Add new comment

I still think it's an interesting question that's not so straightforward, and would vary from context to context.

Thinking of prisons in the midst of events like these which have flooded, leaving the prisoners trapped inside their cells, or sweating without windows and air conditioner when the power goes out, and without water. Clearly the solutions is not to lobby for prisons to use solar panels and have more modern and "resilient" infrastructure, though it would be "more humane". Reading your comment you might be the one to have no qualms with intervening so that the power takes longer to come back, that's another possibility. Consider that usually rich neighborhoods get their power back first than the poor one's. Maybe you make it so that the rich don't get it back until the last neglected poor block gets it back. Or maybe you are working on a cruel hypothesis that prolonging the power outage for all is best.

The question is not so much one of the ethics or morals of it, each has their own,(in this site we assume or expect it be anarchist, but for nihilism it may n/a) but about a question of timing imposed by events. Will you campaign and organize so that the prisoners are well prepared and do not suffer as much when the storm comes? Will you act in the middle of the storm to help break them out? Will you wait until the prison is at the point of mutiny and riot to intervene? This hypothetical scenario is just an example.

With the huge commotion and distraction of storms, many things can be done before, during, and after, for more than just aid.
Supermarkets have food that could spoil and go to waste. Sometimes they don't come back to reopen and clean it out after days, employees trying not to retch as they mop up aisles of melted ice cream and rotten meat.

During big storms, everyone's holed up inside their homes for good reason, but is it possible that you may come up a better reason to be outside? When the power's out it's good for star gazing.