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Hurricane Preparedness

August 25, 2011 by · Comments Off on Hurricane Preparedness 

Hurricane PreparednessHurricane Preparedness, An earthquake shook the entire east coast just a few minutes this week. It gave no warning, no indication that would ever happen, and then, within seconds, he disappeared. In the evening, everyone was back in the groove of Manhattan – and what passes for it in Washington, Philadelphia and so on.

However, the earthquake was only the introductory paragraph of what will be a story of a week’s time on other, more slowly on some turmoil: Hurricane Irene.

Interestingly, as we now have such accurate prediction of electronic devices, drama-hungry media, such as personal communication and universal, each individual who is evenly remotely in the way of this little time is being subjected to the psychological stress of waiting. Access to television and the web every 15 minutes to see if the “cone of prediction” has finally embraced a territory of their home becomes a compulsive ritual. The Weather Channel is doubled the staff, knowing that their ads hair replacement and foot fungus triple in value during the time of storm.

Survive here on the Gulf Coast; my life has been marked by many events such as. However, the first two storms occurred at a time with relatively primitive indicators of progress. At that time not reported, which did not suffer from the days of anxiety, as both hurricanes past, the death toll was largely unaffected by the lack of preparation. The cost of material, it was inevitable. Nothing to be done. But there was no significant loss of life incurred solely by excess foreign concern.

1957 Hurricane Audrey was and remains the strongest storm of America always in the month of June. A Category 4 Audrey crashed headfirst into southwestern Louisiana. I was in third grade and spent a week at a very primitive, though pleasant, summer camp in the forest with my two cousins. One night the wind began to blow hard and rain started coming sideways, so everything has to sleep on pallets in the cafeteria. We ate peanut butter and jelly by candlelight. That was my Hurricane Audrey.

A week later, my father and I drove to the coast devastated the small town of Holly Beach, where we spend time in summer in a ramshackle house in the small beach. Approaching the Gulf Coast, Dad kept his eye on the odometer, anticipating a break in the tracks and signals. He was right to do so. Two miles from Holly Beach, large oil astride the road from east to west. There was no one on board. We went carefully through the drained rice fields, traveling around the propeller, which rose above 20 feet from our car. In just a mile, who were in the water’s edge?

But Holly Beach was not in sight. The sand never returned, and the hometown is still a quarter mile into the sea. Audrey and thus did affect me, after the fact.

In 1965, Hurricane Betsy roared directly over the New Orleans itself, and then crashed directly upstream through Baton Rouge, reaching the coast during my first week at university. I had been away from home and in school for only three days, sleeping on top of a bunk bed screaming, drinking beer with different young foreigners – in the process, and hoping to analyze the origins of adult life.

We had no TVs or phones or computers, little interest in listening to weather reports on radio otherwise full of the Beatles and the Stones. Therefore, he had received no warning when we awoke to the lack of electricity and 155 mph winds. Betsy was suddenly bursts rather difficult for the mile-wide Mississippi River raised 10 feet at the edges. The water rushed over the levees of Lake Pontchartrain, but the levees held.

Roaring winds shook the bedroom window of wrought iron. I dropped down from the bed. Passing through about four feet unexpected cold liquid and floating shoes.

My ground floor bedroom was waist-deep in floodwater. I leaned forward and looked through the main entrance of the strong, thick-walled construction, fascinated. Cars rolling down the street, driven by the wind to move sideways on its own. Up in expansion-uprooted oaks, three-storey buildings flew low class, and crashed into the tallest structures.

And I thought, “This is what life outside the home is.” Betsy, as bad as it was, was not able to traumatize advance. It was right there.

Forty years later, I returned to New Orleans from Japan 48 hours before Katrina. I was seriously outdated, but when I got home, I immediately grabbed a ladder and began to secure storm shutters to the windows of my house 27. Upon completion, the storm was only 18 hours away and the city was under a mandatory evacuation order. There was also a great emotional stress to handle. I did. After 14 hours of terror-filled ride, with three cats VW Beetle and the clothing was never a safe place, 200 miles north.

It was the first time in my life evacuated. I have vowed not to leave again.

My 48 hours of waiting for hurricane preparedness kit now involves batteries and flashlights, bottles of oil for lamps and lanterns, fresh water and a chest full of ice, a battery powered radio and two good books, a couple of bags of crisps and, of course, a large visible supply of bourbon.

And because I live where you do, I got in my yard a little canoe – a shallow water boat Cajun – and a gas generator. None of which is likely to be necessary in New York or Boston.

But elsewhere, a calm demeanor and positive absorption of selected information are essential. If it’s going to happen, it will. These days, after the logistical preparation is complete, go into a holiday mood, leaving only two-day weather updates.

Strong winds or not, Happy Hour will come when needed.

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