So hard to prove a negative.

[mom'sfolly]

Unfortunately, New Orleans was evacuated too late, didn't have a good plan for getting out people who didn't have access to cars, and didn't have much of a plan for evacuating nursing homes and hospitals. Many of those left behind didn't have cars, and there weren't nearly enough buses. The pumps for pumping out the city were also below the water line for any sort of flood, i.e. they would not work because the power would be cut.

On proving a negative...Its very sad that people can't be grateful that they were spared, appreciate the emergency services, and thank god that they were merely inconvenienced, not killed or left homeless. I think there is a special kind of selfishness at work when people think that they are more important than anyone else. Their need to stay in their home, or not slow down for an emergency worker is more important than the people they put in jeopardy. I think they have little concept of the world outside themselves as being real or in any way mattering. This is how they can ignore the flashing lights, ignore that staying in their home risks others and live their lives guilt-free and feeling blameless. If something happens, it is always someone else's fault.

 

[ECBW]

Did we forget earthquake Haiti 2010? Was there building code and enforcement?

Building design, engineering and regulation are for real.

Comparing the preparations for Katrina and Irene, two words: lessons learned.

 

[lishah2000]

For a time Irene was headed towards us in Florida. I went out and got supplies I couldn't really afford. Car ended up breaking down - more I couldn't afford. Made my plans for the animals and got some things ready around the house. (We are pretty experienced from Frances, Jeanne and Wilma - even had an Irene years ago).

While watching the storm hitting everyone in the north - I was thankful it didn't hit us and thankful it had weakened some before hitting. Kept those getting hit in my thoughts and prayers.

Officials do sometimes over prepare, but it's better to prepare and be ready and not have the storm hit, than not prepare and have a Katrina type situation again.

If another storm threatens I'll have less to do and have my plans ready.

I just hope that next time everyone doesn't think all hurricanes are the same and ignore warnings.

 

[Royd]

Devil's Advocate, here.....First off, the whole hand wringing, and Big Daddy finger wagging, by the politcal class, is all about CYA. Especially after Katrina.

In order to evacuate the 300,000 from Long Island, which was demanded by the mayor, it would have to have been started on Thurs. or Fri. morning, because most people in the city do not own automobiles, and would have to be evacuated by bus or subway, which is only going to get them so far....Obviously, not out of the path of the storm.

Then what? We have 300,000 people jambed together, at the end of the railway, with no way to proceed any farther. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen.

Not only would you have the mayhem of the milling masses, but you would open the door to wide open looting, of people's properties, by criminals, who have intentionally stayed behind.

The simple solution would have been to ask people on the bottom two or three floors of any building, to seek shelter with neighbor's on a higher floor.

If I had listened to the media, when the storm first started to brew, I would, now, have hundreds of dollars of needless plywood in my yard, because according to them, it was coming straight up the middle of the penninsula of Florida.

What better way to get the masses stirred up. A lowlying state, with millions of single dwellings.

It's time for the media to get out of the Apocolypse mongering and just do their jobs.

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

The media issue is real and I am not ignoring it. One of the first things necessary to restore the US is to restore the regulation that stated that if a media outlet called itself NEWS what it said needed to be factually true. That simple law being lost in 2003 has been a terrible blow to us that most don't realize.

That being said, Evacuating any large number of people is a disaster in itself looking for a place to happen. But, most of it was about getting the looky loos and idiots off the streets. Getting the millions of tourists and commuters out of New York getting businesses to shut down, forcing construction companies to remove the enormous number of high rise top cranes that operate in NY every day.

It was less the residents of New York than the people who go through it every day.

One of our bridges clocked wind speeds at 85 miles per hour. They didn't even lose so much as a light. That is not happenstance or a miracle - it's preparation and planning.

Besides plywood never goes bad, uses for it always turn up!

 

[spacecowgirl]

Mom's folly Wrote:
"Do people really believe that companies would build to those specifications unless they were forced to?? Yes, there are tons of ridiculous wasteful goverment rules. But the libertarian anarchists are just as delusional as the communists. Sanity is in the balance."


Don't you mean the liberals? Libertarians generally believe in keeping the government out of our business...

 

[mom'sfolly]

I didn't say that...but I do agree....

There has to be some balance between the regulate everything group, and the equally wacko group that ways regulate nothing....

And she did mean libertarian anarchists who think any regulation is bad....

 

[Royd]

Besides plywood never goes bad, uses for it always turn up.

Not the point. In today's hard scrabble economy, noone has an extra $1,000 laying around to buy enough plywood to cover all their windows.

Wouldn't this current administration have just loved the statistical result of 5 million households, from Key West to Kill Devil Hills NC running out and buying 10 sheets each, of needless plywood, along with the fasteners, drills, saws and ladders to install it all.​

 

[Black Cochin Bantams]

Last I heard was that 38 died. In New England where my son lives there is lots of flooding. No they didn't get it completely right but the human toll would have been worse without the warnings that went out.

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

he number currently is 40. Two guys near here who decided to "go for a run" in the storm to run from one guys house to the other's.

Twp 25 year old healthy men, two families destroyed because they decided to earn their Darwin Awards....