Looks like a banner year for plywood, batteries and bottled water.
Posted on 05/08/2006 5:51:19 AM PDT by redfish53
As the season looms, it's becomming more and more apparent that the US is not ready for this upcomming season.
I was fortunate enough to travel down to Marathon Key (on behalf of Mark Sudduth and hurricanetrack.com) this weekend to help out at a Hurricane Seminar there. This was my first trip into the Keys in some 14 years or so.
The upper and middle Keys have really changed. Well, all of them have since my last visit, but, there is a ton of new construction there with perhaps billions of new residential developments down there. Surrounding these beautiful and vurnable estates are poorly constructed commercial store fronts of every type you can imagine. Many are built from metal or sheeting, there are billboards everywhere and in many places, residents down there have been allowed to build their own home over time with little regulation or oversight.
So as I stood there at the momument to the 1935 hurricane there in Islamorada, surrounded by all of these things on a 2 lane road out of the Keys, it is very obvious. They Keys are not ready for this season, and our country isn't either.
Every Keys resident I spoke with said really 2 things. They estimate only 15% (at most) of the residents evacuated for Wilma, and there have been too man false alarms in the last few years.
Since 2004, the keys have been cleared out for Ivan, Jeanne, Rita, Katrina and Wilma and I think I am missing one storm.
How many places must also think there have been too many false alarms? Just about every hurricane prone city has had one in this active phase:
Houston last year with Rita New Orleans countless times (now they have the opposite problem) Tampa with Charley Miami with Jeanne, Frances, and Ivan ...And so on...
So as we stand less than 4 weeks from the next season, there are more problems. Accuweather is out there predicting doom and gloom for the subscriber-heavy Northeast. An NHC false-alarm email has aleady sparked panic in New Orleans. Many places in SE Florida haven't recovered from cat 1 winds in Wilma, and there are countless blue-tarps in place in SW Florida from Charley 2 years ago. Perdido Key hasn't recovered from Ivan. Mississippi is still clearing debris from Katrina with many who were lost still yet to be recovered or identified in Lousiana. The levees around Lake Okechobee, protecting residents and water supplies and ecosystems, are given a 17% chance of failing in any season.
And littered all over the Gulf and Eastern seaboard are communities that haven't experenced a direct hit in generations.
The NWS meteorologist at the seminar, Matt Strahan, has a very good point which he shared with me after things wound down Saturday. Most people think they know what a hurricane can do. Many more people than not, even in areas with direct hits, have not experienced the inner core of a strong or intense hurricane, but they think they have. This may be the most dangerous thing of all, and many, including Max Mayfield, believe that this type of belief system may have caused Camille to kill more people in 2005 than Katrina did.
Finally, there is a sense of disbelief taking over with the new season closing in. 17 storms? That number in any other season before this one would have caused panic. This season, outside of New Orleans, that number is considered GOOD NEWS.
Chances are we are going to get hit hard somewhere this year. Some will tell you they know where, which is of course, BS, but we are probably going to get hit again.
If it's Houston, we'll be wishing for 3 dollar a gallon gas prices. If it's a hurricane in Miami like 1926, the death toll from surge and evacuees who didn't leave could rival Katrina. If it is the NE US, well, we will look back on 2005 like we look at 2004 now. Bad, but not as bad as it was a year ago. And if it is the Keys, well, I've seen it, it will be bad beyond any current standard.
And we know that FEMA has yet to demonstrate they can respond to anything.
So, really what can be done?
All anyone reading this post can do is this. If you're reading this, you likely follow the tropics closely. Start talking to everyone you know about hurricanes. Discuss what you know about surge, about the inner core where the most destructive winds are, about the outlook for this coming season. Ask them about their plan. Help them find a place to go if they need to evacuate. Sign up to help with rumor control hotlines or help lines, every community has these and they need all of the help they can get. Talk them out of bad ideas like "riding it out" or "hurricane parties".
At the same time, be a model of preparation. Get your shutters or plywood now. Get your supplies ready before June 1st. Know where you are going to go if you have to leave. Don't try to ride it out on your own...etc.
We know the media won't help. But even if you talk to 2 extra people, and change the way they think about hurricanes, you've made a huge impact.
This is a bigger problem than any one person or organization or city can solve. Years of run-away real estate, poor building regulation and poorly advised and unsafe costal development combined with a very unlikely lull in activity has built this monster. We all can affect our sphere of influence however, and help prepare and protect the people we know and care for.
And given everything we're up against, that's the best we can do. Even if the country isn't ready, we can be.
MW
Might be a typo, the V is right next to the b.LOL
Not ready for a spelling contest either.
We are setting ourselves up for a massive loss of life, and it will all be about the lax regulation and over exploitation of the local marketplace...........With the billions of people that inhabit this earth I find it hard to understand the uproar about the death of a few hundred people that were too stupid to get out of the path of a potentialy deathly situation.
part of the problem is that old people here in the keys will not leave there pets because thats all they have for family and monroe county doesnt allow pets in there shelter.
Plus to cover there a-s they were ordering mandatory evacs for a trop storm(holy overreaction batman)
Then they need to get out of that business. They are rethinking FEMA.
Where does it say that Bush and the American taxpayers are responsible for paying for food, housing, clothing, utilities and anything else for lazy bums that would rather suck on the teet than get off their azzes and work. We tired of paying for their socialist attitudes..."I'm owed" mantra. They aren't owed anything. Louisiana is a welfare state, that's how the dims and liberals keep their voters in line.
I laugh at the thought of our president trying to get out "actuarially unsound" in a speech. But you are correct in that we have underwritten too many disasters that should have been privately covered over the years.
I strongly suspect that those who can influence building codes are in the pockets of the developers and builders.
lol
I believe both Bush 41 and 43 suffer from some form of dyslexia. Both had problems assembling coherent sentences longer than about 15 words. 41 often spoke in jerky 2 to 5 word phrases, "Not prudent" being one of my and Dana Carvey's favorites.
And will SOMEONE please hang a poster in the Oval office declaring "It's 'nuCLEAR' not 'nuculer' and 'strategy' not 'stragery'."
The Bush family -- on the Walker side -- tout their connection to George III with whom we had that unpleasantness in 1776. This could explain many contemporaneous events. May be all that British royal in-breeding.
Where DO we get these people?
Vulnerable fits the context.
Looks like a banner year for plywood, batteries and bottled water.
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