So, Hurricane Laura has passed. I have not updated, other than the story post, due to catching up with everyone in our family, to see how they fared and where they're headed next.
On our end, the storm made little impression. The central spiral of the storm wound itself into a very concentrated force; this is likely connected to the actual wind strength experienced as the storm moved ashore.
A happy accident then was that we were too far west, and out of the fetch region, to see any true effects as Laura pushed through.
However, all our Lake Charles family were effected, from minor (a window shattered by a duck figurine and a few missing shingles) to the catastrophic (one lost business, and my dad's house looks more and more like a total loss the more I see of it. A pine tree topped out and speared through the house when it came down, piercing from the ridge beam all the way to and through the ground floor (it's a 2-story house...)). Pretty much everyone lost parts of the roof, the shingles peeled back under the winds.
Like with Katrina/Rita (semester I finished my doctorate and began a post-doc), circumstances conspire to keep me from hands-on participation in the cleanup effort. I have to travel for the day gig, and I have to observe the safety protocols under covid. A significant part of that being no out of state travel in my blackout periods.
And my boss has, rightfully, grown antsy about the fact that we haven't been able to travel as freely as we had grown used to. Our sites need certain things that only physical presence can provide (welcome to engineering work...). Further, there's pretty much no place to stay in Lake Charles, as my dad and stepmom are bunking with my sister's family for the immediate, and likely extended, duration.
The key element here for Hurricane Laura, so far, is that the majority of folks packed up and headed out. The loss of life was minimal, and this falls into the category of minor miracle.
There are some signs that the Great Forgetting (Gulf Coast Storm Version) is setting in; interviews with folks in Bolivar and High Island indicate that there are many folks there who won't be so quick to evacuate next time.
It's an unfortunate part of what happens when the storm doesn't quite hit you. The hassles you went through, to evacuate and so on, are remembered far more readily than images on the TV screen of what happened just 40 miles away.
It's natural, regrettable, and yet forgiveable, ultimately. We could see another storm tomorrow; it might be 30 years before we see one. That's effectively what happened between Alicia and Ike (barring Tropical Storm Allison, which was a completely different kettle of obnoxious pile of water looking for a place to land), for example. And, if Rita had not come through with only modest relative effect in our corridor, Houston and Harris County would have tried to evacuate the entire five million plus population for Ike. Which would have been catastrophically bad.
Rita gave the county and city that lesson, that it's effectively impossible to completely evacuate a metropolitan area on the timescale of a hurricane (i.e. within a 24-48 hour period, effectively). And the geography with Ike proved that it was unnecessary to do so; even a direct hit by Ike did not cause the kind of destruction that would have justified attempting to make the complete evacuation.
Systemic risk assessment is never complete; there's never a "finished" picture. Things will change that make the current evaluation obsolete. Just be prepared, I guess, to go through the gut-checks next time, rinse repeat as needed.
Life in stormtime, as it were.
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Please keep it on the sane side. There are an awful lot of places on the internet for discussions of politics, money, sex, religion, etc. etc. et bloody cetera. In this time and place, let us talk about something else, and politely, please.