The myth is that “people didn’t evacuate for Katrina”. The truth, by your own account, is that something in the neighborhood of 90% of the parishes south of the lake did just that.
Of course, some people neither evacuated nor needed to be rescued. You are aware of this, right? A material number of people made an intelligent assessment of their situation and decided to remain behind. Some of these self-evacuated after the storm; a great many never left at all and managed to live off the grid for a few weeks without posing an inconvenience or danger to anyone. Of course, government is very, very angry with them and they will have to be punished like the naughty children they are.
I might add that “evacuation” is a phony standard anyway, since in a sane world of free citizens, evacuation would not be the default model for storm response. It’s time to re-visit the unexamined assumption that people need to flee for their lives whenever their masters tell them to be very, very afraid. I can guarantee you in the future it won’t be a case of the authorities yelling “jump!” and us asking, “how high, sir?”
TRT: so glad to see you’re doing fine. I had a feeling you would be.
You are aware of this, right?
Yes, in answer to yo ur unrelated snotty question.
A material number of people made an intelligent assessment of their situation and decided to remain behind.
I presume your ethereal number does not include the 50,000 plucked from rooftops, pulled out of attics, and picked up from tiny land plots amid flood water who did not make intelligent decisions in the face of grave danger.
When you take things out of context to start an argument, your position would carry more water with tighter numbers than "material."
Thanks! We did very very well. We’re almost back to where we were before the storm. The roofer is flooded in at his home in the Heights so we’re waiting on him to come put back 2-3 dozen shingles we lost.
While checking out at the Food Town a little earlier, I thanked the young checkout girl for coming in to accomodate others. She told us how she was so tired and depressed from the storm. I told her that was very sad because she was still able to have feelings and draw a breath, some weren’t so lucky. She moaned about being without power and I told her that when I grew up in southwestern Louisiana, I went to school all my life with no a/c. At home we had one window unit that covered all the bedrooms for sleeping and that was it. She then complained how she couldn’t get out on her cell phone. I just shook my head and told her that life was going to be very disappointing for her if her cell phone was that important to her. I should have just given her FEMA’s phone number and told her they’d straighten out her life for her :-)