I don't understand are people lazy in storms or what?

[snooper2]

CNN just showed a couple families staying even though mandatory evacuation on Long Island.

There was water in the street and creeping up the driveways around the cars and to the garages. If you are going to go ahead and stay shouldn't you be productive? Maybe loosen all the lugs and jack up the cars higher putting the rims under the frames or use wood or scrap crap to raise it 3-4 feet in the garage to try to save your car? Get inside and start moving shit (I saw furniture through the window) upstairs?

There was a bunch of yard-work, ornaments, decorative rocks and stuff in the yard. Take 15 minutes to grab that stuff and stick it on a shelf in the garage.

Oh Well

[Butterbean]

1. Ignorance, denial. My parents refused to evacuate

for a cat. 4 storm. I was 16, I was helpless and had to stay with them. They didn't do anything to prepare either, as they are both from Ohio, and thought the whole hurricane thing was "just a storm." They know better now, but it took getting our asses kicked being scared to death riding out a cat 4 storm in a bathtub in the dark for reality to sink in.

People just don't/won't get it until it happens. Nothing you can do.

[randome]

2. Seems like the majority of forecasts are overly dramatic.

Maybe people tend to discount them as they did the Boy Who Cried Wolf?

I'm starting to think the forecasters are spot on this time, though.

[TwilightGardener]

3. Having been through a flash flood myself, had I

been able to see it coming, I would have saved a lot of things and prepared my home. Nothing like throwing your hard-earned but soggy household belongings into a dumpster.

[quinnox]

4. maybe they don't care about all that junk

[SheilaT]

5. It's a combination of ignorance, if you've never been through that kind of thing before,

and an almost reasonable reaction to the tendency to exaggerate possible dangers from all approaching storms.

In 1972, when Hurricane Agnes came ashore, I was working at National Airport in Washington, D.C. We were told that evening that the George Washington Parkway into Alexandria was underwater. About 11 am an employee from another airline decided he'd try to drive home, and I asked him for a ride. The Parkway was high and dry. Well, maybe not exactly dry, but it was above water at that point. I don't believe it ever flooded, because the next morning the busses were operating and I had no trouble taking one to get back to work.

But were I in the path of this storm I'd either be sure I was on ground high enough to avoid flooding, or I'd have evacuated.

[HopeHoops]

6. We took care of the outside yesterday. It's already nasty and the worst is still far off.

Our township sent out a robo call stating that we are in an official state of emergency - non-essential travel prohibited. It looks like Sandy will be parked over MY FUCKING HOUSE! for at least 24 hours. I just let both dogs out and they took their shits but didn't seem happy about it - would YOU want to shit in 35 mph winds with sideways rain? At least the cats can shit inside.

[braddy]

7. Good post, that is an excellent observation.

Anyone willing to chance surviving a hurricane, you would think that they would be the type that are eager to take on a challenge, the type that would be all over their house, preparing and strengthening defenses, fighters, instead of lazy and passive.

Newcomers to hurricane regions don't realize how hurricanes can erase houses, people that haven't seen the results up close, think in terms of downed trees and broken windows, but they don't realize that houses, and entire neighborhoods can simply disappear, with nothing left but slabs on vacant lots and no remnant of whoever lived there.