bayous play an indispensable role in filtering out pollutants and
limiting storm
destruction.
Plus, they provide habitats for many species of fish, waterfowl, migratory
birds, and songbirds as well as a nursery for shellfish larvae important to
the seafood industry.
For
200 years, humans have been trying to reign in the "Big Muddy."
The thoughtless construction of canals and shipping channels, largely for
the benefit of the oil industry, has greatly impeded the natural process of
the river overflowing its banks every spring and
depositing
tons of sediment and nutrients required to maintain the marshes.
Since
the 1930s, a million acres of wetlands have disappeared (at the rate of a
football field every half hour), thereby diminishing a natural buffer
against hurricanes and other storms that routinely pummel the region. Urban
sprawl has contributed to the problem. Every four miles of wetlands can
absorb enough water to reduce the height of a storm surge by one foot.
There is wisdom in conserving them.
At
Biloxi, Miss., the salt marshes have been replaced by floating casinos,
which, as we have seen, do not make for good storm barriers. All of them
were destroyed by the surge, which swept over the coast.
The
National Wildlife Federation has been campaigning for the "Greening of
the Corps," to get them to use their powers for good instead of evil
by conducting restoration projects to save the wetlands. The plan, named
Coast 2050, was launched by a broad coalition of environmentalists, fisher
folk, sportspeople, businesses, and politicians. Although the project had
been making some progress, it had fallen short of funds. Once again, the
federal government is to blame for the lack of money by reducing the
Corps’s marsh restoration budget from $14 to $2 billion.
A toxic brew
There
are 66 chemical plants and petroleum refineries in the 10 Louisiana
parishes hardest hit by Katrina.
The area is referred to as "Cancer Alley" and is populated
by many poor people who have been afflicted with various environmental
illnesses over the years.
Many
of these facilities were breached by the floodwaters, causing a poisonous soup
to be released. Dead rats were seen
floating in the water.
Taking
samples in Week Two, the EPA found 100 different chemicals present in New
Orleans flood water and reported that lead levels were 10 times higher than
what is safe. Included are PCBs, hormone-disrupting chemicals that alter
fetal development in animals and humans in such a way that fertility is
affected.
In
Mississippi, there are nearly 400 chemical sites located in the counties
declared disaster areas. A spokeswoman for the Sierra Club at Oceans
Springs, Miss., stated that at least five major chemical factories were
flooded by the storm surge.
Near
St. Louis Bay, the DuPont plant sustained extensive damage from high winds
and flooding. It is among 290 places in the four Gulf States that produce
dioxins, deadly chemicals that cause cancer and function as hormone
disrupters. Nearly 2000 lawsuits
are
pending against the plant, and a jury recently awarded $14 million to a
local oyster fisherman with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.
Company
officials and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality claim
none of the toxins escaped. However, people exposed to contaminated waters
have already been experiencing severe inflammation and lesions of the skin.
In
New Orleans, the Agriculture Street Landfill, located next to the Lower
Ninth Ward and in the process of being cleaned up before the storm hit, was
inundated. Remaining toxins could easily leach out of the ground from the
95-acre Superfund site. There are also two toxic dumpsites in Mississippi
that were damaged and could be leaking heavy metals and other
carcinogens.
The
engineers responsible for pumping the floodwater back into Lake
Pontchartrain claim it is impossible to filter out the sewage and toxins.
Plus, the EPA has exempted them from having to do so. Therefore, all of
that poisonous gunk will enter the Pontchartrain Basin
ecosystem.
Whatever dangerous toxins are present will settle and concentrate in the
layers of sediment and resurface later through the food chain.
During
the storm, several oil storage tanks burst open, spilling 5.4 million
gallons of crude oil. The U.S. Coast Guard counted six major spills and
other smaller incidents south of New Orleans and along the Louisiana coast
that came from storage facilities owned by Chevron, Royal Dutch/Shell, and
Murphy Oil. At Meraux, La., oil
sludge has spread across an area
of
three square miles. Because it is sinking into the ground faster than
clean-up can occur, 4000 homes will have to be razed and two to three feet of
soil removed before the land is fit for rehabilitation.
The
estimated volume of the spills is about half that of the Exxon Valdez,
which killed huge numbers of wildlife, when it was dumped into Prince
William Sound on the Alaskan coastline in 1989. That crude is now making
its way back up through the sand on the shoreline. It is safe to assume
that the consequences for the ecology of the Gulf Coast will last decades
into
the future.
Katrina a product of global warming
With
greenhouse gas concentrations rising, earth’s atmosphere and oceans have
been steadily warming. Hurricanes
rely on huge pools of warm surface waters in which to grow and expand. When
the waters of the Gulf of Mexico reach a temperature of 80 degrees
Fahrenheit,
they generate tremendous power for storms like Katrina.
Climatologist
Kerry Emanuel recently published a study in Nature magazine, in which he
demonstrated that tropical storms, hurricanes, and typhoons have doubled in
frequency and increased in duration and intensity by 50 percent since 1970.
He was a greenhouse skeptic,
who
now believes that the Atlantic storm record fits into a larger pattern of
unusual weather around the globe, which indicates climate change.
As
seawater warms, it expands. This thermal expansion is what contributed to
the volume of the 28-foot storm surge that flattened the houses in Pass
Christian, Miss. In addition, as the planet’s ice sheets melt, sea levels
are rising. This means more shoreline erosion and further imperilment of
coastal populations.
Instead
of halting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by
switching to clean wind and solar energy to power industry and transport,
the Bush administration, in collusion with the Energy Giants, is hell bent
on the continued use of fossil fuels.
This insane reliance upon deadly hydrocarbons is rushing us all down
the path of destruction in spite of what the rest of the world thinks or
desires. Yet they persist, because under capitalism it’s "Profits
first and human and environmental needs be damned!"
A million lose their jobs
According
to The New York Times financial pages, a million workers in eight Louisiana
parishes and four Mississippi counties were thrown out of work by Hurricane
Katrina. The majority of the working population that has been dispersed is
less skilled than in other parts of the country. Fewer than 43 percent of
adults from the Gulf Coast region are college educated, and employers in
other states are using that as an excuse not to hire people.
Some
employers have extended pay to their employees—but not all. UPS granted
wages retroactive to Aug. 29, but whatever pay has been extended will run
out long before people can be taken back. For instance, the military contractor
Northrop Grumman stopped paying its 19,000 workers at the end of Week Two.
Many skilled construction workers want to return
home
to help in rebuilding their communities. In the meantime, they need public
assistance in order to survive.
There
is only one solution to the problem. Until people who cannot find temporary
work are permanently settled either back in the Gulf region or elsewhere,
they should be given full unemployment benefits at union scale along with
food stamps, so they can feed, shelter, and clothe their families. That
includes those workers who were chronically unemployed before
the
storm struck.
Free
child care should be provided to all working parents as well as free
medical care for all refugees and psychological counseling for those
traumatized by the storm.
Some
950 Jamaicans were employed at Biloxi casinos on guest worker visas and
nine-month contracts, which had not yet expired. Without any income and
consequently any money for plane fare, they have been unable to return to
their home island. Also there are approximately 145,000 Mexican citizens
who were reported missing in the storm. Their government has
been
trying to locate them through two temporary consulates set up in Mobile and
Baton Rouge.
Another
significant group of Latino workers are the Hondurans, most of whom are
still in Louisiana. They fear using the shelters there because of the
border patrol being active in the disaster area. Many only stay to sleep at
night and leave early in the morning to avoid being caught without papers,
and with all the destruction, who has papers?
The
union movement must come to their defense and demand that they be given the
same assistance as citizen refugees and displaced citizens and that the INS
must stop harassing them.
Rebuilding New Orleans — how and for
whom? In exile in Baton Rouge, the
city’s well-heeled power brokers have been meeting late into the night to
plot New Orleans’ renaissance, with visions of football games and a
scaled-down Mardi Gras dancing in their heads. They have even gone on
flights of fancy over putting in a bid for one of the 2008 presidential
nominating
conventions. The tourist industry brings in $7-8 billion annually, and they
cannot afford to lose a penny of those revenues.
With
the French Quarter, the main attraction, having suffered very little flood
damage, the major players hope to have it and the historic warehouse
district reopened in 90 days. While the effort would reemploy over 120,000
workers, business leaders are moving ahead without the least thought as to
how to provide housing for workers, since many lived in the lowest-lying,
most heavily flooded, most polluted sectors of the city.
Representative
Richard Baker of Baton Rouge (R-La.) was jubilant over the destruction of
poor people’s homes when he told lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up
public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did it." As
far as the rulers are concerned, the workers of the region can live in
mobile homes, while Trent Lott was assured by President Bush that his
rebuilt
house in Mobile, Ala., would be "fantastic" and restored to its
former palatial splendor.
On
the other hand, the Community Labor United coalition has demanded that a
committee made up of evacuees "oversee FEMA, the Red Cross and other
organizations collecting resources on behalf of our people. … We are
calling for evacuees from our community to actively participate in the
rebuilding of New Orleans."
Grassroots
organizations are absolutely right to claim control over the reconstruction
funds. Otherwise, the money will get into the hands of ambitious
developers, who will put up more luxury accommodations and ice the city’s
poor out of a decent, affordable place to live
while
keeping wages and taxes low.
Rebuilding
workers’ housing and much needed schools and hospitals that were previously
in a state of dilapidation, while putting people back to work in the
process, are what is really needed.
Congress
voted over $62 billion for relief and rebuilding efforts, and is expected to
open its purse even wider, with aid climbing to over $100 billion. Unfortunately, it took no time for
lobbyists to be falling all over one another, so that their clients could
belly up to the reconstruction buffet and chow down. Washington favor
seeker James Albertine gleefully exclaimed, "They are throwing money
out, they are shoveling it out the door!"
Familiar
names such as Halliburton and Bechtel have already received no-bid
contracts to rebuild Gulf naval bases, repair flood-control systems, and erect
housing. The situation is already descending into the same mire of
cronyism, abuses, and waste as exists in the Iraq War.
On
Sept. 9, President Bush signed an executive order allowing federal
contractors to underpay workers on rebuilding projects. This is in
violation of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires that at least the
prevailing wage of an area be paid. The trade-union movement must unite to
demand that all workers be paid at union scale on all reconstruction
efforts.
Congress
hopes to exploit the disaster to drive through more of its neo-con agenda
by instituting student vouchers for private school tuition with the goal of
undermining school desegregation in particular and public education in
general. They want to provide more lucrative tax credits for businesses and
investors and scale back industry and environmental
regulations.
House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) complained about the FEMA rule that
forbids funds to churches. For
reactionary ideological reasons, they would like to see a way to skirt that
too.
While
the U.S. government does not hesitate to spend trillions on a war for oil
in Iraq, causing the deaths of thousands on both sides, it could not and
would not take the necessary measures to protect the people of the Gulf
Coast from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Nor, due to its own
criminal neglect, could it or would it get the lead out and help them after
the
disaster occurred.
Only
a socialist society based on a democratically run, planned economy that
puts human and planetary needs before profits could have prevented such a
catastrophe. Similar future disasters, because of global warming and
climate change, are sure to occur.
It is essential for the sake of human survival that the working
people of this country make a fundamental
change
in how our society runs and in whose interests it operates. We now have no
other choice.
In
the meantime, working people must come to the aid of the Katrina refugees and
defend their right to jobs, economic aid, decent housing, health care,
child care, and other vital social services. By expressing our solidarity,
we can support their struggle to refashion their lives for the better and
do so free of racial discrimination, political corruption, and bureaucratic
obstacles.
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