If you choose to continue reading, be prepared.
What part of MANDATORY EVACUATION do people not understand?
mandatory: (n) the recipient of a mandate; (adj) Required by rule
evacuation: (n) The act of removing the contents of something; The act of evacuating; leaving a place in an orderly fashion; especially for protection; The bodily process of discharging waste matter
When your city’s mayor says it, when the your state’s govenor says it, and when Shrub ends short his 5 week vacation because of it, don’t you think that people would like, do it??
I’ve watched as people are plucked from rooftops, cars, little patches of dry land. I’ve watched as the news highlights the ‘heroic’ stories of people who chose to disobey the mandatory evacuation. And I just keep getting more and more angry.
What is heroic about being an idiot and almost getting yourself and others killed? Why put yourself at risk, your family at risk and ultimately the safety of the rescue crews that have to save your ass?
That said, I understand and believe that some people could not leave. No money, no transportation, no abilities. All of this is due to poor planning on their part and the part of their local gov’t. Afterall, if you live by the ocean, one that is notorious for creating the majority of the worst hurricanes, and you don’t have a plan for evacuation…well…that is both lack of common sense and lack of brain cells. For the gov’t to also have no pre-planning in place and to not realize who were most at risk (ie who had the least amount of common sense)…well, that is just plumb stupid.
Once again, that said, I think it all comes down to education. No, not school education, but education on the hazards and results of the possible disasters and major events that can happen in an area. New Orleans is/was in a bowl. The education of where, when, how etc for in case of a levee break or a hurricane should have taken place long before now. People needed to know what to do in case of flood. They needed to know what to do in case of massive power outages and lack of transportation.
And a hatchet in your attic is not adequate pre-planning. If attic escape was part of the planning, then why not install an escape hatch? If flooding is prominent in the area, or a worst-case-scenerio, why not have an inflatable raft?
I won’t get into the idiocy of building a house on the beach, but I will get into the idiocy of staying there when a hurricane comes. By remaining, what do you hope to do, hold onto it to keep it from floating away? Afraid you’d not be able to get back home after the storm is over? If there is that amount of problems getting there, then chances are you’ll have no power, no clean water and no phone. So why would you want to go back to begin with? Sure, you want to go and visually check on the status. I am a visually oriented person myself and I would need to see it myself. But you bet your sweet bubblebutt that I’d not stay there while the storm was happening! For me, the fear of not coming back is strong, but again, I’d not stay to begin with because I am not that version of an idiot.
As a person with a disability, I try to figure out how I would get my butt to safety should a disaster or major event happen. This is MY disability. This is MY situation. I need to be the one to plan on how to get out. If that means being dependent on my local gov’t, so be it. But I would know their plans, make sure they even have plans, and remind them of my needs during bad weather seasons.
As a person who is owned by a bunch of critters, I have in place ways to take them with me or get them to safety as well. There’s no way my escape plans would not include them.
This rant is geared toward the citizens of The Pond Formerly Known as New Orleans (PFKNO) that was ordered to evacuate. It is not geared toward the other cities. Well, some of it. Like poor planning. I am so afraid that with so much attention and media focused on the drama of PFKNO, that people in places like Slidell, St. Bernard, and those other towns to the east will not get what they need to survive, recover and live.
Okay, I feel a little better. Well, not too much but enough.
I feel horrible for everyone effected by this…i understand everything you’ve said about people who didn’t evacuate as they’d been told to do, but like you mentioned…many of the people in that area are very poor and either did not have the money to leave, or a car that could even get them to the superdome…probably a lot who did not have the money to get enough gas in their cars (providing they had they) to get them as far as the superdome.
ah the pets being left behind just kills me (as wells as all the people who are suffering)…I saw footage what appeared to be a black lab standing on a roof watching it’s family being carried off in a boat…now I could be wrong but that’s what it looked like and that is just so horrible.
anyway, i’m not in louisiana (though I lived in Slidell till I was nine), but i’m hoping to see more footage of Slidell.
I feel horrible about it too. I guess I reached a point when I had to let some crap out of my brain.
And yes, I know that there are those who couldn’t afford to leave in one way or another. I understand that. I would think that there are ways to deal with that. If there are not any ways to evacuate those who cannot both physically and financially, then there should be methods developed!
Of course, it is easy for me to sit back and play armchair FEMA director.
I mentioned Sidell because I was listening in on the Hurricane Net when they lost contact with the National Weather Service office there.