Shouldn't we pay close attention to developments regarding the current situation in Texas?
Those of us living in large population concentrations have important lessons to learn.
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Hope that I learned all I need to know about surviving a hurricane from Sandy!
Yes, like never move to Texas or anywhere that Hurricanes hit. Egads, what a mess, those poor people.
@Call_Me_Jay That sounds so horrendous. Being consumed by ants is one of my darkest fears, ever since I read “Leiningen Versus The Ants” when I was ten.
The only thing to worry about is when Trump uses Harvey as an excuse for Latinos to be put into FEMA camps run by Joe Arpaio.
@Call_Me_Jay, fire ants have made it to Australia and our governments are going to great lengths to try to irradicate them. I don’t think that’s been achieved anywhere yet.
As to avoiding hurricanes, are there any areas where there are no possible natural disasters? I live in a pretty safe place (my city), but we still get major floods and could be hit by a cyclone or even an earthquake. What places should people move to in your country to be safe from natural disasters?
No place is entirely safe, but obviously the odds are better in some than others.
Florida is probably the worst bet in the US. The odds of a tsunami wiping out everything on the Oregon and Washington coast is high. A Los Angeles earthquake is rather likely. The New Madrid fault could devastate parts of the midwest and of course we have tornadoes.
For the most part I don’t think people should move, except for the really likely flood zones.
@Call_Me_Jay :: My sister just bought a house I am moving into in a few weeks. There are massive trees (like a diameter of 5’ at the base). My sister is not keen but her husband agrees with me that the trees need to come down. They would cut the house like butter if they fell down.
I would say the safest locations in regard to natural disaster would include Montana, and the Dakotas.
The future looks grim regarding the severity of wind related weather events. Hotter and higher oceans mean more energy for larger, more frequent, more violent storms carrying more water and faster winds. Obviously coastal real estate is in for a pounding with risks to property further inland than we would otherwise expect. To add to the cheerful tidings, we are guaranteed a dramatic increase in the number, frequency and violence of tornadoes crawling across the heartland while the seasons for cyclonic storms lengthen continuously with rising mean temperatures. We’re in for some expensive excitement.
Well. The last two Octobers, in a row, have produced storms that flooded my house. I’ve lost most of my belongings. I live in “the low country.” I still live in the same house, because I’m too poor to afford somewhere else.
I have been digging ditches, and trying to modify my yard for maximum drainage. So far, results have been good. But, I know a lot of rain plus high tide makes a flood likely….
Those poor bastards in Texas are just getting started. The real horror, to me, is seeing what’s left when the water finally goes away. It’s pretty demoralizing, picking up the ruined pieces of you life…
I’m so sorry you’ve both been through this @MrGrimm888 and are still dealing with the consequences.
^Thanks.It is what it is. I don’t really have much to lose now. As long as my loved ones survive these storms, I’ll take it.
Oddly enough, my little brother is riding Harvey out in Houston, as I type. He’s been lucky. He lives on the third floor of a large apartment complex. They just had to release the water from two dams there. They (as a city) seemed caught off guard by this. But it’s been more,than 40 inches of rain. I’m not sure anywhere is prepared for that…
To your point, @MrGrimm888, and to answer the OP, the thing to know is that “the authorities” are not going to protect you. That’s the lesson to take.
I live in New England, and have only a passing interest in the hurricane – the interest of a “normally interested observer”, that is. Yet even I knew – two or three days ahead of landfall -
where the hurricane was headed and what would be the likely outcome in terms of rainfall (even the 35” that was predicted days before the storm hit seemed unreal), yet the mayor of Houston told residents, even those in sea-level coastal areas to “shelter in place”.
That was criminal-level stupidity. Even without the rain, hurricanes raise local sea levels as the low-pressure area moves over the sea. That’s simple physics. Then the wind brings high waves – more simple physics. And if the storm hits at a high tide, which is just a matter of luck, then coastal flooding is inevitable. Add three feet of rain, and there is simply no question that local drainage will be at least temporarily overwhelmed. It’s beyond stupid to face a storm of that magnitude while staying in a coastal area, yet that was the “advice” given by elected officials.
This has simply nothing to do with “climate change” and “the future of the planet”. This is a normal weather event of the kind that we have simply been lucky not to have happen in the past twelve years in the continental USA.
@cwotus. We must have been listening to different officials. The ones I heard were saying to get out and if you refuse to get out, use a Sharpie to put your social security number and name on your arm so they could identify your body quickly.
Hurricanes are a thing that happens. If you live anywhere reasonably close to the Gulf, you’re aware of this fact.
If you live in a bowl, be aware that sometimes bowls fill with soup and you need to have a bugout plan.
The real crime is city planning – if you’re going to put poor people in the deepest part of the bowl, and not provide infrastructure that allows them to affordably evacuate, shame on you.
I lived in tornado land for a few years, at least with a hurricane there’s notice.
Vermont, with no coastline, was devastated by Irene.
Montana is burning.
Winter storms are less predictable and increasingly extreme.
Really, where can one live anymore?
@canidmajor Climate change is causing more frequent and stronger storms worldwide.
It is, indeed, @janbb. Both Katrina and Harvey were dramatically exacerbated by the different-than-usual temperature of the Gulf, caused by climate change. (I can’t remember if the guy on the interview said it was warmer or cooler).
To get back to your question, @stanleybmanly , I think it would be great it we have government scientific and engineering planning on a high level such as some of the European countries have and built storm gates and infrastructure to prepare for mass evacuations quickly. Until we do that, individuals will be hoarding water and axes in a sometimes vain attempt to keep themselves safe. And good, good individuals will try to rescue others.
Me? My plan is to go wherever @LuckyGuy is and beg for shelter!
Floods, fires, earthquakes, monsoons, hurricanes, Tornados, pick your poison. Where I am in CA. no major earthquakes are likely but we contend with major wildfires ever year. It is what it is.
In reality, it would serve no purpose. People are gonna do whatever people are gonna do, and nothing will stop them. If they can’t control their errant matters amongst themselves, Mother Nature will do it for them.
@canidmajor Where can one live? Western NY is one of the few places in the country that benefits from climate change / global warming. We have snow but don’t have earth quakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods. As the climate warms the reduced energy required to heat our homes is offsets the additional air conditioning load by 10:1 .
In 30 years this will be the place to live! :-)
@LuckyGuy As I said above, I’m coming to stay with you when the water’s a risin’.
@LuckyGuy, I’m on my way! Set another place at the table! ;-D
What lessons? Like, get out while you still have time?
I thought it was weird to hear that people were recommended to shelter in place, but then, I’ve only learned how to respond to earthquakes and fires, not hurricanes, so I figured I didn’t understand something… This discussion is helping me see that the local authorities were likely at least irresponsible with their initial recommendations…
My heart goes out to the people in Houston.
@CWOTUS It was my understanding that scientists are comfortable linking Harvey with climate change because its intensity fits with patterns predicted by climate change. From what I understood, they have also tracked a steady increase in precipitation events in the area over the past several decades.
There isn’t an attribution study completed yet on Harvey, but there is one completed on “torrential rains” that hit neighbor Louisiana a year ago and caused severe flooding there. The analysis finds that:
A Central U.S. Gulf Coast extreme precipitation event has become more likely and more intense in 2016 than it was in 1900 as a result of climate change. Analyses based on observational precipitation data found clear positive trends in rainfall frequency and intensity. [. . .]
Based on these different approaches [explained in the text] – all of which are in agreement – the team found that human-caused climate change increased the frequency and intensity of the heavy rains such as the August 12 – 14 event along the Central U.S. Gulf Coast region. [. . .]
By comparing recent three-day precipitation extremes for the Central U.S. Gulf Coast region with the historical record and climate model simulations, the team found that an event like this is now expected to occur at least 40 percent more often than it was in our pre-industrial past. Precipitation intensity increased by roughly 10 percent as a result of human-caused climate change.
My understanding is that it was deemed safer to shelter in place rather than risk hundreds of thousands of people trying to flee the city for higher ground with critically flooded roadways and freeways. Safer to stay put than to risk being swept away and drowned in your vehicles and increasing the need for already, overtaxed, emergency response teams. I think local authorities made a good call, the choice between hell and high water. More hellish and dangerous to be trapped in your sinking vehicles than to stay in your home where you can get to the rooftop or an upstairs location and await rescue.
^^ Oh, I see. That reminds me of story that grandparents and grandchildren apparently got swept away driving over a bridge, accounting for 6 of the deaths. :’(
A friend of mine prepared to leave ahead of the storm and move further in land. And she did.
And this is why it wasn’t safe to leave as Harvey got closer to landfall. The infrastructure of a city that could have this happen wasn’t up to the task.
But they had days of warning. Days to evacuate.
But even days of warning are not sufficient time for a rational solution. The problem boils down to an abhorrence of regulation allowing 7 million people to inhabit a flood plain. People were advised to shelter in place because there frankly is no workable answer to the question “where and how to relocate 7 million people?” The casualty and death figures are almost certainly guaranteed to be lower if people sit still to be plucked as the need arises rather than the assured catastrophe of 7 million people taking to the road simultaneously. The rest of us living in big population corridors should pay attention.
I asked my friend who evacuated how much time they had and if the roads were bad. I think they left 2 days before it hit.
“Days of warning” is a misleading concept. The meteorologists have to speculate and base predictions on probabilities. Hurricanes don’t travel in straight lines. They veer off at the last minute very often, often making landfall at an entirely different location. In 2005 I was at a convention in NOLA in mid-August. Dennis was coming towards us at a great rate, veered east a few hours before landfall, did enormous damage to Mississippi, rained a bit on us. In 2012 Sandy was all over the place with predictions.
The problem is that the cost of an enormous evacuation is so high that it’s a gamble to make people leave 48 hours in advance, in case it veers off. Your friends had the time and the means and the option, @Dutchess_III, many don’t. When you live in hurricane land, it’s a gamble. When you live on the Gulf Coast, where the poverty rates are really high, sometimes the options for evacuation ahead of time simply aren’t available.
Another thank you for the link and the other info, @canidmajor! Situation makes a bit more sense to me now.
Stanley hit the nail on the head. They couldn’t just put 7 million people out on the roads in 100° heat. This was largely a rain event. People would be safer in a dwelling, than on the roads, stuck in gridlock…
It was a problem, that didn’t have lots of good solutions.
They’ve also had to let water out of several dams. It sucks, but it’s better than letting them overflow.
But then how much of the US have to be avoided if people want to avoid hurracaine and other weather events?
Hurricanes hit on the coasts @flo.
@flo All of it. There are tornados in the mid west, fires in the west, earthquakes all over, hurricanes on the east coast and gulf coast, volcano eruptions in Hawaii, and blizzards all over.
You would have to live in an underground bunker to avoid all of the problems the weather brings.
And earthquake prone areas, forest fires, although they say forest fires can be prevented.
If we could predict a hurricane’s path better, that could help a lot…
We are in a severe heat wave here, it was 106 yesterday, 103 today and 107 by Fri.
Man, if I could take a few dozen inches of rain from Houston I would happily do so. Extreme weather is getting more extreme no doubt
@flo, a lot of wildfires are started by lightening strikes that can’t be prevented.
Only you can prevent forest fires!
There have always been forest fires, long before humans migrated here (to America)
My area here in the Sierra Nevada foothills is an evacuation destination for the Capitol City of Sacramento. Over a million and a half Oh joy. haha
@Patty_Melt Unless the Yellowstone Volcano erupts again.
I live in the midwest. There are some areas where tornadoes hit frequently, and some ateas where they don’t.
I think Omaha got hit twice ever, once real bad. That was back in the early days when switchboard operators knew you by your first name.
Where I live has had nadoes near, but never here. The farm where I grew up had one, but that was long before I came along.
Southern Missouri gets them a lot, and mich of Texas and Oklahoma. There are other places where they have more reason for concern than we do here.
We get earth tremors, but mostly we don’t feel them. They are never strong enough to knock things off walls.
Our river used to flood sometimes, but a lot of money and planning was put into banking and reshaping the river so that is far less likely to happen anymore, except for one road which sometimes gets shut down for a day or two, but it is all park area, and a golf course, so no big damage there. They just have to pick up all the fish before anyone tries to tee off again.
An easy way to find out wher the biggest dangers exist, look up what areas have applied for disaster relief, and how often.
There are homes in various states which were contructed in colonial times still standing.
Our whole nation isn’t cringing daily over nature’s wrath.
I must say, though, the recent increase of sinkhole occurances has me baffled.
@YARNLADY, lol. True, but it has a ten thousand year window.
@Dutchess_III
Let’s play a game:
You live in a coastal city. You work in the neighborhood. You rely on public transportation. You don’t know anyone outside your city. You have $13 in the bank.
Hurricane watch shows up. T-3 days until landfall. What’s your evacuation plan?
^Correct. Many people /families live paycheck to paycheck. There simply isn’t room in the budget for evacuation. Some don’t have cars. Some have medical needs, or physical issues that make evacuation difficult.
It’s not a good situation when those storms are coming. Usually, we make preparations, and then the storm goes somewhere else. That’s also a factor.
In addition to @Muad_Dib ‘s excellent list I can add a few.
Some people have pets and don’t know what to do with them.
Some people are afraid their homes will be robbed if they leave their apartments or home empty.
Some people have no other contacts outside their immediate family.
Some have drug problems and can only see as far ahead as the next day.
Some have a huge distrust for “mainstream media” and think it is all for show.
There are many reasons people won’t leave. If I lived 100 ft above sea level I probably wouldn’t leave either.
Those are all valid points, @LuckyGuy. However, does it seem reasonable to base the city / county evacuation advice and policy on what the hardest cases – or best cases (that is, in terms of lack of resources and mobility, extenuating circumstances or even elevation) – might be? The places we’re talking about, for example, are generally < 10’ above mean sea level, not 100’. Maybe there’s someone in the area sitting at 100’. Sure, that house is going to be fine. And “most people” probably don’t live hand-to-mouth, in neighborhoods that are so crime-ridden that a few days’ absence will subject them to ransacking and looting (assuming the storm doesn’t come to pass), etc.
Assuming “the expected course of events”, what’s the best policy when you’re on the coast and in a flood plain that’s “highly likely” to be under several feet of unexpected water within a day or so?
While I did not monitor the Mayor’s announcements from New England – as I thought I made clear, I was a fairly casual and long-range observer – but I got my accounts of the non-evacuation advice from current and former Houston natives, who monitored announcements very closely.
With that said, though, I have been pleasantly surprised to see such an extraordinarily low death toll.
I traveled to Tennessee to be in the path of eclipse totality. “They” estimated 7 to 10 million people across the US traveled to be in that magic band 60 miles wide and 3000 miles across the US. Why do I mention that?
Traffic in TN was tied up for 40 hours. Gas stations in Oregon ran out of fuel. Traffic on I-81 was stop and go for 18 hours. Service areas ran out of food and fuel. This was across the country – 3000 miles – and everyone had a 100% certainly of the date and time of the event!
Coincidentally, Greater Houston has 7 million people. Based upon my experience with the eclipse last week I estimate It would have been impossible to evacuate the city unless they started weeks earlier. Can you imagine how bad it would have been if the roads were packed with cars sitting in stand-still traffic as the water rose above the car windows? The death toll would have been much higher.
How does any community prepare for 50 inches of rain? You start moving food, water, fuel and other supplies to the area to handle the people who will inevitably be displaced.
Car companies are already planning for a ramp-up of production to replace the 500,000 (est.) totaled vehicles. Construction companies – even here!- are planning to take off and head to Houston to help fix the mess. Insurance companies are flying in estimators from all over the country to get payments moving quickly. And, as usual, Waffle House stepped up to the plate and handled it in stellar form.
I find it shameful that poor people are left in harms way due to lack of money. Shouldn’t the governments step in and provide free buses to get them out, and shelter until it’s over? And does it cost money to stay in a shelter?
That is a very big measure for any degree of uncertainty.
Emergency shelters don’t charge people to stay, but SOMEBODY pays for it.
There is no shelter system in place able to handle a max exudus. The only hope in that regard would be if multiple hotels offered rooms to refugees.
We could argue about some of the differences in your scenarios, @LuckyGuy, the primary one being an influx of people from all over into (mostly) rural and semi-rural areas who were unprepared for the influx, versus the daily migration into and out of Houston (which does appear to have some of the worst traffic in the country – but they deal with that traffic daily) “away from” the most likely points of danger: coastal and low-lying areas in particular. But your point is made. Considering the low fatality rate from this storm, it does seem like the decisions made were “generally acceptable”.
For one thing, the primary roads “could have” been set to one-way traffic away from the city, which would have doubled capacity, if anyone had considered that.
An evacuation order (or suggestion) issued too close to the time of expected landfall would have resulted in more problems – in general, and in this locale.
@Dutchess III Shelters aren’t about charging people. And it is ALWAYS poor people most likely to be in harm’s way. That is in fact the working definition of what poor is about. The thing most depressing about this situation is the sudden addition of probably millions of people to the rolls of the destitute. Our country has come to be defined as a land where the avereage guy is “just getting by”. This catastrophe means the abrupt demotion of untold numbers of people across a spectrum from middle class through barely scraping to the status of homeless.
@Patty_Melt Well, most often shelters are in pre-exisiting structures like churches and schools. They’re there no matter what.
I would hope the government could swing a few dollars per person for food and water.
Food, water, bed, clothing, transportation, medications, sanitation, communication, mobility assistance…
Humans have a lot of needs. Humans away from their homes have even more.
There are shelters – most any standing building can be a shelter – but there aren’t enough for everyone, not everyone can get to them, and while a high school can accommodate a thousand kids for 6 hours a day, they’re not built to house 3000 people for a week. Sewers fail, gym showers can only fit so many people a day, and people get bored and restless.
To top it off, hurricanes aren’t predictable enough that you can be assured you’re only going to evacuate the people who need to evacuate.
Harvey could have easily bounced off the Texas coast and mowed straight into Tampa Bay. Then I’d be sitting here under water instead of Houston.
You can’t evacuate everyone in six gulf coast states every time a tropical storm shows up.
(Humans away from their bones are really up a creek!)
Aw crap! I wanted it to stay! ~
Not corrected, @flo, simply informed.
I get what you meant @flo.
Like I said, there are not enough pre existing shelters to handle that kind of massive crowd. Pre existing shelters don’t have room for all the homeless people when there is no disaster.
Remember all the people staying in the stadium after Katrina? They were unbelievably crowded, and teen girls were getting raped in bathrooms. The conditions were just plain inhuman.
During disasters, temporary shelters have to be set up.
Alright. I guess I’ll stop here since it’s off topic really.
Texas is a very large state. I’ve never heard of flooding in the panhandle.
If one lives on the Southern coast it’s a different ballgame. We live in NE Texas and never saw.a drop. My son in law’s townhouse is in Houston and it came out completely dry. After two days near us he went back to work . I don’t think the news showed all the dry Houston areas.
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