Re: No gas Sunday!

The message <qs79i1du6nk3j6dgocf0jmcrpedn74bl3v@xxxxxxx>
from Goedjn <prose@xxxxxxxxxxxx> contains these words:

> it takes a long time, years, working to stop being poor.
> >Nobody, even in Louisiana, can do it at a week's notice. Poor people,
> >IME, do not have an option of shopping in advance for crisis supplies
> >next week.
> > . . .
> >for or take it. My understanding of poor people, is from being from
> >there and fighting out of it, and from working with other poor people
> >even after I stopped being one. I'm afraid your "insight" into my

> Ok, let's put some of that insight to work:

The person with self-proclaimed insight was Larry, so you're asking
him, right?

> You're in New Orleans, and the mayor has just come
> on the TV (which you see through the window of
> an appliance store, maybe.) That there's a big
> hurricane coming, and most of the city is going to
> be under about 9 feet of water sometime in the next
> few days, and you should get the hell out of the city.

> What do YOU do?

Well, I've been in several hurricanes. There's a risk of severe
injury from flying debris. We stay inside a secure building in a
downstairs room, preferably one with no windows, and brick or stone
walls. Our pantry is the designated safety-room here, but very often
stair-wells fit the bill. With a floodwarning too, I'd hope my stone or
brick built building had an upstairs.

I was brought up in a flood area. We never evacuated. The deepest
our house ever had was 4ft (inside), though that was not in our time
there..that was a tidemark we found under the wallpaper.

When the flood alert went out, all schools closed and we'd race home
to get inside the house before the access to it flooded. Some
neighbours would immediately summon a removal company to evacuate the
ground floor furniture but we never had that kind of money. Back home,
we had a routine; turn off gas and power. Fill the bathtub with clean
water. Fill every saucepan with clean water and take it upstairs. Take
whatever fresh and tinned food was in the house, upstairs. Stuff rags
inside a plastic bag and ram it down the U bend of the downstairs toilet
pan to stop sewage backing up. Put sandbags against every low wall-vent
and outside the downstairs doors (they don't keep much water out but
they do reduce silt/mud. Take ornaments and pictures upstairs (floating
furniture breaks them). Roll up rugs and take them upstairs. (we didn't
have fitted carpets). Car owners moved vehicles to higher ground.

My grandfather's house was also on a riverbank, beside a levee to
reduce flooding. His (rented) house was immediately below the raised
bank. After we had left there (and were living in our own floody
riverbank house), there was a such a severe flood warning that the
raised bank was expected to give way, washing away an entire village.
Grandfather's house would be the first to go. So, there was an emergency
evacuation of the village. Just one person refused to leave, locked his
door to the police, and was seen on national TV, leaning out of an
upstairs window waving his fist at the helicopter. No prizes for
guessing who.

I don't know if I would have left New Orleans before the hurricane.
If there was somewhere safer to go, which I could get to..maybe. If I
was already in a solid building with no means of leaving safely, maybe
not. If I was as old, stubborn, and tough as my grandfather..then maybe
like him, I'd prefer to take my chances in my own place than give in to
panic or officialdom.

During a bad hurricane in Scotland this year, a young island family
living beside the shore were so panicked that they left their old solid
stone house and tried to drive to higher ground. where they thought they
would be safer. Their car blew off the road into the sea and they all
drowned. Had they stayed in the house, they would have been safe.

Janet.




.

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