CHARLOTTE, NC vs FLORENCE - EXTREME FLOODING THIS WEEKEND (RED CROSS & FEMA)

CHARLOTTE, NC vs HURRICANE FLORENCE - RISK OF EXTREME FLOODING THIS WEEKEND:

EMERGENCY SHELTERS & MEALS FOR EVACUEES, ELDERLY/ DISABLED (RED CROSS & FEMA).

FLORENCE DOWNGRADES TO CATEGORY 2 BUT STILL VERY DANGEROUS.

PREPARE & CONTINUE TO PRAY (PSALM 91).


Post Sources: Charlotte Observer, Fox News, Youtube


***** Charlotte at ‘extreme’ risk for flooding this weekend


Friday, 8:35 a.m. There’s little deviation in the National Hurricane Center’s 8 a.m. track for Florence, which shows the storm is expected to move south and west across South Carolina through Saturday before turning north and west into North Carolina.

The storm is expected to cross the Columbia, S.C. region on Saturday. Charlotte is in line for 10 to 15 inches of rain and potential tropical storm-force winds, the National Hurricane Center predicts.

Friday, 8 a.m.

The National Weather Service’s Greer, S.C. office is predicting Charlotte will receive a massive deluge this weekend as Florence moves inland. That’s elevated the risk for flooding to “extreme” in Charlotte and the surrounding counties for Saturday and Sunday.

A flash flood watch will be in effect this weekend for most of the region. The Charlotte area could receive a foot or more of rain, the weather service is predicting.

Florence’s 5 a.m. track from the National Hurricane Center shows the storm moving across Columbia, S.C. on Saturday afternoon, before turning northwest and heading for North Carolina. That would bring it near the Charlotte region as a tropical storm or tropical depression, dumping heavy rain before moving into Tennessee and Virginia early Monday.

Florence drops to Cat 1, but still ‘life-threatening’

Thursday, 11 p.m.: Florence was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane but was delivering “life-threatening storm surge” along the NC coast, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. Florence had 90 mph winds, and the “threat of freshwater flooding will increase” in the days ahead, according to the advisory. The storm was about 60 miles east of Wilmington.

Islamic Center opens doors to evacuees

Thursday, 9:24 p.m.: The Islamic Center of Charlotte, 1700 Progress Lane, tweeted that it is partnering with United Muslim Relief to provide fresh water and basic aid packs to evacuees and is “opening our doors as a shelter ... to help those in need.“

Charlotte braces for more rain than expected

Thursday, 8:21 p.m.: Charlotte’s airport can expect 10.83 inches of rain during Florence, according to the latest projected rainfall totals from the National Weather Service office in Greer, S.C. That’s up significantly from Wednesday’s NWS estimate of 6.3 inches.

Areas to the south and east of Charlotte could see even more rain and flooding — 14.5 inches in Monroe, 13.67 inches in Concord, 14.7 inches in Albemarle and 18.46 inches in Anson County, said meteorologist Doug Outlaw of the National Weather Service in Greer, S.C.

Higher amounts also are forecast for cities to the west of Charlotte, with Gastonia at 9.64 inches, Lincolnton 8.78 inches and Shelby 6.8 inches.

The mountains should see far smaller amounts, according to Outlaw, with only 3.54 inches anticipated in Asheville.

Government offices to close at noon Friday

Thursday, 5:03 p.m.: City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County government offices will close at noon Friday ahead of the storm, the city and county announced in a joint news release.

CharMeck 311 and 911 emergency services will remain active. CharMeck 311 will operate from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Storm emergency updates: http://charlottenc.gov/emergency/Pages/default.aspx .

Volunteers respond to call to deliver meals to shut-ins

Thursday, 4:52 p.m.: Friendship Trays, the nonprofit that provides meals for shut-ins, the elderly and people who can’t cook for themselves, was overwhelmed with help Thursday after putting out word on social media that they needed volunteer drivers, said executive director Lucy Carter Bush. So many people stepped up, they couldn’t answer all the messages.

“It was wild,” she said. “We got what we needed and then some.”

Friendship Trays was delivering both meals and emergency packs with canned goods, to make sure their clients could get through the weekend.

Monday is still up in the air, Bush said. Since no one knows how conditions will develop over the weekend, she doesn’t yet know if they’ll be able to make deliveries. If they can, they will need more volunteers, she said.

They’ll post updates on the website, www.friendships.org, and through a recording on their phone line, 704-333-9229.

Mecklenburg County jail inmates allowed free calls

Thursday, 4:33 p.m.: Sheriff Irwin Carmichael approved a request from Global Tel Link Inc. to offer inmates two free 5-minute phone calls per day Thursday through Saturday.

“We know how important it is to get reassurances from loved ones that they are taking the necessary steps to prepare,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

Plenty of space at Red Cross shelters

Thursday, 4 p.m.: The Observer visited each of the Charlotte area’s five Red Cross shelters on Thursday, and all five had plenty of space available.

The busiest, at East Mecklenburg High School, had only about a quarter of its beds occupied at midday. Several shelters were almost empty Thursday.

All of the shelters accept pets, and by 4 p.m. Thursday, the North Mecklenburg High shelter was housing two dogs, two cats and a bearded dragon.

Islamic Center opens doors to evacuees

Thursday, 9:24 p.m.: The Islamic Center of Charlotte, 1700 Progress Lane, tweeted that it is partnering with United Muslim Relief to provide fresh water and basic aid packs to evacuees and is “opening our doors as a shelter ... to help those in need.“

CharMeck 311 and 911 emergency services will remain active. CharMeck 311 will operate from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Storm emergency updates: http://charlottenc.gov/emergency/Pages/default.aspx .

METRO ACCESS PROBLEMS (WMATA) - ARE THERE ANY IMPROVEMENTS YET?

METRO ACCESS PROBLEMS (WMATA) - ARE THERE ANY IMPROVEMENTS YET?

IS THE COMPANY STILL PLAGUED WITH RARE ON-TIME DISABLED PASSENGER PICK UPS, ACCIDENTS AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT ISSUES?


IS SUCH CHAOS THE RESULT OF USING PRIVATE CONTRACTORS WHO ARE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY??


Sources: WTOP, Washington Post


****** MetroAccess riders, drivers join forces to voice their complaints


Disabled riders and MetroAccess drivers have joined hands to complain about the transit service that they say could use a lot of improvement.

Both riders and drivers complain that they are victimized by poor service, and they gathered together at Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church on Friday to air their complaints.

“It’s totally unreliable, totally unreliable … I have been abandoned more times than you can imagine,” says Gloria Jones Swieringa of Fort Washington, who is blind.

Unionized drivers, who are members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, say that dispatchers don’t welcome their input, that the policy of collecting fares outside the vehicle is unsafe and low driver pay produces high turnover rates.

“We need to make changes as far as the drivers, clients, the dispatchers, it needs to be a better service,” says Genoa Greene, a MetroAccess driver for the past eight years.

The complaints have drawn the attention of Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker.

“[I’m] very much concerned,” he says. “It was part of our budget hearing and so we want to hear what the problem is. I know a lot about people with disabilities trying to get back and forth so it’s a big concern of mine.”

METRO ACCESS - PARATRANSIT REMAINS BROKEN IN DC (GREASED PALMS)

METRO ACCESS - PARATRANSIT REMAINS BROKEN IN DC:

YET THE PROGRAM COLLECTS MORE FEDERAL FUNDS.

WHICH POLITICIANS' PALMS ARE BEING GREASED??

WHY NOT REPLACE CONTRACTORS WITH UBER & LYFT DRIVERS?

METRO ACCESS GROWING PROBLEMS INCLUDE.......

POLITICALLY-RIGGED CONTRACTS,
POOR MANAGEMENT,
HORRIBLE PERFORMANCE LEVELS,
SEVERE RETALIATION AGAINST WHISTLE BLOWERS,
EXTREME DISORGANIZATION,
RARE ON-TIME PICK-UPS,
DISABLED PASSENGERS FORCED TO RIDE FOR HOURS,
NEPOTISM,
DISPATCHERS DON'T KNOW WHERE DRIVERS ARE,
POWER STRUGGLES,
SEXUAL HARASSMENT,
HOTBED FOR SINGLE WOMEN LOOKING FOR SUGAR DADDIES IN THE WORKPLACE.


Sources: Washington Post, WTOP, Youtube


******* How problems with MetroAccess have left D.C.’s most vulnerable commuters stranded


Users of Metro’s service for the elderly and people with disabilities say they have recently endured hours-long waits for rides, spent entire afternoons in vans traveling nonsensical routes and watched as fellow riders soiled themselves on unreasonably long trips.

The routes that MetroAccess drivers must follow are not only unnecessarily long, but sometimes also take them in the opposite directions from their destinations, say customers, including some who are blind, medically fragile or use wheelchairs. One former customer said her doctor recommended she stop using the service to get to her lung cancer treatments because it was too stressful.

For MetroAccess’s 43,000 registered customers, the problems began last September with a sudden, seven-point drop in on-time performance. The share of excessively late trips nearly tripled from the month before. Metro officials have blamed soaring numbers of late and missed trips on a driver shortage.

“I feel like because I have a disability, I’m being treated like less than everyone else,” said Shannon Minnick, 46, who is quadriplegic and uses a wheelchair.

Minnick, of Silver Spring, said she recently missed a doctor’s appointment after spending more than 2½ hours in a MetroAccess van for what is typically a 25-minute ride. On another recent trip, a driver taking her home from Rockville first picked up someone in Kensington, five minutes from her home, and then drove another passenger to north Silver Spring before heading south again to drop her off.

Nancy Childress, 63, of West Springfield, Va., recalled how one MetroAccess trip took so long this winter that another passenger soiled herself after being in the van for two to three hours.

“She couldn’t help it,” said Childress, who has trouble walking and balancing from being hit by a car two decades ago.

The driver disinfected the van, and they went on their way, Childress said.

Heidi Case, a disability advocate, said she knew a woman who almost called the police, frantic that she hadn’t heard from her severely disabled daughter who had been stuck in a van for more than two hours.

Those are the kinds of “disastrous things that are happening,” Case said. “It is a significant quality-of-life change.”

On-time performance remains near its lowest level since at least mid-2013. In April, 88 percent of customers were picked up on time — better than the 83 percent in the fall but still below Metro’s minimum target of 92 percent.

By April, the number of trips deemed “excessively late” — more than 20 minutes past the half-hour pickup window — had nearly doubled since last summer, from about 2,400 a month to 4,700. Incidents in which the driver never showed also doubled to almost 1,500 in April.

The number of botched and excessively late trips make up a relatively small portion — about 3 to 4 percent — of MetroAccess’s overall service. But with about 8,000 trips a day, the percentages mask thousands of missed appointments, late arrivals at work and frustrated customers who rely on the service to live independently.

While high driver turnover has been a problem in the paratransit industry for decades, Metro officials say the growth in services such as Uber and Lyft has further cut into the driver pool. The shortage worsened just as ridership was picking up from the summer lull, Metro officials said, even though the agency’s own data shows usage actually dropped by 9,500 passengers between August and October.

Christian Kent, Metro’s assistant general manager for access services, said contractors were down about 100 drivers in September, leaving the companies 10 percent short of the 1,000 needed for full service. As the driver shortage increased throughout the fall, Kent said, on-time performance couldn’t recover, even in months when ridership dropped.

“The contractors experienced a more competitive driver market than they have had to deal with in the past, and the number of people who applied for jobs with MetroAccess was lower than we’ve seen in the past,” Kent said.

Transit agencies are required to provide paratransit service under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and MetroAccess is the fifth-largest such program in the country. Usage has more than doubled in the past 14 years, from just under a million trips in 2003 to more than 2 million trips. It is the agency’s fastest-growing and most expensive service.

Metro spends about $100 million annually to provide Metro¬Access service via five contractors. The transit agency subsidizes 92 percent of the costs, with the rest covered by fare revenue.

Rides cost two times the equivalent bus or rail fare, with a maximum $6.50, for a trip that costs the agency an average of $50.

Customers must make a reservation a day in advance and are given a 30-minute pickup window. As a ride-sharing service, there are typically multiple passengers per van.

Many of those who rely on MetroAccess cannot easily navigate Metro or afford taxis or ride-hailing services.

Kent said a trip is considered late if it is even one minute outside the 30-minute pickup window.

Just because on-time performance dropped, he said, that doesn’t mean “that suddenly every trip is egregiously late.”

Contributing to the problem are the computer-generated routes that drivers are required to follow — even if they don’t make sense in terms of geography or time.

Documents obtained through a public records request show that MetroAccess contractors began “dropping” routes at a precipitous clip last August, meaning the companies didn’t have enough drivers to accept all the trips that the computer assigned them.

During some months last fall, as many as 1,337 trips had to be reassigned among available drivers.

Fewer drivers means those on hand must cover larger areas and have more trips tacked on to their routes, Kent said. Accommodating these “add-on” trips causes the circuitous routes that customers have complained about.

Steve Polkinghorn, of Burke, Va., said his commute home from his job in Arlington County used to rarely exceed 90 minutes. Now it can take more than two hours. That’s because the drivers who pick him up at his Crystal City office often head into the District to pick up another passenger before turning around and slogging through traffic back to Northern Virginia to take him home.

“Why am I driving due north when I live due south?” said Polkinghorn, who has multiple sclerosis.

Cindy LaBon, who is blind, said out-of-the-way routes have left her and her guide dog stuck in a van up to three hours.

In the fall, LaBon said, a fellow passenger who was mentally disabled began crying after the driver passed her street to drop off someone else miles way. The woman had already been in the van for three hours on a trip from Lanham to Silver Spring.

Two weeks ago, LaBon said, she spent more than two hours trying to get from Burtonsville to Gaithersburg — both in Montgomery County — in a van that first took her to Northwest Washington.

“They don’t know geography,” LaBon, 68, said of whoever sets the drivers’ routes. “They don’t even put trips [together] going in the same direction.”

While the computer suggests three options, staff members in the scheduling center can override the software, Kent said.

“On days when we have surging ridership and depleted drivers to route, sometimes the dispatchers don’t have an ideal choice coming out of the computer,” Kent said. “We are very much aware of the issue.”

Metro has fined the three companies that provide drivers — Transdev, First Transit and Diamond Transportation — almost $1 million each in contract “damages” since the fall.

But Metro officials say they’ve also cut the companies a financial break to help them hire more drivers. The agency has greatly reduced future financial penalties, in some cases by 90 percent, for six months, according to Metro. Transdev also has been allowed to use temporary drivers, a Metro spokeswoman said. And the agency recently agreed to pay the contractors “slightly” more so they could raise wages.

“It’s very difficult for them to put out the extra cash to pay drivers at a higher wage scale if, simultaneously, we’re taking the money back from them in damages,” Kent said.

Transdev, the company responsible for half of MetroAccess rides, blamed the sudden downturn on the difficulty of recruiting drivers, “given the current robust labor force and low unemployment rate.” The company said it had been fully staffed a year before the performance drop, but suddenly attrition rose and driver training classes shrank. Meanwhile, ridership increased in the fall just as back-to-school-and-work traffic jumped.

First Transit, which is responsible for 35 percent of Metro¬Access trips, said it faces the same problems attracting drivers. By fall, the company was short 35 to 50 drivers, spokesman Jay Brock said last month, and the workforce hadn’t fully recovered. Brock said the company is participating in job fairs, increasing its marketing and undertaking grass-roots efforts to attract new hires.

“We’re screening, interviewing, taking [applicants] through our background checks and trying to get them on the road and behind the wheel,” Brock said.

John Gray, acting project manager at MV Transportation, which manages the MetroAccess call center, directed reporters’ questions to Metro.

Kate Walden, a spokeswoman for Diamond Transportation, which provides 15 percent of MetroAccess trips, said driver shortages are occurring nationwide. She said the company is now “nearly fully staffed” for MetroAccess and is “aggressively recruiting to ensure we have a full complement of drivers this summer.”

A union representing paratransit drivers says Metro is letting contractors off the hook for poor service. A key problem, they say, remains the “poverty wages” drivers receive. The companies recently agreed to increase wages to at least $15 an hour, union officials said. For example, Transdev drivers who were making $13.85 an hour saw their wages increased to $16 an hour.

“You cannot operate a public service with a sweatshop employment model,” said Todd Brogan, a union organizer with Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1764 at a recent demonstration urging Metro to stop using contractors for paratransit.

[Transit service for elderly, people with disabilities sees sharp decline]

Kent said training classes are now full and efforts continue to hire more drivers to meet the growing demand. The agency said late Friday that they were fully staffed. Metro also recently began receiving 207 new vans to replace older ones and expand the fleet by 25 vehicles.

The five-year MetroAccess contract expires in June 2018, and the agency is putting the new one out for bid. The agency also is exploring ways to partner with Uber, Lyft and other transportation services to provide same-day paratransit service at a fraction of the cost.

Kent said MetroAccess will improve, even as the number of people needing it continues to grow.

“There’s really not a choice,” Kent said. “MetroAccess is our responsibility to our customers with disabilities. We must provide it under the ADA, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

CHICAGO BLACK YOUTH START "RACE WAR" FOR OBAMA (ATTACK WHITE DISABLED MAN)

4 CHICAGO BLACK YOUTH CREATE "RACE WAR" JUST AS OBAMA WANTS (ATTACK WHITE DISABLED MAN):

OBAMA WANTS TO GIVE INCOMING PRES TRUMP A RACE WAR TO SABOTAGE & DISTRACT TRUMP'S FIRST 100 DAYS.

DEMOCRATS ARE STILL TRYING TO DIVIDE AMERICA AND KILL MORE YOUNG BLACK MEN.

DEMOCRATS ARE ALSO ANGRY MANY BLACKS VOTED FOR TRUMP.


Sources: ABC News, Reason, Fox News Chicago


4 Black Chicago Youth Torture Disabled White Man.


Obama wants to create a RACE WAR for Trump as he leaves office.


***** Anti-White Hate Crime? Video Shows Black Teens Torturing Mentally Disabled White Kid
Be skeptical that Donald Trump's election has unleashed a wave of hate crimes, period.

Chicago police have arrested four teenagers for assaulting a mentally disabled young man with a knife, tying him up, and subjecting him to other abuses—all of which were livestreamed on Facebook.

The alleged perpetrators are black teens, and the victim is white. The police found the victim wandering Chicago's West Side on Tuesday. He was "in an obvious state of trauma," according to CBS Local. Authorities eventually calmed him down and identified him as the subject of the video.

The video itself lasts for 30 minutes, during which the victim—who is tied up, with his mouth taped shut—is abused in numerous ways. The perpetrators cut his hair with a knife until his head bleeds, flick cigarette ashes on him, and threaten him. They occasionally utter things like, "Fuck Donald Trump, fuck white people." At one point, the video recorder—a black woman whose name is easily identifiable—suggests putting the victim out of his misery.

It's these statements that have some segments of Twitter—including and especially the alt-right—wondering whether the incident counts as a hate crime. As I write this, #BLMKidnapping is trending on Facebook, in reference to the attack. Needless to say, that's hyperbole, based on the facts as they are currently known.

BuzzFeed News reported police were looking into the hate crime angle, but couldn't speculate at the moment:

Johnson said police were investigating if the incident was a hate crime, but so far he said there was no indication it was motivated by politics or race.

"Some of this is just stupidity," he said. "People just ranting about something they think might make a headline. We'll keep investigating, and we'll let the facts guide us on how this concludes."

Maybe the perpetrators have malice toward white people in their hearts. Maybe they're just deeply immature people who think hurting someone is funny. Maybe they're under the influence of drugs (someone is definitely smoking something). It really shouldn't matter: what they've done is reprehensible, regardless of the motive.

That's the problem with making hate crime determinations—in many cases, determining the precise factors that led a bad person to do something awful is no easy task. For example, BuzzFeed took a second look at 28 of the alleged "hateful incidents" the news outlet investigated in the wake of Trump's election. Reporters found few outright hoaxes, but the motives remained questionable in roughly a third of stories:

Other incidents happened as described — and were reasonably initially perceived as political — but the stories are a bit more complicated. A Southern Illinois University student who appeared in front of a Confederate flag in what appeared to be blackface later said it was a cosmetic mask, and the university said "we sometimes find that reports of incidents made via social media and elsewhere are not fully supported by the facts." The man arrested for scrawling "Black Bitch" on a Philadelphia woman's car is black.

Meanwhile the hoaxes, which were at the center of the conversation in late December, didn't surprise academics and journalists who study extremism and hate crimes.

"People will do things when there's a lot of attention paid to it, and hate crimes aren't any different. What I find interesting is how that is being politicized now," Brian Levin, a criminology professor and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told BuzzFeed News. Hate crimes, he said, spike after a catalytic event, and in that "cycle of publicity and retaliatory violence" there will be false reports.

As our catalog shows, there's little evidence of a wave of hoaxes. There has also not been the wave of violent assaults that some anticipated. (The FBI did disrupt one murderous terror plot just before the election, in which Kansas militia members sought to bomb Somali refugees.)

We ought to be a little skeptical of the Southern Poverty Law Center's contention that Trump's election has unleashed a wave of race-based harassment and hatred. But we should also be a little skeptical that a bunch of teenagers bullying a white man has anything, really, to do with Donald Trump. This was an inexcusable act of violence, no matter what was going through the perpetrators' heads.