ostrich. head. sand.

I agree completely with Codger_64.

When we come to what could be one of those final bottom lines, it's up to us, ourselves, to either make it or not. If the government doesn't have either the time, money, or supplies to swoop in, in order to save me, does my government deserve the blame, or is it me that has bought the full portion of the blame, because I've allowed myself to drift into a situation/location where I might need rescuing...?

It helps to think of the government as a safety net, rather than a parachute. It has holes in it, and, sometimes, people will fall through....

I'm not going to rely on my neighbors or my government for my survival because my survival is up to me. Some people don't understand that, however.

What's going to happen when something unimagined occurs, that completely shocks and surprises us, like 9/11 did, and, suddenly, everyone who said that they didn't need to prepare, needs to prepare...? The roads are going to be grid-locked, grocery stores' parking lots will be filled to over-flowing, and people will be fighting in the aisles for supplies that are running off of the shelves. I'd rather do my pantry-stocking now, when there are still sales on grocery goods and bottled water, and the survival stores are so accessible, especially online.

Some people are ready for unforeseen circumstances, and some people will never be. I believe that has been referred to as "Social Darwinism."

Survivors will survive.

GeoThorn
 
Codger_64 said it well. I grew up in upstate NY in a river valley, and I knew better than to live right down by the river. It was only a matter of time before the river would come over the banks. When I moved to Kalifornia, it quickly became clear to me that to build on top of a soft sandstone sea cliff or on a steep hillside in this state was to invite disaster. It might take 20 years before it happens, it might happen the next week. But it will happen. So when I see very expensive neighborhoods built in high-risk areas, I cringe. I know that the developers probably had some undue influence on politicians who then changed zoning so the development could be built there. And people who should know better move into their beautiful surroundings (heck, if I could figure it out shortly after moving here, why can't the natives figure it out?). But our nanny government has stepped in to save the people from their own stupidity, at the expense of the taxpayers. I challenge anyone to point out where in the federal or state constitutions the government is authorized to rebuild houses for fools who build in risky locations. As the saying goes, if you shield fools from the consequences of their actions, you create a nation of fools.

Of course, there are limits to that argument. I think Katrina was so much more devastating than a lot of the historical experience indicated that those who built in areas that were well inland and on higher ground were in a position to reasonably expect low risk. But New Orleans has been a ticking time bomb for a long time. Give me a break, a city of that size below sea level, protected from Lake Ponchartrain by levees? Guess what, levees eventually fail. And they fail because government at all levels - city, county, state, and federal - do not prioritize their maintenance and improvement. But that maintenance and improvement should be paid for by those who choose to live in that high risk location, not by taxpayers halfway across the country.

The takehome lesson is that all areas have some level of risk of natural disasters. Choose your location with an effort to minimize that risk, either locally or regionally. And then have a reasonable level of preparedness in food, shelter, fuel, etc. As we saw with Katrina, a large scale disaster creates such a large demand for assistance that you just cannot rely on any form of government help. Nor should you.
 
I had thought this thread didn't go anywhere, went away, came back, and found lots of responses. My bad for posting and running.

When I posted that story I wasn't thinking about the poor choices that people make in terms of where they live, or of the tax burden we all share because of those choices. I'm the first one to tell people not to live in a flood plain. OTOH, I know from first-hand experience that people sometimes end up living where economics take them. In my case, I came to California for the jobs. It meant living in an seismically active area, but it was either that or languish unemployed in my chosen field elsewhere.

Still, once you've decided to live in a risky place, it behooves you, I think, to minimize your risks. You can do this by not buying a house 5 feet above sea level in a hurricane-prone area and not buying a house on a steep hillside given to mudslides. But more to the point, you can also minimize your risks by putting together survival gear against the likelihood that things are going to go bad.

I'm talking about water and food and tents and blankets and all the sort of stuff that Codger_64 talked about. I'm talking about paying attention when the authorities tell you that you might have to take care of yourself for 48 or 72 hours, or two weeks, or whatever it is for your locale.

But people don't heed those warnings. Or, more to the point, not enough people heed those warnings. Why? Well, the title of the thread partially sums it up: Ostrich. Head. Sand. But also people are busy, preparing is expensive, and preparing is actually kind of boring for a lot of people.

I don't know that people are actually expecting the government to take care of them if the bad thing happens. At least, I don't think that's foremost in their thought processes. Rather, I think they're sort of playing the odds. Chances are, there won't be an major earthquake in my location this year so I don't really have to do that boring, expensive preparation thing, do I?

Likewise, on the gulf coast, chances are good for any given person that there won't be a hurricane hitting them this year so why take all those funny warnings seriously?

I don't know if there's an answer to any of this, except to watch a few more cities be destroyed and a lot more people hurt in the aftermath and government (at all levels) struggle and ultimately fail to save people, because government ultimately can not save whole populations that are unprepared. If bad things keep happening, people will get it and they will finally start to take care of themselves.

As for me, well, I tend to be paranoid about these things. I have my earthquake kit. It isn't as good as I want it to be, but I doubt very seriously that there will ever be a time when I'll have done everything I can imagine doing to get ready for "the big one."

One thing's for certain, though. If the fortunes of my life had deposited me in New Orleans, I like to think I'd have been smart enough to stand in my backyard, look up at the top of the levee, and promptly put an axe and inflatable raft in my attic.

I just can't imagine living in a hurricane prone area and not being prepared to paddle myself to the aid station.

If you lived on the gulf coast or south east coast, what would you be doing to prepare for bad weather?
 
I bought cases of gallons of springwater and put them under the beds. I bought 1/2 cases of canned foods and packed them into some large water/stormproof containers. I put up a small quantity of essentials like batteries for the radios and flashlights, toilet paper, disposable plates and plastic flatware, drink mixes, bottled propane cylinders for the camp stove and lantern, detailed maps for evacuation or relocation, hard currency (ATM's were down and banks were closed, so you couldn't get money, and merchants couldn't make change without power). I made preparations to fend off looters (which were'nt a problem) and help neighbors who hadn't prepared. By having prepared more than was needed, I was able to help others who had not prepared at all. SOme didn't even realize that they had a supply of drinking water in their hot water tanks! When it became apparent that we would be hit by the storm full force, I filled five gallon water cans and the bathtub so we could flush the toilet while the water was off. I closed our water meter, gas meter, and shut off our power at the main breaker. We boarded up some windows which faced the gulf and bay, and waited out the storms in the nearly windowless bathroom. There was a fairly brief window of opportunity between the warning to evacuate, and the landfall of the hurricanes. Most of the time, it is too late by then, and chances are you will get stranded in a highway gridlock for the duration, with us it was the bridges. Trust me, you do not want to be caught in a gridlock on this in a storm, much less a hurricane!
http://www.wbqp.com/Pensacola/Bay Bridge.JPG
This one went down during hurricane Ivan. The driver of the truck went down with his tractor.
http://www.dot.state.fl.us/rddesign/dr/images/Hurricane Ivan Escambia Bay Bridge.jpg

I was indeed there for economic reasons. And I left the Gulf Coast for many reasons, some of which were also economic.
 
Codger_64 said:
I bought cases of gallons of springwater and put them under the beds. I bought 1/2 cases of canned foods and packed them into some large water/stormproof containers. I put up a small quantity of essentials like batteries for the radios and flashlights, toilet paper, disposable plates and plastic flatware, drink mixes, bottled propane cylinders for the camp stove and lantern, detailed maps for evacuation or relocation, hard currency (ATM's were down and banks were closed, so you couldn't get money, and merchants couldn't make change without power). I made preparations to fend off looters (which were'nt a problem) and help neighbors who hadn't prepared. By having prepared more than was needed, I was able to help others who had not prepared at all. SOme didn't even realize that they had a supply of drinking water in their hot water tanks! When it became apparent that we would be hit by the storm full force, I filled five gallon water cans and the bathtub so we could flush the toilet while the water was off. I closed our water meter, gas meter, and shut off our power at the main breaker. We boarded up some windows which faced the gulf and bay, and waited out the storms in the nearly windowless bathroom. There was a fairly brief window of opportunity between the warning to evacuate, and the landfall of the hurricanes. Most of the time, it is too late by then, and chances are you will get stranded in a highway gridlock for the duration, with us it was the bridges. Trust me, you do not want to be caught in a gridlock on this in a storm, much less a hurricane!
http://www.wbqp.com/Pensacola/Bay Bridge.JPG
This one went down during hurricane Ivan. The driver of the truck went down with his tractor.
http://www.dot.state.fl.us/rddesign/dr/images/Hurricane Ivan Escambia Bay Bridge.jpg

I was indeed there for economic reasons. And I left the Gulf Coast for many reasons, some of which were also economic.
Click to expand...

Your list of gear looks a lot like my earthquake kit, except that I keep stuff outside of my house. You don't get to see an earthquake coming and you don't have any guarantee that your house will be standing in its aftermath. So we've been taught to place supplies in those large, plastic lawn bins on wheels. Pack them with the least important stuff on the bottom (blankets, spare clothes) and the most important stuff on top (a quick change of clothes, flashlights, emergency radio, for in case you bail out in the middle of the night.)

The only thing I keep under my bed is my hiking boots and flashlight. In the Northridge earthquake, the number one type of injury seen was lacerated feet. The earthquake happened in the middle of the night and people jumped out of bed without thinking about all the glass laying around from broken windows and glassware knocked off of shelves.

The one thing I'd add to your list is "comfort food." In particular, hard candies that store a long time can go a long way to lift people's spirits when the world falls apart. A bit of sugar, something sweet, it helps.
 
I wonder if roof hatches will be required in new or rebuilt homes in NOLA, now that the storms have passed.
I tend to agree with Codger64 also.
As a country who was originally designed as an ideal for limited government, kneejerk crying out for government aid has cost us most of our liberty and freedom. However, the weak and needy will sit in the eagles nest with jaws agape, screaming about how helpless they are. And the government will keep feeding them and collecting their votes like fertilizer.
 
Codger_64 said:
I am of the opinion that my survival is a matter of my own personal responsibility, not that of government, and I live my life that way. Government is not my mommy or daddy. In today's society, individual survival is actually less assured because the prevailing thought is that government is there to protect me from my own poor decisions. Well, Katrina showed us what happens when too many people think this way. If you want to build a house of straw on a spit of sand jutting into the gulf a few feet above sea level, or a house of twigs on a steep eroded hillside in California, or the rim of a volcano in Washington, more power to you. Just don't blame me, or the government when your property comes to ruin or you don't survive. Nature is not a respector of persons or governments. And in the long run, no matter how you seek to isolate yourself from nature, we do live in the dynamic natural world.
Click to expand...

you got that right. there's nowhere you can go where the earth cant get you.
 
Seems to me that it's not so much a question of whether the government help will arrive, but when. If the roads are clogged, power lines are down, water mains are broken, telephones are out, etc. how is the government supposed to deliver emergency supplies? It's going tp take time to organize aid workers because normal communication channels are down. It's going to take time to restore basic services so that emergency supplies can be distributed. It's going to take time to mobilize trucks, planes, and helicopters to deliver the supplies. It's going to take time to haul the supplies from whatever warehouse they're stored in.

Regardless of what you think government responsibility is, expecting instant relief just isn't practical.
 
I sense a bit of finger wagging going on which I find fruitless. The thing about disasters is that they take people by surprise. Few places in the US are immune. Earthquakes can, and will, stike some unexpected places. NY and Missouri have survived some of the biggest in North America. Tornados can hit randomly in large parts of the US. Once you list all the places where disaster could strike, there are precious few places left where anyone actually wants to live.

I feel there is a legitimate role for government in response to disasters. Think back a few years, it hasn't always been as overwhelmingly crappy as it was in the aftermath of Katrina. The real unending debate is how the government will respond in the face of such an event.
 
Thomas Linton said:
Given that government -- relevant government -- is not running a surplus, vote to very significantly raise your taxes to provide the funding for building necessary infrastructure and vote in politicians who will increase the cost of buildings by requiring them to be built to resist 200 mph winds and Category 5 storm surge. We know the technology is there. In 1994, I saw a church in Des Plaines that had been run over by a Class 5 tornado. It suffered only cosmetic damage. (The rectory building next door was simply gone - just a cinderblock-lined hole in the ground -- the basement. Even the grass was gone.)

I elect not to live there - or in the quake and volcanic zones out west. I noticed that those risks existed.
Click to expand...

I would love to see pictures of that. I've never heard of a building surviving a class 5, only basements...
 
I was attending a conference just out of the damage area. They moved us all into the basement of the hotel, where we watched the blow-by-blow on Chicago TV.

The church was basically a half cylinder of steel-reinforced concrete. It had damage, but it survived.

Kids in a school yard just to the side of the path were initially told to lay on the ground. A teacher told them to get up and run into the school, which they did. None was hurt. Much of the blacktop where they had been told to lay down was ripped up. A backboard standard was stuck into the school building like a big spear.

That twister left lots of basements. A reporter even commented, while hovering over one neighborheed, how lucky it was that it hit houses under construction. Later, we heard that there had been finished houses there. Even the most of the grass was gone. Fortunately, no one was at home in that block. Some moms from those houses had driven to the school to get their kids when they heard the warning.

Across the street, houses only lost some shingles.

It sucked several out of a two story apartment and dropped the corpses in a corn field, but a child dropped through the floor into the first story and survived.

Strange beasts.
 
Wow. I never get tired of tornado stories. Sorry for taking this thread off topic, maybe I'll start a tornado thread....
 
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