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I know what it says, what I am saying is that folks NEEDED to be evactuated BEFORE the storm. I am not saying what policy is. I am saying what should be done. In lieu of that, perhaps a generator on a non-flooding floor, with TONS of fuel, and with portable A/C units that could be used to save overall power in certain rooms where you could group these people in. Thats how it is with humans, you live and learn. I did.

Somehow, we seem to have reached the point that there is a general expetation that even when Mother Nature throws one of her most powerful punches at us, no one should die as a result. It's a very unrealistic way to think.

Hospitals were keeping critically ill patients as the best option. Moving them out before the storm would have killed many or most. Moving them out after the storm would have done the same. They played the odds and it just didn't work out. They were in a no win situation.

Only 50 years ago, that storm would have killed many thousands people. With technology, (and wealth) we have managed to cut the deaths to a fraction of what they would have been, but we will never be able to reach zero. Nature will have it's say and it will take lives, especially the most fragile lives. I am just impressed that the death toll is as low as it is.

You make a good point, I mean, there IS a reason they call them disasters. I just think that you live and learn, and there is getting past that. In the meantime, people will die, because life is imperfect, people are imperfect. There are always better ways to do things, and each disaster bring about better ways of handling things. I am not one who is much into pointing the fingers of blame, for me, its simply about figuring out how to do better next time.

More to your point, can you imagine if such a storm had hit a similar city in a third world country? At least half the citizenry would be dead. As it stands now, it looks like our dead will be an order of magnitude less than first worried. What is lost in all of this is all the heroic effort that went into saving lives, all the GOOD things that happened. I'm afraid that story will be all but lost.

I am just impressed that the death toll is as low as it is.

Me, too.

I just remembered that some of the dead were "euthanized" by doctors and nurses who did not want to leave them and did not want to stay. I wonder how many?