Hurricane Laziness
Katrina Didn’t Teach Us A Lesson
By Daniel Muniz

The media provided wall to wall news coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The general public is fixated with natural disasters and the press knows it. And the news was heart wrenching because of the devastation and the enormous loss of life. Consequently, the finger pointing was outrageous because so many people blamed the federal government in general and George W. Bush in particular.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin should have been nailed to the wall for his incompetence. Instead, he was reelected and is considered a folk hero.

Even so, everybody who lives on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts should be aware that hurricanes are dangerous and they should be fully prepared for them and be ready to flee when one is coming their way. After all, the media saturated the public with Hurricane Katrina and they incessantly blamed George W. Bush for all the carnage in New Orleans. As a result, there should be no excuse this time around.

But truth is stranger than fiction.

According to a Mason-Dixon poll, Atlantic and Gulf state residents revealed the following:

Source: MSNBC.com

So with the enormous publicity that Katrina generated, why is it that more than half of the people who live in hurricane prone areas do not have a hurricane survival kit and do not even feel that they are vulnerable to Mother Nature?

However, there is a more disturbing question to ask. Who is your most important safety manager?

Is it yourself or is it the government?

Obviously, the poll reveals that a lot of people think that someone else, other than themselves, ought to be responsible for their own personal safety in the event of a hurricane.

And if a hurricane does kill people and wreck havoc on property, then it must be the government’s fault. After all, a lot of people blamed the government for Hurricane Katrina.

Unfortunately, this mentality is evident everywhere.

Every time it rains, people drive right through a low water crossing and it is irrelevant if there is a barrier there or not. And if there is not a barricade there, then it has to be the government’s fault for not putting one there fast enough before someone drove through it.

And by the way, the government is still obligated to rescue me if I am stranded in that low water crossing.

Fortunately, the stats are a bit skewed because Florida residents are typically far better prepared than the other Atlantic and Gulf states. And they ought to be because nearly half of all hurricanes make landfall on the Sunshine State.

But for everyone else, Hurricane Katrina didn’t teach them a lesson.

It is time for people to start taking responsibility for their own personal safety and to start doing their own thinking instead of relying on a governmental agency to do it for them. There are a lot of personal decisions that can be made to acquire the right supplies and make the appropriate preparations at the onset of every hurricane season.

It is absurd and dangerous to be so complacent about a possible life threatening event especially because an individual can already do so much in preparation ahead of time. Yet people are so quick to blame the government instead of blaming themselves when disaster strikes. Of course there are exceptions and that is where Florida excels in identifying the people who are unable to evacuate on their own accord.

Sadly, the complacent people who are represented in this poll have an unrealistic expectation that the government is going to solve all of their problems during an emergency. They aren’t going to bother to stockpile a three day supply of non-perishable food and bottled water. They don’t have a first aid kit and extra medication available. Somehow, an overwhelmed hospital is going to take care of that.

The fury of Mother Nature doesn’t have to be tragic if more people take more personal responsibility for their own safety. 

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