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Jun 1, 2024 22:50:34 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2018 12:48:21 GMT
Growing up in Charleston, rose out a couple during childhood. I STILL remember, as a previous pea indicated, the wind eating at the house like it was going to rip it to shreds.
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Post by jeremysgirl on Sept 14, 2018 0:07:08 GMT
Well this thread just scared the pants off me. Prayers for everyone impacted by hurricanes.
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Post by CarolT on Sept 14, 2018 2:49:54 GMT
We live in Orlando and have evacuated in the past, even though we were not in a mandatory evacuation zone. I’ve never regretted evacuating, but we stayed home last year for Irma and regretted it. By the time it was apparent how bad it was going to be here, it was too late to leave.
If they tell you to go, GO! Last year, my friend’s 16 year old had a grand mal seizure (his very first) during the worst of the storm. They called 911, but the winds were too strong for ambulances to be on the road and a huge oak tree was blocking their cars in...they had no way to get help for their son. Can you imagine how terrifying that was?!
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Post by Delta Dawn on Sept 14, 2018 2:54:24 GMT
We had typhoons and there was no where safe to evacuate to. Everyone stayed home.
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Post by Merge on Sept 14, 2018 3:00:20 GMT
As a Gulf coast native, I've been through several hurricanes. I am far enough inland that I am not in a mandatory evacuation zone. I've ridden out every hurricane that has ever hit. The only one I wish I had evacuated for was Ike. Since that one was more of a wind threat than a flooding threat, it was worse for me since my neighborhood rarely floods. We didn't have power for 3 weeks after Ike and that was the worst! I've been through a few hurricanes and quite a few tropical storms over the years. Ike is the one that made me say I'll probably leave next time for anything over a Cat. 1. I rode that one out alone with a cat and a drugged up dog. My house made noises I didn't know were even possible! We lost power about 6 hours before the first winds even hit, and it was out for 2 weeks. The reason I didn't leave for Ike was that we were not in a mandatory evacuation zone. Also, Ike wasn't initially predicted to hit Galveston/Houston directly. It was initially projected to hit over towards Corpus and go up through the Hill Country. I'm glad to know that Ike really was that bad. It was my first hurricane, and I was terrified! But it was "only" a category 2. I stayed awake all night and made the whole family sleep downstairs. Listening to the transformers pop all around us, wondering if a branch would come through a window ... I wouldn't stay again for a hurricane that was predicted to be a bad wind storm for us. It was awful. And then the two weeks without power. Ugh. I think a lot of people chose not to evacuate for Ike because they remembered the awfulness of the Rita evacuation - which we also did not do. Harvey wasn't that kind of terrifying for us, more just a slow watching the water level creep up the yard and wondering if it would get to the house (it didn't). And then the horror of being trapped in the house and watching on TV what so many people were going through.
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Post by Merge on Sept 14, 2018 3:01:55 GMT
Well this thread just scared the pants off me. Prayers for everyone impacted by hurricanes. Having lived the first part of my life in tornado land and the second part in hurricane land, I'll take hurricanes over tornadoes any day. With hurricanes you at least get a good, long warning.
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Post by **GypsyGirl** on Sept 14, 2018 4:26:47 GMT
I think a lot of people chose not to evacuate for Ike because they remembered the awfulness of the Rita evacuation - which we also did not do. That factored in as well. We did evacuate for Rita. 21 hours for what is normally a 3 hour trip. We went through a Category 1 in 1988 in New Orleans (also named Hurricane Florence). DH said that was enough for him. I could probably stay through a 1, but 2 and above I'm out of here. Having lived the first part of my life in tornado land and the second part in hurricane land, I'll take hurricanes over tornadoes any day. With hurricanes you at least get a good, long warning. Grew up with tornadoes, later lived in California and went through a 6.4 earthquake (DH was conveniently out of town for that as well!). I will take a hurricane any day because I've got enough warning to make the decision to leave or not. With tornadoes and earthquakes, you don't have that option.
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Post by leftturnonly on Sept 14, 2018 6:18:44 GMT
Well this thread just scared the pants off me. Prayers for everyone impacted by hurricanes. Having lived the first part of my life in tornado land and the second part in hurricane land, I'll take hurricanes over tornadoes any day. With hurricanes you at least get a good, long warning. With hurricane, you get tornadoes. Bonus! The reverse isn't true, but those tornadoes are a helluva lot worse.
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Post by cindytred on Sept 14, 2018 6:20:00 GMT
Hurricanes freak me out. I've been fortunate in that I haven't actually been in many - and none of them horrible. I vaguely remember Irma hitting Florida last year - they had predicted it was going to be catastrophic but luckily it was a non-event at my house in Tampa. Maybe because I was expecting it to be so much worse.
I am originally from Pensacola, FL (the hurricane magnet of the Gulf Coast) and they've had some doozies since I moved away in 1983.
I'm living in Houston now and I'm concerned about Hurricane Isaac that is out in the Atlantic looking like it could be a threat to the Gulf Coast sometime next week.
Cindy
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Post by leftturnonly on Sept 14, 2018 7:36:37 GMT
Florence may be a Cat 1 Hurricane, but this is why it's so dangerous.
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Post by Patter on Sept 14, 2018 10:17:20 GMT
Florence may be a Cat 1 Hurricane, but this is why it's so dangerous. Exactly! This is why my daughter and her husband came here. We are going to get torrential rain, wind, and possible tornadoes but their flooding will be worse. They live in a one story with no where to go if the water gets high. It's SO scary. Right now we have 5 of us here with 4 dogs and 2 parrots. My neighbor has a house full too. My other daughter is on shift now (police officer) and they have implemented their emergency plan until further notice. Praying for all of our first responders!
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Post by Merge on Sept 14, 2018 10:36:03 GMT
Having lived the first part of my life in tornado land and the second part in hurricane land, I'll take hurricanes over tornadoes any day. With hurricanes you at least get a good, long warning. With hurricane, you get tornadoes. Bonus! The reverse isn't true, but those tornadoes are a helluva lot worse. Yeah, that's why I made my family sleep downstairs during Ike. No basements in Houston.
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mallie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,253
Jul 3, 2014 18:13:13 GMT
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Post by mallie on Sept 14, 2018 13:32:19 GMT
Why do people stay?
In no order:
-They are stupid or have a belief that they are invulnerable to real danger. Think about how people drive daily -- absolutely insane, reckless, dangerous to themselves (I assume they care nothing for anyone else). But the way they drive is guaranteed to kill/hurt themselves. And yet they do it? Why? Because they think nothing will happen to them. They are special. Especially stunted in their development, that is -- stuck in a young child's ignorance of fatal consequences. Not far from here, as an example, some rich beachfront home owner privately plowed the dunes in front of their home because he felt they were ruining his view. Those dunes are specifically created as a barrier for storms. But hey, let's just plow them down to enhance our view.
-Lack of a place to go. Some people don't have familiy/friends they can stay with. So they need hotel rooms. Last year, when we debated about evacuating,(we are not in a mandatory zone) I thought I was looking enough in advance to get a hotel room within a "reasonable" distance. Ha. The closest place I could find was an 11 hour drive away -- and that's normal drive times, not when you are stuck on the road with millions of other people. The problem with the drive time is two-fold: gas and job retention.
-Lack of money. It costs money to rent hotel rooms, especially when they jack the rates up to take advantage of evacuees. It may be illegal, but that's not going to make one bit of difference when you are desperate to find a hotel room and a $150 room is now going for $750. I saw that for myself last year when we debated about evacuating -- hotels I had used before (so I knew the prices), were suddenly jacking up rates by $500 or more. There were also reports of (and I knew people this happened to) people getting to hotels where they had reservations and paid in advance, being told, "That will be an extra $250. Pay up or keep moving." It also costs money to get anywhere, especially when a 3 hour drive takes 15 hours -- that's substantially more gas. If you can GET gas.
-Time and the worry of getting stuck on the road in your car when you run out of gas. My workplace is located next to the major highway that links the east coast of Florida northwards. For DAYS, the traffic was either stopped for hours or stuck going 10-20 mph. And for all the petroleum companies yapping about how they were continuing to fully stock all gas stations so people didn't get stranded like they had in the past? There was NO gas in any gas station around here for 2 days prior to landfall.
-Pets. Try finding a hotel that takes pets if you wait at all to make a reservation. Or a shelter. Very few shelters allow pets and they must be in crates. All of the stores here sold out of crates a few days prior to landfall.
-Lack of transportation. Many of my employees rely on public transportation as their only way of getting around. They also live paycheck to paycheck, so they can't just rent a car (if one was available) and getting a bus out of here means they'd have to pay out that unexpected expense -- at a time when their income has decreased due to store closing during the hurricane.
-Fear of losing your job. The news here was rife of stories of people being fired for evacuating. I can also tell you that these are not just minimum wage jobs. We had just moved here when a hurricane came through. My dh was told he had to be back on site "the minute" the authorities cleared the area for local travel. If he had evacuated and had to travel back here, he would have been fired. I begged my dh to leave, regardless. He refused. I got everyone else in the car and went to relatives out of the danger zone. My dh stayed; he survived obviously. (But it has totally colored his view of his boss and workplace. He will never forgive them for that requirement -- because his work is NOT necessary to anyone's life or well being.)
-Wanting to secure your house/start clean up asap. Truthfully, I can totally see this reasoning in terms of clean up. It is the wait to clean up that leads to mold. And once you get mold, ugh. Bad bad bad news for you. So you hedge your bets and hope for the best.
-Past experiences. Here, it has been a long time since there were fatalities and the like as a result of a storm. So people think "it doesn't happen here".
Having been through a few since we moved, if we were in a mandatory evac zone, we WOULD be gone. No matter what. My husband's job can go fuck themselves.
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Post by leftturnonly on Sept 14, 2018 14:13:28 GMT
That was a really good list. This is one that affects the decision the most of people of all incomes that I know.
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Loydene
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,639
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Jul 8, 2014 16:31:47 GMT
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Post by Loydene on Sept 14, 2018 18:52:10 GMT
All of this is very interesting ... particularly since my sister just bought a townhouse on Escambia Bay in Pensacola -- which I now hear is a hurricane magnet!! And that is where I was thinking to retire ..... Oops - up popped someone I would "know" - 4th degree of separation probably -- here is what he said: one guy who stayed in New Bern said he didn't have $$ for all his family ---could have got out with his but not the grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. So there is another reason - not necessarily pets, but the rest of the family can't get out. Another edit: mallie ... I'm wondering if a better business bureau complaint -- better, state attorney general -- couldn't be made against those businesses "gouging" during a crisis. I believe the most states have laws against that sort of behavior -- it really shouldn't be allowed.
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maryannscraps
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,736
Aug 28, 2017 12:51:28 GMT
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Post by maryannscraps on Sept 14, 2018 21:50:51 GMT
My inlaws evacuated for Katrina. They'd lived in that house for almost 50 years, and never had any storm damage. Their home was hit by storm surge from the lake, and it was destroyed with virtually nothing salvageable. There were a number of homes from their neighborhood that were just gone -- all that was left were empty slabs. There were people who rode out the storm. Some died in that neighborhood and their bodies were never recovered.
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Post by yivit on Sept 14, 2018 22:24:25 GMT
My inlaws evacuated for Katrina. They'd lived in that house for almost 50 years, and never had any storm damage. Their home was hit by storm surge from the lake, and it was destroyed with virtually nothing salvageable. There were a number of homes from their neighborhood that were just gone -- all that was left were empty slabs. There were people who rode out the storm. Some died in that neighborhood and their bodies were never recovered. Yikes! My late DH's aunt lived in Gretna. Her daughter (in Mandeville) made her come stay with them. All she ended up with were some shingles gone, a tree down (that didn't hit the house) and - as she says - some people came in and borrowed some things. Her daughter's house got a huge tree knocked down on it but it didn't hurt anyone. Aunt invited us to come stay with her in Gretna when Rita was threatening us (which we almost considered, but thankfully didn't).
They lived in Buras when Camille came in. They were going to stay, but left at the last minute. It was a good thing they left because when they got back, the only thing standing was the old PO from what she told me. Everything else was just empty slabs. DH and his older brother were spending the summer with them, and that's the ONLY reason they left.
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maryannscraps
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,736
Aug 28, 2017 12:51:28 GMT
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Post by maryannscraps on Sept 14, 2018 23:48:08 GMT
My inlaws evacuated for Katrina. They'd lived in that house for almost 50 years, and never had any storm damage. Their home was hit by storm surge from the lake, and it was destroyed with virtually nothing salvageable. There were a number of homes from their neighborhood that were just gone -- all that was left were empty slabs. There were people who rode out the storm. Some died in that neighborhood and their bodies were never recovered. Yikes! My late DH's aunt lived in Gretna. Her daughter (in Mandeville) made her come stay with them. All she ended up with were some shingles gone, a tree down (that didn't hit the house) and - as she says - some people came in and borrowed some things. Her daughter's house got a huge tree knocked down on it but it didn't hurt anyone. Aunt invited us to come stay with her in Gretna when Rita was threatening us (which we almost considered, but thankfully didn't).
They lived in Buras when Camille came in. They were going to stay, but left at the last minute. It was a good thing they left because when they got back, the only thing standing was the old PO from what she told me. Everything else was just empty slabs. DH and his older brother were spending the summer with them, and that's the ONLY reason they left.
They were in Slidell. Honestly, they still feel the effects of Katrina to this day. They lost a number of friends to heart attacks, strokes, and suicide. It was so awful. I'm not sure people appreciate that more than 10 years later. My inlaws didn't lose any money in it -- they were well covered with insurance (thank you USAA!), but money doesn't cover your friends and the life you had. I can't even tell you how many divorces resulted from that hurricane. Just the sheer stress that went on for years. At this point, they say they would not evacuate (although they aren't in any sort of flood zone or anything), because they'd rather just die than go through that again.
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