Floridians Ignoring Evacuation Orders

From Reuters:

At one point the most intense hurricane recorded in the Atlantic basin, Wilma weakened as it hammered Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula for days, but then strengthened again to carry 105 mph (165 kph) winds toward the Florida Keys, where storm-weary residents largely ignored evacuation orders.

"We were all packed and ready to go. But personally, now I feel we will be safe and better off here," said Lori Thompson of Key West, who had considered driving to Orlando.

Emergency managers estimated no more than 7 percent of the Keys' 80,000 residents evacuated, despite fears they could be stranded if Wilma washed out parts of the Overseas Highway, the only road connecting the 110-mile (176-km) island chain to mainland Florida. The last city evacuation bus left Key West on Sunday morning with only the driver and one passenger.

"All I can tell people in the Keys who are trying to ride this one out is one of these days your luck is going to run out," said Craig Fugate, Florida's director of emergency management.

Craig Fugate is right...but what's even worse is, after Katrina I suspect that (1) a lot of people are going to be stretched awfully thin for hurricane-survivor sympathy. Not because they're not good people, but because Katrina was such a spectacle, so tragic and all-consuming and genuinely heartbreaking, and because then came Rita so fast on its heels, that another hurricane disaster in the Gulf Coast just doesn't seem like news anymore. It just seems like a retread; if the news shows yet another landmass full of devastated homes and misplaced people, Americans will get bored and change the channel. It's just the way people are in this short-attention-span, mass-media-saturation age.

And (2) not only have we all seen Katrina's aftermath many times, but so have the people now waiting to duke out Wilma. You guys down on the Gulf Coast, you know what's coming. You've seen the damage it can do. You saw what happened to everyone in Louisiana and Mississippi who thought they could stand the hurricane. The "I told you so" fringe that we saw after Katrina will, if you are wiped out by Wilma, rise to a majority. Bound to happen.

Please, you folks down there in Florida. Don't be foolish. This time it's completely true: if Wilma wreaks the kind of havoc that's expected you'll not only have nobody but yourself to blame. You'll have nobody but yourself to pity you.

Please get out while you're still dry.

Article Author: Michael J. West

Michael J. West is a writer, editor, and dilettante jazz critic in Washington, D.C. In addition to BlogCritics, he writes for JazzTimes, Washington City Paper, and AllAboutJazz.com. He occasionally writes at Pop Musicology, too. He's very cute. …

Visit Michael J. West's author page — Michael J. West's Blog