Thinning The Herd
This is not good. CNN writes that 37,000 may need to be rescued after Hurricane Ike
The Coast Guard said in a news release it received a distress call around 4 a.m. from the Antalina, a Cypriot-flagged freighter. It said the vessel had “lost main propulsion 90 miles southeast of Galveston” and was unable to steer.
Coast Guard Capt. Bill Diehl said the freighter had been “in the direct line of the path of the storm and lost its engines.”
…The Coast Guard also worked to airlift people and their pets from their cars and homes on the Bolivar Peninsula, a narrow stretch of land that separates the Gulf of Mexico from Galveston Bay, as the wind and rain from Hurricane Ike slapped the Texas coast.
The guard issued a statement saying “Coast Guard Air Station Houston launched a HH-65C rescue helicopter and crew to airlift and transport approximately 22 to 50 people” who had called authorities for help.
As CNN noted yesterday the local National Weather Service advisories have not been down playing the seriousness of this storm:
ALL NEIGHBORHOODS…AND POSSIBLY ENTIRE COASTAL COMMUNITIES… WILL BE INUNDATED DURING HIGH TIDE. PERSONS NOT HEEDING EVACUATION ORDERS IN SINGLE FAMILY ONE OR TWO STORY HOMES WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH. MANY RESIDENCES OF AVERAGE CONSTRUCTION DIRECTLY ON THE COAST WILL BE DESTROYED…
What in hell was that freighter doing leaving Port Arthur and heading into a hurricane, because Ike fills up the entire Gulf of Mexico? You go out a few miles to avoid being run aground; rig your anchors; and evacuate most of the crew to wait it out.
Why would people think in was OK to stay in a coastal area when the mandatory evacuation orders have gone out and the Weather Service is talking about “CERTAIN DEATH”? “CERTAIN” does not mean “possible” or “probable”. It is a promise, not a threat.
6 comments
In the UK people are charged for the cost of their rescue when they need to be rescued because of their stupidity. I would love to find out if our Coast Guard and local EMS will be billing all the stupid people in the TX coast area who decided they could ride out the storm. 37,000 is just simply a stupid number of people that possibly will need rescue.
If anything near that number require rescuing because they were unwilling to evacuate, I’m fairly certain that coastal states will start billing.
In some counties in Florida they have started billing the people who are at fault in auto accidents for the emergency response.
The Bolivar Peninsula was stripped clean in the 1900 Galveston hurricane where 8,000 died. As in, 99% of the people died. Why anybody with any sense would stay there with another hurricane coming and the peninsula being no higher today than it was in 1900 (indeed it has settled a little)… baffling. Just baffling.
Meanwhile, my bro be chillin’ with his new generator. All he’s going to get is some tropical force winds and rain. He doesn’t have enough watts to cool the whole house, but he does have enough to cool the living room as well as run the refrigerator and freezer, and he can always roll out the sleeping bags for himself and the grandkids (his wife gets the couch), so he’s going to enjoy the time off from work and play the new movies I just sent him.
There was a photo on weather.com that had two dogs that were locked in someone’s back yard, the owners were not home. The yard was surrounded with an 8′ chain link fence. I want to beat those people senseless.
I’m glad to hear that your brother scored a generator, because Texas is going to have a huge demand starting tomorrow. The whole coast from Galveston over to Cameron is going to catch the “tsunami” surge from this sucker.
I’m a little inland, but I’m on high ground and there are a lot of very substantial concrete buildings between me and the coast. There is no way in hell I would stay on our barrier island for even a tropical storm. The main road on the island, US-98 was already under water a couple of days ago from the waves and it was under water in Alabama and Mississippi.
Of all places to decide to ride out a storm, the site of the worse storm in US history for deaths, is not sane.
I read that NOLA is considering using some of the flood gates based on the projections, just as a precaution.
People move to these places and don’t bother to learn about them. It’s like trying to explain to people that San Diego is a semi-desert and you can’t grow anything unless you use native plants or put in irrigation. Floridian transplants are the worst: “why don’t they just drill an irrigation well?” We have water 6 feet deep in the coastal zone, so Floridians are accustomed to putting in shallow wells. They don’t understand that there are places where that doesn’t work.
It’s time to thin the herd, because people don’t learn. The really scary part is that these people must have amassed a whole lot of money to live there, so it is obvious that salary isn’t dependent on intelligence.
They have a better chance outside, than inside the house, Moi, because this isn’t going to be slowly rising water, it is going to rise quickly. They definitely shouldn’t have been left behind, but they may not be controllable. Some dogs react really badly to storms, and there may have been no way to get them in a car. That’s why you leave early, before the stress sets in.