Back when Katrina was moving across SE Louisiana, Ch. 8 evacuated from our South Jeff. Davis location (which flooded with 4 feet of water for over a week) over to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s office on the West Bank. During the height of the storm, Harry Lee got an emergency call from an apartment complex off of Manhattan Blvd calling for help. I remember Harry asking me…”do I risk my men to go out during the height of the storm?” I told Harry absolutely no. Your men have families too. As you remember, the NHC forecast track of Katrina was very accurate 2+ days out. Everyone had plenty of time to leave, the exception being those in nursing homes, hospitals, homebound etc. These folks in the apartment complex (they all ended up safe) chose to stay & ride out the storm. It inspired me to give a paper at the Hurricane Conference titled…”How can we be responsible for the ir-responsible?” There will always be several reasons for people who can’t leave. (financial, lack of mobility, job responsibility etc) Sometimes it’s just making stupid decisions and I believe people need to be responsible for their actions. It repeats over and over every hurricane season. Florence was very well forecasted. With social media, there is no excuse folks didn’t know it was coming. Yet here we see once again people needing help during the height of the storm. It was very frustrating as a broadcaster to understand the decision process of those who stay. What say you? How can we be more responsible in keeping people safe? What did Forrest Gump say?
Florence will continue her painfully slow journey over the Carolinas through Sunday. Then it heads up towards the big cities of the NE. We are far from over hearing about Florence. The disturbance over the western Gulf moved inland near Corpus without developing. In the Caribbean, Isaac had a burst of storms early this morning, but they have fizzled tonight. It appears the tropics will go quiet for about a week to 10 days before they ramp up again in late September into early October. We really need to get those cold fronts coming, but I see nothing for at least 2 weeks. Enjoy your weekend and stay tuned!
FYI…For some reason, I’ve been unable to post my blog on my Ch. 8’s Facebook pages.
No comments:
Post a Comment