Isn’t Life Strange?

I’ve been thinking about a few things related to Ike and of storms in the past.

It seems to me that if we need a reminder of the potential damage and deadly force a hurricane brings with it, we need only look a few years into the past to Hurricane Katrina. We all know what Katrina did. It destroyed several coastal communities, left over a thousand people dead, and displaced many times more from their homes and jobs. New Orleans was nearly destroyed due to the fact that much of the city lies below sea level. Due to poor planning and a poor government response, many more lost their lives than necessary.

In fact, with the technology and wide reaching communication networks we have today, it is incomprehensible how anyone in the United States could possibly die as a result from the forces of a hurricane.

Then again the longer I live and the more I witness, I am more resolved to believe that many people are utterly stupid and irresponsible.

Some friends and I were laughing at a CNN.com headline last night that seemed over the top and exaggerated. Words and phrases like “certain doom” and “deadly force” were used in the story. With the way the media tends to sensationalize everything, our first reaction to the headline and the story was to laugh. It was the kind of stuff you read in comic books. But now I am not so certain that it was funny at all.

Waves have been crashing into Galveston Island all morning, carrying with them debris and a force that is wreaking havoc on beach homes and anything else close to the shore. Much of Galveston is already flooded, and the storm is still over a hundred miles away. A twenty foot tidal surge is enough to put most of the island under water. Surely anyone remaining on the island is a fool and places his own life in danger. This is not at all a funny situation.

Local news media have been repeating for at least twenty-four hours the mandatory evacuation announcements for those areas and others that will be affected by a tidal surge. Public officials have held press conferences and have been interviewed by all local television channels, and have alerted everyone of what this storm will definitely do. Emergency numbers have been given for those people who cannot leave on their own and need assistance in seeking shelter. People have been informed that if they remain in those areas and find themselves in an emergency situation, it will be impossible for emergency crews to respond.

There is no excuse for the loss of even one life. If anyone who chooses to stay in those areas is killed by the storm, it will be their own fault, not the fault of the mayor or the governor. Not the fault of FEMA or the President of the United States. We are so fortunate to live in a nation that has such a good network of emergency services staffed by hard-working first responders. Although weather forecasting is not an exact science, our meteorologists are pretty good at predicting where a storm like this will strike and what it could do. We’re fortunate that even though we may disagree with them most of the time, our elected leaders want to keep us safe from harm and provide us with any assistance we may need in times like this.

None of these blessings are a substitute for common sense or good judgment. In the coming hours, we will all be seeing national news coverage of the damage and destruction of this storm. We’ll be hearing stories about people who didn’t get out, about people who decided to stay and ended up losing their homes or even their lives. There will be questions about whether the emergency management plans were sufficient for this storm and the damage that will be left in its wake. It will be a disgusting display of finger pointing, blame-gaming, and dare I say it — political profiteering.

I don’t wait around for the government and the news media to tell me what I should do to take care of myself. Nor will I blame them for the results of poor decisions I have made. We’ve all been warned. We know what’s coming. It’s up to us to take care of ourselves.