Florence

This one’s not going to be funny.

Last week Hurricane Florence barreled out of the Atlantic Ocean and ground her way through the Carolinas, leaving all sorts of ruin and heartbreak in her wake. As a result of this storm, there has been something like $22 billion in property damage, and at least 42 people have died. Many hundreds of men, women, and children have been rescued from damaged and flooded homes. As I’m writing this, the nearly 11 trillion gallons of water dumped by the storm is flowing back toward the sea and creating even more problems. Authorities are still rescuing people and preparing for more deaths.

To the best of my knowledge, most or all of the deaths and evacuations happened in areas that were under mandatory evacuation orders. This means that in a perfect world, none of those people would have been there to need rescuing or to lose their lives. There are two fairly important things going on here.

First off, some people who live in these areas simply can’t afford to evacuate. If you don’t have a car, you can’t just hit the highway out of town. If do manage to hitch a ride, and you don’t have relatives inland or the money to pay for a motel, you have a problem. If you can’t find or understand whatever emergency transportation and shelter plan the local government might have in place, and if the local government can’t find you to help you, then you’re pretty much out of luck. This is a problem that municipalities large and small have struggled with for decades.

And then there are those folks who are just too stubborn to leave.

In the days when Florence was still out in the ocean gathering strength, we listened to interviews with self-sufficient individualists who were preparing to “ride it out” and protect their property. Their comments almost always included statements like, “I know what’s best for my family.” This was often followed by images of small children dutifully following along behind parents pushing shopping carts heaped with bottled water.

When the storm got to shore, we started seeing clips of truly courageous first responders and volunteers risking their lives and using just about anything that floats to bring soggy self-sufficient individualists to safety through fast-flowing, dangerously polluted water. Other self-sufficient individualists, including their kids, became statistics.

Alan Tharling, the mayor of Port Lavaca, Texas, is my personal hero. When Hurricane Rita was bearing down on his little Gulf Coast town and he was trying to get his self-sufficient individualists to take the evacuation order seriously, he gave them all permanent markers and asked them to write their Social Security number, next of kin, and a phone number on their arms or across their bellies, to help the clean-up crews identify their remains. That’s some clear messaging.

I do get it – kind of. I understand that it’s really tough to leave your home and all your stuff behind, knowing that you might come back later to find it all destroyed. But I have to ask; how exactly do you think your presence in the house with that stuff is going to protect it from one of these massive storms? And just what kind of stuff could possibly be worth risking the lives of those rescuers? Or the lives of your children?

So let’s mourn the dead, and send prayers to the families who lost loved ones. Let’s send prayers and what help we can to the people who are dealing with massive damage to their homes and businesses. Let’s thank the valiant rescuers who always seem to show up whenever we need them. Let’s donate to the American Red Cross.

And next time around, I just want to ask all the self-sufficient individualists out there to at least consider getting your families out of harm’s way when the experts tell you to. If you really feel the urge to protect something from the storm, how about filling that need by reaching out and taking a couple of helpless neighbors to safety with you.

Florence

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