Stupidity at its finest

Apparently, as long as you deny yourself the memory of the severity of destruction of the hurricanes of 2005, you can be stupid in blissful ignorance.

From a survey of hurricane preparedness:
According to a new survey of people in high-risk hurricane areas conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health Project on the Public and Biological Security, one-third (31%) of residents said if government officials said they had to evacuate due to a major hurricane this season, they would not leave. This is an increase from 2006 when 23% said they would not evacuate.

This is a trend that begins after a bad hurricane season. That 31% will likely jump into the 40s next year. It happened after Andrew (a hurricane that wiped out an air force base and its surrounding neighborhood when I was...18? iirc), and it's a sickness of sheer idiocy if you ask me. Within just a few years, people seemed to forget the images that were carried on newspapers across the country. Even down here in South Florida where it had happened, the lights finally came back on, water and gas were finally being sold for reasonable prices again, and it was as if none of it had ever happened when officials would visit homes to encourage people to evacuate when a hurricane warning had been issued. I'm sure it was quite funny to them that the sherrif's department asked them to fill out a tag to wear so that their body could be identified if their home was destroyed. (Not joking. They really did this when the residents of these areas refused to leave.)

No matter how strong you figure your house is, no matter how crowded the roads get when an evacuation order is issued, there is no excuse for refusing to evacuate a high-risk hurricane area when you've had an example of the magnitude of New Orleans in your recent history. Things are just things. Your life and the lives of your loved ones are so much more important.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -George Santayana

I will never forget the absolute gratefulness I felt that my parents had evacuated (from their home down here in South Florida, two years ago) when I heard my mother sobbing on the phone "It's completely destroyed. The roof's gone."