I’m tired of people saying that this hurricane was all media hype. There are 5 trees overturned on my block from a microburst. My friend is right now bailing out her basement from six feet of water. Power is out to almost a million homes in the New York metro area. There are people trapped in hotels in upstate NY from an overflowing reservoir.
The disaster management decisionmakers have to be right every time — and they are damned if they do, damned if they don’t, because if you remember, the worst of Katrina came AFTER the storm.
The people complaining about media hype and an overreaction to the storm should maybe consider themselves lucky instead of considering it overreaction.
The media is over-reacting, but thats a function of the 24/7 news cycle we have now. Its not that these storms aren't trouble, sure they are. I've been through some hellish ones I can tell you about. One of the reasons I stuck through Andrew, instead of evacuating, was because of all the hype from previous storms that never lived up to it. By the time Andrew came around, most people sort of shrugged their shoulders. That's what excessive hype will do, it can lead to future endangerment, it is not just stupid, it is irresponsible.
No offense, but in Ohio we call that a June Cold Front passage.