Here's a story from Galveston for everyone blaming those who stayed:

[crispini]

Sure, there were some who could go and didn't, but there were also some who wanted to go and couldn't:

Winters, on the other hand, had tried everything to get out before Ike hit. The native Galvestonian has been registered for special assistance for the last five years, she said, but no one came to the retirement community on 61st to help her and her cat escape.

Increasingly desperate as forecasters and government officials warned of certain death for coastal residents who remained in Ike's path, Winters spent the last few days on the phone, trying to find someone who could help her out of her first-floor apartment. She called 311, 211, 911 and the number for the city's Emergency Management Center. But she was still waiting at 8 p.m. Friday, when all rescue attempts ceased. That's when police, EMS and firefighters returned to the San Luis hotel, where they bunkered down with city officials and journalists.

Winters parked herself in front of the TV, switching between three networks and the Weather Channel until the power went out. Then she turned on her battery-powered radio and went to the bedroom to lie down. She woke up later with water trickling on her toes.

the rest of the story...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6000366.html

[malaise]

1. Thanks for this - I'm adding a link to me thread.

K & R

[msongs]

2. what about her friends network? nt

[stray cat]

3. Not all people have a strong connection of mobile friends in an emergency

[eShirl]

8. what friends network?

[HughMoran]

13. Friends?

Making an Assumption?

[KoKo]

18. Not everyone has a "friends network." Particularly elderly who have friends who've died

and kids who live far away. We are very much a nation of strangers for many folks these days.

[pitohui]

22. she's 79 and in a wheelchair, her friend's network is dead jim

it must be nice to have no idea of what it's like to be old

people tend to have their deepest friendship with peers, but sadly other wheelchair bound residents at her retirement community in their late 70s and early 80s are unlikely to be able to up for much in the way of rescue duty

if you live long enough then most of your friends are either dead or have serious illnesses/disabilities of their own

it would be nice if america was a civilization rather than a popularity contest, you have to eat shit and make people like you and be friendly to deserve just to be allowed to LIVE? and even if you're the nicest person in the world, hello, you're 79, many many MANY people won't be your friend simply for that reason, this is an age-ist society

[readmoreoften]

31. You forgot the sarcasm icon.

[slackmaster]

4. Thanks for posting this - It's pretty much what I had assumed to be the case for some people

:kick:

[WolverineDG]

5. k&r

from a Texan sick of the Texas bashing on DU......

:hi: crispy!

dg

[Skittles]

60. it's fine that there are stories of Texans doing great things

it's NOT fine when Texans insinuate people in other states would not do such things

[WolverineDG]

61. It's also not fine when people in other states

wish for hurricanes to destroy Crawford, which would mean most of the state would be devastated, or insinuate that all Texans are stupid because shrubbie claims to be from here instead of Connecticut....

dg

[Skittles]

65. stiffen up

why is it that Texans claim to be so tough but fold like cheap lawn chairs with a few digs? Good thing most of them are not blonde.

[lastliberalintexas]

69. Perhaps it's the ignorance that we despise?

I can't tell you how many posts I saw pre-Ike wishing ill on Crawford. Do the idiots not understand basic Texas geography? I have no patience for anyone who would try to score any political points or even make such lame "jokes" as the Crawford jibe in these times. If you think that's folding, then I would have you come to SE Texas right now so that you could see just how tough so many Texans (and SW Louisianans) actually are.

[WolverineDG]

72. When the abuse is repeated again & again? Hell no nt

[SoCalDem]

6. Shame on her neighbors..

:(

[shrike]

14. Read the whole story. Her neighbors saved her.

[SmileyRose]

26. They could have saved by taking them and her out of harm's way

At least one of her neighbors had to have been able to make a spot in the car for her. They got lucky. I'm glad, but they got lucky.

I understand why people stay. Either by choice thinking "it won't happen to me" or being unable to get out like this woman, or staying to help an at risk loved one who stubbornly won't or can't leave. I'm honestly not blaming the victim. But here is a woman who wanted to leave and couldn't find anyone to get her out. Shame on her neighbors is right (the one's that left her behind).

[shrike]

48. I see what you mean. Yes, you'd think somebody could have given her a ride out of there

Shame on her neighbors, and shame on the assistance system that failed her.

[chill_wind]

7. To the GP. Yesterday I was waiting in a medical waiting room,

where CNN was blaring about all the "Stubborn people who didn't leave."
They cited, among others, the death of an 80 year old woman who had refused to leave. A well-heeled woman sat down beside me and proceeded to take up the theme. "What's WRONG with those people. How irresponsible! Wouldn't YOU leave?!"

I replied that a LOT of people stayed behind against their better judgment. I retorted- "If your 80 year old mother, for what ever irrational (or other unknown) reason, refused to evacuate-- would YOU abandon her?" It was a short conversation.

[KoKo]

17. Kick this to the Greatest Page...So many DU'ers need to read this...

This woman called and called all the agencies she was supposed to. She had nothing else she could do but stay to die if that's what it came to. And, look at the neighbors who rescued her and got her upstairs. They had a 17 hour trip in the last evacuation where the guy's wife ended up in the hospital due to the stress.

That's way many folks didn't evacuate...

[EFerrari]

19. And did you catch the part about the couple who stayed

rather than face another horrible evacuation? I remember those cars sitting on the highway for HOURS. People with health problems or frail dependents had an awful choice to make.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

21. The majority of Texas deaths from Rita took place during the evacuation

It was a terrifying nightmare for many.

[Oak2004]

64. And keep in mind the Rita evac was an attempt at a Republican face-saving publicity stunt

You almost never evacuate from wind. You evacuate from water. No road system can handle a universal evacuation throughout the entirety of a hurricane's probable strike area, and shelter resources are insufficient to relocate millions at short notice. Evacuating from wind only makes sense when an individual does not have access to a sturdy shelter inwhich to wait out the storm.

But after the disaster (to their popularity, not to the people affected) of Katrina, the Republican Party was hell-bent on proving that states with Republican governors could do it so much better than the Democrats (who they were, predictably, blaming for their own fiasco).

So they evacuated. Everyone. Probably to the fury and frustration of their emergency managers, who must have pounded the tables and shouted and screamed trying to talk some sense into the Deciders.

And so what they got was a man-made disaster: the evacuation itself. Which contributed to the disaster of Ike.

Hurray to the GOP for keeping Americans safe yet again :sarcasm:

[tpsbmam]

9. Thanks for the story....this is certainly government failure but it's also

human failure. It's up to us to learn our community and reach out to be there for people who might need help. It's up to us to check on our friends and neighbors and to befriend those who might need help. I can't afford to drive all over the place for Meals on Wheels these days -- gas is just too expensive. But I most certainly can afford to befriend one or two elderly neighbors or neighbors with disabilities, check on them on a regular basis, do their marketing for them when i do mine or bring them with me when I'm doing errands anyway, and so on.

I don't do this here. I do vaguely know of a couple of distant neighbors who, were they on their own, would need this kind of help -- both thankfully have family who help them. I did bother to check and make sure. I've done this in most places where I've lived -- NYC, Madison (WI), Connecticut, etc. I've checked for programs here that would make it possible for me to do this here but so far haven't found anything -- I'll likely go volunteer some time for a more general program for the elderly so that I can make those connections.

Too many of us are too isolated these days. We forget that there are people out there who have no one and, in a situation like this, have no one to rely on.

The government needs to do better. We need to do better.


(Edited to add that, thankfully, there were neighbors who DID do better. Still, we need to be putting our neighbors in our cars and getting them the hell out before they're in a position like Margaret Winters ended up in.)

[malaise]

10. Great post

You're a real neighbor. :yourock:

[tpsbmam]

11. Thanks -- truthfully, though

I've been too slow to do this since I've moved here. I've been too self-involved. I've been here for over 3 years now and still haven't gotten this rolling. I've gotten lazy and complacent about it. Margaret Winters just gave me a swift kick in the ass and I'll act on this NOW!

[Solly Mack]

15. K&R

[EFerrari]

20. It's a really good idea to know who has a baby or a walker or

might need help in an emergency. Our block is 2/3 single family homes and 1/3 apartments so it's tricky to figure out who is where sometimes because of the density. But after a while, just watching people get in and out of cars, you can start deducing who's living with their adult kids, who only gets visitors on week-ends, that mom who has a baby, a tot AND a dog, that kind of thing.

[Bluebear]

12. Darwin Award! Idiot! Thinning of the herd! Natural selection!!!!11

Along with a slew of other choice names that I saw being bandied about on DU over the last couple days.

[davsand]

16. When did DU and the DUers become so mean?

One of the things I appreciated most about DU when I found it in 2001 was the fact that the DUers, for the most part, were people who actually GOT it. I see some of the comments like the ones you describe and I wonder when DU changed so radically.

We went from being a community to being a mob or pack.


:cry:


Laura

[pitohui]

24. i'm wondering the same thing

i can only hope it's bullshit trolls and election year infiltrators responsible for some of the hateful posts i've seen about ike

in several threads i have seen evil people actually call for the people in need of rescue to be billed for rescue services -- shades of red china!

you might as well just kill them then, since the people in need of rescue are going to be the most financially fragile and the older people who have lost their homes now have nothing except their social security payments -- should these be claimed to pay the coast guard and the people allowed to die for lack of food and medicine, in which point, why pretend to rescue them at all?

i really HOPE no one is really this cold and evil, i really HOPE it is a calculated troll effort to dis-spirit people, i would hope the "real DU" is about community and understanding

[Festivito]

25. Hi DavSand. Yup, lots more. Lots lots more.

Hey, at fifty cents a post, it's a living I guess. They've become really good at just being impertinent enough without causing clear rule violations.

I'm hoping someday we can color code names so we don't get overloaded with garbage, but it's a slow process.

Hope you guys are doing well. Long time, no see.

[EFerrari]

54. There is a mob mentality that can take over that I haven't seen

until pretty recently -- maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

There's also the contamination we all tilt with from these Bush years. That's going to be a struggle to counter and we have to counter it because it destroys the sense of community, maybe purposefully.

There are still plenty of people here who help first and bitch later, lol. And we're not going anywhere. lol

:hi:

[davsand]

56. I find that as I have aged I have become more insistent about doing the "right" thing.

I have always heard references to the idealism of youth, but I have to say that as I get closer to 50 I am even MORE intent on doing the things I did when I was an idealistic kid. I dunno how it goes for anyone else, but I still spend a lot of my time working to leave the world a little better off than it was when I came into it.

You are right, sfexpat, some of us are not going anywhere except out to bind the wounds and ease the burdens. I'm still laying it down in person, physically, or politically and I expect that will never change. Like the Scorpion, "It is just my nature."

Peace to you.

:hug:



Laura

[EFerrari]

57. I'm the same age and it's not likely I can be different.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what people do when confronted with a crisis.

Some of us move away, some of us go right to it. That might just be DNA.

It's good to know who and how you are.

lol

:)

[Art_from_Ark]

68. We were a small community back then

mostly composed of sincere progressives. Then as we got bigger, we lost a lot of that character, as so often happens with small towns that grow from 4,000 to 120,000 in the course of less than 8 years.

[RoyGBiv]

28. No shit ...

I have unfortunately been forced to reassess my mental list of people I think are wastes of breath ... intelligent people with not one shred of decency in them.

Reading some threads, I thought I'd gone back in time and was reading a forum full of the racists and ignorant bastards who were gleefully celebrating the deaths of Katrina victims.

And this was before the storm hit, when I was nervous as all hell and just trying to get my mind off what was about to happen.

Makes me sick.

[KoKo]

23. Another kick for this article and comments by those who encourage us all to do better with neighbors

:kick:

[Xipe Totec]

27. I don't blame those who stayed because they could not leave

I blame those who could leave but didn't, and came here to brag about it.

[EFerrari]

30. He left, too. What about not blaming anyone until

we get a head count and people have a dry place to sleep? Think of it as a Karma deposit.

[readmoreoften]

33. I don't get why people are so desperate to blame. Are we such a low self-esteem nation that we need

to hurl rage at hurricane victims? If 40% of the city didn't leave maybe there's a good reason why some of them were stuck. I'm really getting sick of this "Americans are stupid, meme." Really sick of it.

I agree with your post sfexpat.

[EFerrari]

39. When I do that, it's because I don't want to feel helpless.

Not much to do with other people, really.

[readmoreoften]

50. That's a good point. But it's also to feel superior. "I'm so smart I'd be one of the evacuees"

"I'd be one of the people the media says are the 'good guys.'"

I also detect a bit of arrogance attached to it: "I'm good enough and smart enough that I have a car and can afford a hotel and gas. If my house blows down I'll be okay because I 'worked hard' to have job skills that allow me to go anywhere. I also don't know what it means to grow up in a community and to resist being uprooted. I think that 'community' means helping out the 'worthy poor and suffering' around me not 'being a part of a place where I am equal and I belong.'"

Ah.... it just really pisses me off. I suppose because I'm in Austin and my relatives are evacuees right now. Some of them were confused as to whether or not they should leave until the last minute. I'm taking this very personally.

[EFerrari]

51. What an awful choice they had to make.

:(

Are you in good communication?

:hug:

[Xipe Totec]

40. Excuse me, but those people put others at risk

Over 100 911 calls came in from the west side of Galveston after sundown Friday.

That puts the lives of first responders at risk.

There is no excuse for anyone staying on Galveston Island, especially if they're not behind the seawall.

[readmoreoften]

49. Bullshit. The rescue teams would be going out there anyway. Why do you think the poor are stupid?

Even if 95% of the coast was evacuated the goddamn rescue teams would be out there doing their jobs. IT'S THEIR JOB. Whether they are searching for 100 people or 20,000 people isn't much different. The storm is OVER. Why are rescue teams suddenly "risking their lives" when Sean Penn and John Edwards worked as rescuers after Katrina.

The evacuation was a clusterfuck of misinformation. Galveston is a town full of yachts but also a town full of drifters and poor folks. Maybe some of you people should buy a clue: if 40% of a population refuses to evacuate maybe they're not just "stupid" or "selfish."

Maybe they stayed behind to evacuate the elderly and board up their homes but it was too late when it came time for them to leave. Maybe they were children of alcoholics who weren't going to board a bus and leave their mother and her dog to die. Maybe they were Vietnam vets who lived on the beach off VA checks and thought "I'd rather just die here where I've lived for 30 years than be homeless in town."

More people died evacuating in Rita than in the storm.
Up until the night before KHOU was reporting that it was a Cat 1 or Cat 2. Many of these people lived through Cat. 4s.
Few people trust media hype or the government.
Some people know that the government put padlocks on perfectly good homes after Katrina.

So all the rich white people with cars, who can afford cars and hotels and ANTI-DEPRESSANTS are grand citizens. But the people who missed the bus because they were waiting for their boyfriend to get home from his job as a dishwasher and the Vietnam Vet drifters and the people who stayed behind to care for the mentally ill or who couldn't go because their parents wouldn't leave: fuck them because they're "stupid."

Why are you so full of hate for people who's circumstances you don't even know? I'm in Texas. I know people effected by this. I know the clusterfuck that it has been. I know how corrupt politics are down here and how far they'll go to cover shit up. I know how the evacuees are suffering in my community. And many of THEM are afraid for their neighbors who stayed behind. I've yet to meet a single evacuee who has such hatred for their neighbors. Maybe because they're not media abstractions.

[malaise]

66. Nice post

:D

[sabrina 1]

59. Why do we need first responders

if when there is a crisis, we don't expect them to respond? I have responders in my family and they WANT to do their job.

We don't know why some people didn't leave, nor should we care. The first priority should be to save lives. And if you read the OP, some people did try to get out, disabled people, but couldn't.

I don't get this need to place blame either.

This, hurricanes and natural disasters, are national security issues. Bush and his cronies should have been held criminally responsible for their failure to do anything for five days, after Katrina. Blame them, if you are looking to place blame somewhere.

[Xipe Totec]

34. If he left, I have no quarrel

It's these people that drive me batty:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid823425597/bclid877032950/bctid1785349319

I have no pity for them.

[EFerrari]

36. People do the best they can, with or without our pity. n/t

[Xipe Totec]

41. Did you see the video?

Did you hear the reason he gave for staying?

"wanted good surf the next morning"

[EFerrari]

42. Yes, I did see that. That is what he said. He also looked shocky.

You can't always go with what people say with their mouths. And even if he really did do that, that means he made a stupid choice. It happens.

[Xipe Totec]

45. It happens, true,

I'm sorry, but I do not have any pity for people who make stupid choices.

Stupid choices is what the last 8 years were all about.

Might as well forgive the people who thought invading Iraq was a good idea.

[EFerrari]

53. Well, the last eight years were brought to us by election theft.

And Cheney knew exactly what he was doing and that he would bear no consequence.

In any case, I know we agree on hoping that people will recover soon enough to decide not to do this again.

/oops

[LanternWaste]

62. For my part...

For my part, it's precisely those people who make stupid choices that receive my pity and my empathy as I've never met anyone who didn't make a stupid choice at one point in their lives or another.

Seems to me that if both pity and forgiveness are infinite, there's no reason to horde them, and dole them out only to those we judge as being "smart" enough.

[RoyGBiv]

29. Thanks for posting this n/t

[progressivebydesign]

32. No one has blamed those who cannot leave. Not one person here has.

We have blamed those people that stayed to protect their belongings, even though it meant putting First Responders at risk, and those that were unable to leave.

Many officials have gone on record as being extremely pissed off that some people refused to leave, because it endangers everyone.

Of course there are exceptions for people who could not leave. As I said, no one here blamed those that could not leave. Every post had that caveat. Those that refused to leave endangered those who could not leave.

One woman was quoted as not leaving because she didn't want "looters" to get her stuff, and stood watch with a shotgun and "had permission from neighbors to shoot anyone going onto their property"

[EFerrari]

35. By all means, echo the BushCo official line. I'm sure the good people of TX

need you to chime in. What would they do without your blame in this awful time?

[readmoreoften]

43. Yes and most of you seem to assume that the large majority fall under that category.

A good number of people in Galveston are loners, beach bums, ex-Vietnam Vets who don't have Blackberries or the internet and some don't have (gasp) TVs. Many people know through the grapevine how the feds confiscated perfectly good homes after Katrina. So when the government issues an optional evacuation for what the Houston weather folks call "a category 2" or even "Looks like it might even be a category 1..." people don't know what to do or who to trust.

It's easy to fault these people for being 'greedy' but when you're poor and you bought your house from a settlement you received from the VA back in 1973 and you have no family and you're facing a future of life on the streets of a town where nobody knows you...you better believe that people in such a predicament are going to stay.

I didn't see one yuppie with a beach home say "I'm going to die in my beach home." I only saw people who said--in so many words--"why should I leave? if I lose my house (the home I got with a settlement check, the home my father paid off in 1964 and passed down to me, etc) I'll be a middle-aged homeless woman in a strange city and I won't even be able to get my $500 a month disability checks.

Yeah some people are stupid thrill seekers. But I highly doubt that 40% of the city are stupid thrill seekers. It's offensive to suggest such a thing.

[Lars39]

52. Wrong.

There were several here who blamed them, saying that there was ample buses and shelters for everyone and there was no excuse. Those posters were alerted on.

[countryjake]

37. I don't get that attitude...on Wed. even the mayor was saying "sit tight"...

only on Friday morning did Galveston authorities realize they would be the center of the storm.

The stilt houses were built to withstand storm surges. The dire Weather Service warning was issued for people in single story, first floor, ground level housing, specifically, which gave the stilt people a false sense of safety, actually.

On the Strand and Galveston proper, flooding reportedly began long before Ike actually hit, (four feet early Fri. afternoon) in which case, who the hell would risk driving across that causeway, with wave height as it was?

[proud patriot]

38. Thank goodness for caring neighbors

k and R

[tannybogus]

44. Prescription for disaster.

People had evacuated for Gustav and Rita(years before). That was an awful experience and the storms were not major problems.
People who haven't been through a major hurricane tend to downplay what can happen in their minds. I'm not sure it can be comprehended.
Some people who have been through a major hurricane tend to gloss over what happened.
Katrina may have subconsciously given some people a better feeling. Katrina had levees that broke. People may have been thinking that since there were no levees that it couldn't be that bad.
And it's just hard to leave home I don't care who you are and what you've been through.:(

And FEMA is going to eff something up because anything Bush is remotely near is FUBAR. I'll stop about FEMA or I might go all night.:rant:

[EFerrari]

55. And a lot of people remember the horrible Rita evacuation

that was gridlocked for hours in the heat, their cars breaking down, and no help along the road. :(

[lastliberalintexas]

70. Rita and Gustav evacs

That was a big part of why people stayed, whether thay told the media that or not. Hurricane fatigue has set in on SE Texas and SW Louisiana, and I'm sorry to say that this was the result.

And until anyone has walked a mile those people's shoes, it would probably be better not to cast aspersions.

[EFerrari]

71. If the danger of the Rita evac didn't change your mind

the expense of the Gustav evac did. I hear you.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

46. Oh, this is horrible.

The poor woman. :cry:

[DustyJoe]

47. Proves the Point

Unless you know each persons personal dilemma or condition, there is no reason to belittle or judge their decision.

[roody]

58. We need to look at Cuba. They evacuate everybody.

[crispini]

63. I see this needs a kick. nt

[Dukkha]

67. see jerkass Haroldgreen's comment at the bottom?

HaroldGreen wrote:
I think that when an area, zip code, etc. is told to evacuate that the people must do so. If they choose to stay, and have to be evacuated later, they should have to pay a fee to the governemnt to cover the tax payers's expense of evacuating them.

Yeah, that's exactly why they stayed. they had plenty of disposable income to get themselves out but didn't so make them pay for their own evacuation. :eyes: