Saturday, September 13, 2008

Those who never listen to evacuation orders....

The reason evacuation orders are issued is to prevent situations like this one reported by the Galveston Daily. I've never had to evacuate my home because of a hurricane, I have had to because of the threat of a gas explosion many years ago, so that's as close as I can get to understanding the desire to want to stay in your home but not wanting to place your family in danger.

The whole family could have died because they decided to not leave, placing children purposely into that kind of a situation seems to be a bit worse than having to stay in a storm shelter.
At first, his children just watched in fear. But when his 12-year-old son heard the water could rise as high as 20 feet, he threw up, Rushing said.

Realizing they couldn’t stay in the house any longer, Rushing and his sons waded out to their garage where their ski boat was waiting. Thousands of spiders were floating on the water and ants covered the palm trees, he said.

When they opened the garage door, their washer and dryer and a pool table floated past them. The boat floated off its trailer as soon as they rolled it into the driveway. The men paddled in and drove it around to the front of the house to pick up the rest of the family, including two cousins who were staying with them.

They also loaded up their two panicked dogs, but the water was rising so fast, Rushing didn’t have time to gather up their five 4-week-old puppies. They motored down Stewart Road toward the San Luis Hotel, where Rushing knew city officials were hunkered down. He tried to keep the boat in what he thought was the center of the road. He was afraid of hitting fire hydrants and other objects that were completely submerged.

This also delays the ability of a City to deal with what is needed to get things back to normal as quickly as possible so people can return. Hours will need to be spent rescuing those who decided not to leave. This happens every time there is a hurricane, sometimes because the storm ends up not as bad as what has been predicted. Yet, anyone who paid attention to this storm? Would have realized, this was not some exaggeration on the part of meteorologists, it was for real.

2 comments:

Roland Hansen said...

Ignorant, stupid people never cease to amaze me. In this situation, those folks place others in jeopardy. Shame on them!

T. F. Stern said...

Thank you Roland, you said all that needed to be said.