Sunday, September 7, 2008

I don't like Ike and neither should you

A possible one, two punch from two major hurricanes within a week of each other? That's preposterous. That's ridiculous. That's exactly what could be happening right now. The likelihood that Ike will strike Florida is fairly certain. Experts are suggesting it could be the most powerful storm to strike Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. People in New Orleans will recall two facts. When Hurricane Betsy hit Miami in 1965, it started on a track that eventually hit New Orleans. When Hurricane Andrew struck the southern peninsula of Florida, it followed a similar track. With those historical markers stated, let me now give you my gut feelings. All through the Gustav crisis, I kept eyeing Ike. It developed very quickly and reminded me of Hurricane Camille in how compact and destructive it seemed to be. Because it already is or is about to hit areas devastated by Gustav and Hannah earlier, this storm has the potential to inflict major loss of life in the Caribbean. But closer to home there are several things that are clear. To mount another major evacuation in another few days on the scale of what we went through with Gustav seems unlikely. Like the boy who cried wolf, Mayor Nagin's call for everyone to leave the city for the "mother of all storms" might come back to haunt him. People may reason that nothing happened before, so why not ride out the storm. That's a dangerous assumption and one that police and Homeland Security definitely don't one people to take. Like it or not, a good number of people in Southeast Louisiana don't have the means necessary to evacuate and stay away from their homes for extended periods of time. I am holding my breath a bit on this one. As Ike makes its way towards the Gulf, we'll get a better sense where the storm will eventually make landfall. The forecasters were dead on track for Gustav. Their suggested path of the storm has it in the Gulf by Thursday, a horrifying thought indeed.

1 comment:

Leigh C. said...

Glad to have found your blog through the New Orleans News Ladder! And even THINKING about Ike at this point is gonna drive me batty. The rest of the NOLA blogpocheh is reeling as well. Ugh.