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Sunday, September 14. 2008
Ike
Hurricane Ike has crashed ashore, pummeling Texas and Louisiana as it made landfall. It is such a large storm that the barrier islands, that include Galveston, were underwater hours before the actual hurricane hit.Officials said that 40% of Galveston’s residents refused to evacuate despite the “mandatory” orders to do so. Just makes you wonder what “mandatory” really means. Here in California, when we are getting torched by wild fires, “mandatory” means just that. The police come to your door and escort your ass out of the area.
But some Texans like to think they’re tough — “Bring it on Ike!” — so they contemptuously defied orders and … eight to ten hours later they’re calling 9-1-1, “Please help us! We might die!” Well, no shit. Here’s one of the funniest stories of Hurricane Ike: Some idiot was standing on a jetty in Corpus Christi as the waves from the hurricane were crashing over it and was swept off and lost in the sea. Yeah, he’s dead, but his stupidity makes it a funny story. Stupidity is how humanity gleans inferior DNA from the gene pool.
So, for those who chose not to evacuate and suffered the worst of consequences, too bad for you. If you lost a loved one due to your arrogance and stupidity, no sympathy here.
Unlike those stranded in New Orleans three years ago, who did not have the resources or ability to evacuate because local, state and federal resources were not utilized to get them out.
Another funny story from the Texan Gulf Coast: In Surfside Beach, south of Galveston, the only resident who didn’t evacuate, 67 year old Ray Wilkinson, drank his way through the storm and authorities found him happily drunk and waving when they found him Saturday morning. You know Old Ray will be a local celebrity for a while and he might even get his shot with Letterman or Leno! Or at least Conan O’Brien.
Not everyone caught in the storm was contemptuously ignoring evacuation orders. Some were caught by surprise when the ocean water, pushed on shore by the 600-mile wide hurricane, cut them off from any escape hours before expected. Ike was much bigger than any hurricane in recent history. It was “only” a category two hurricane when it made landfall, but what it lacked in strength it made up in spades with its size.Now, we’ll see how the recovery unfolds. Throughout, Michael Chertoff has been very visible as a hands-on manager of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA. That bodes well for the area hit by the disaster, but with problems still lingering from Hurricane Katrina, we have to look at the feds’ performance with a jaundiced eye.
My sister and her family live about 20 miles west of Houston — think of that: about 70 miles from the coast — and when the eye of Ike passed just to the north of them it was still a category two hurricane, which means they were getting clobbered by winds in excess of 100 MPH. No storm surge, that has been reported anyway, but they received about two feet of rain in the 24 hours surrounding the hurricane.In 1990 I visited their homestead for Thanksgiving and it is your average, muggy swamp like bayou area. Hard to imagine they don’t have some flooding. Not to mention, they didn’t expect they would need to evacuate. They didn’t and all is well with them and I’m extremely grateful.
Now, Ike is tearing its way up to the Great Lakes. By the time it reaches my old home it won’t be much more than a tropical depression, which means the winds will still be high and everyone along its path will be soaked with tons of rain.
Hurricane Ike. And people ask me why I stay in this area with its earthquakes and wild fires. Like my sister in Texas, California is my home so she won’t be getting any queries from me as to why she stays there. She likes her home and I don’t blame her!Well, it is Texas afterall, so I do have some questions …
The photos are from Reuters and the Associated Press. Except for the lovely Mary Lou!
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