Today is the last day of hurricane season. We dodged another one.
Not to jinx us or anything, but if you look at the historical record, you have (recent memory now) Camille in '69, Frederick in '78, Elena in '86, Georges in '98, and Katrina in '05. God willing, our next direct hit named storm should be three to eight years away.
Which will be just enough time for a lot of the people who survived Katrina to leave, and a new crop of storm rookies to stand in front of a camera and brag about how they're not leaving. They'll be standing in front of a home that has been rebuilt and sold three different times before they got it, and tell everyone that "This house survived Katrina, we'll be fine."
At least I KNOW mine did. And thus the age old question rears its head again. Do I evacuate?
This answer changes all the time, but sitting comfortably at my desk on 11/30/07 at 8 AM, drinking my coffee and watching the kids get ready for school, I'd say that yes, I'd evacuate for a Cat 3 storm or higher. Not because I fear for my safety in my home. There is nothing I can do once the storm starts if, say, the roof peels away again or a tree takes out the window. I may as well be somewhere with electricity and drinkable water and air conditioning.
Now, if the budget office grants my request for a release of capital funds for the purchase of generators, now we're discussing an entirely different set of circumstances. But that budget meeting won't occur until spring of '08.
And lucky for me, neither will any discussion of evacuation.
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3 comments:
This isn't the kind of question that effects me anymore... but I thought I'd insert my two cents anyway.
It's the immediate after-effects of the storm that I simply can't deal with. The heat, the lack of power, no water, confusion, mess to clean up... all lasting (even best case scenario) at least a couple of days. Katrina... or worse... I can't even imagine doing that again.
You're right about one thing, though... the actual "storm" isn't that hard to weather. Even Katrina kept you so busy and wound up, you didn't have time to panic or freak out. At least I didn't. If you aren't going to drowned in the surge, then sticking it out is possible.
For those that don't know anything about hurricanes on a "first-hand" basis... PREPARATION is the secret to making it or not. I would be willing to venture that those who survived Katrina, regardless of circumstances (like me) learned an awful lot about what they need to do BEFORE the storm, and just as importantly, DURING the storm.
You can read the books and the web sites, you can talk to neighbors and friends... but it is the little things that get you. The tiny little imponderables that sneak up and bite you in the ass.
Like the fact that 5-gallon buckets of pure, fresh drinking water (6 of them) FLOAT in a flood, as do propane tanks and gas cans (not to mention Dodge Dakotas). Like the fact that the loss of a vehicle renders nearly everyone's "emergency plan" for charging their cell phones in the car useless. Like where to shower after 5 days of 98+ temps and long, hard days of cleaning and rebuilding. Like WHAT to cook for a family of 5 after 5 days of no power... not to mention HOW to do it when your fuel runs out on the fifth day.
Man... am I glad I moved.
Just a small correction, Elena was in 1985 and that was a wake up call, go to bed when it's hitting Florida and get woken up by your father in the middle of the night to move into the hallway because it is now hitting you.
I feel your pain Titus and I suppose I can understand you not wanting to live here anymore, but for me this is home and has been for a long time. I lived in the northeast for several years and dealing with the occasional hurricane is alot easier for me than the yearly ice storms of the northeast and I couldn't wait to get out of there. I miss the snow skiing and the change of the seasons but little else. I have lived around the world and have always found some redeeming quality to every place I have been. Yes even Washington DC and Las Vegas, not much but a little.
We have made it through another hurricane season and hopefully we will again for at least another couple of seasons, at least until we rebuild and figure out where we went wrong just so we can do it all over again HEHE.
Hey, I wasn't "complaining" so much as being serious... hear me out here.
Go to DHS, or the National Weather Service websites, or the National Hurrican Center pages, and read what they have on the "Hurricane Perparedness" lists... barely touches the surface of what people REALLY need to have ready.
Now, I understand that Katrinas and Camilles are "once-in-a-generation" events in the general scheme of things... but who among US is going to ever be unprepared again? Think of the literally hundreds of little items and ideas that we have in our heads about how to prepare and get ready that the people in southern California could have used after the wildfires this month? Or the cyclones in SE Asia? Or a hypothetical earthquake in Alaska or San Francisco?
My god, boys... we should write a BOOK!!!
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