Irene Preparations ...Overkill?
 

I'm kinda thinking 18 deaths is pretty minimal -even given that the impact of the storm was less than expected/feared. So I think I'm voting success and bugger the overkill. But I am not there and I bet the zillion travellers on the subway who won't get service on Monday morning might feel differently. How do you feel about it?

Being unprepared for the many different unknowns with a natural disaster such as a hurricane is now political suicide. I'm glad we were ready for whatever may have happened that actually didn't. Far better than the alternative.

It's not too late to fix that. Hobos often die in such events and aren't found til much later.

But what if Irene didn't weaken? Then the overkill would have been greatly appreciated. Hindsight is 20/20, you know.

Without the FEMA shouting, dire headlines, and weather channel hysteria, it could have been much deadlier. People won't take it seriously unless you get their undivided attention first, and that's damn near impossible these days.

Yes the wind died down, but the inland flash flooding was/is tremendous and often in places few expected.
The normally 3' deep, 60 cu/ft/sec, creek behind my house, jumped to 16' deep and 7,000 cu/ft/sec, in about 12 hrs.

Damn. Tha's a lot of water. And it is very easy to underestimate the power of moving water...

I don't think it's overkill at all, but I wasn't in the local broadcast area. It's pretty easy to be pretty prepared to function autonomously for a short while, but lots of folks don't bother, believe it won't happen to them, are oblivious to dangers until it's too late, etc.

"Don't do stupid stuff! Be prepared for changes to your regular routine. Be aware of your surroundings." Sounds hard, and is hard for a lot of people. Obliviousness is excellent armor for all the slings and arrow of outrageous fortune, save the killing blow.

That's an awesome line.

Oh! There's Dana!

*waves*

I was looking for you!

In hindsight, my preparations were overkill. But I'll do them again next time too.

What they said

Bruce, are you on the Crum, Ridley, or Chester Creek?

It seems to be comparable to a 25" plus snow storm in this area.

Well said.... We live in a extremely vulnerable area as well and we don't take any storm lightly.

For a change, everything was done right. Or at least more was done right than wrong.

Disaster declarations got made early, allowing resources to be available when they were needed, not after. I got to watch some of that resource allocation happen in the Emergency Operations Center. The National Guard guy was right there and able to task some equipment to a local fire company that was doing a water rescue that went bad.

Heck, I even ended up being one of those additional resources ... while I was working Rumor Control, there was a call for CISM and I had it filled.

How many glow sticks did you have this time? ;)

:lol: