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Irma's Coming!

SusanB-M1 said:
A friend just phoned to say she had been watching pictures on TV. If nearly all the buildings are gone, I wonder where the people were during the storm to be safe? If their houses were falling down around them, how did they manage to stay safe? Do you happen to know?
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I think they had several sturdy structures for shelter.

I am trying to figure out the maths. If 90% of buildings are demolished and 60% of the population are now homeless, that means 40% of the population live in 10% of the houses and the remaining 60% in 90%.

As the sturdier homes are the more affluent ones, these figures from the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaveston Browne, simply do not add up.

I could only see about 16 residents standing around when the PM arrived.

So where are the rest...?
 
Rolfe said:
Barbuda only has about 1,600 inhabitants, which is about the same as the village where I live. If the island is really uninhabitable and it's possible to get the logistics organised, you'd think it would be possible to evacuate that number temporarily until clean-up and rebuilding squads can get to work. But there are other larger communities also badly hit and it all sounds extremely worrying.
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Now they are expecting José, the PM did say he was going to evacuate the residents.
 
If 90% of buildings are demolished and 60% of the population are now homeless, does that means 40% of the population live in 10% of the houses and the remaining 60% in 90%? I think you also need to know what percentage of the buildings destroyed were residences.
 
Darat said:
Been reading quite few reports and the like on social media and I'm struck by the number of comments asking god to protect them, keep them safe etc. (Don't read much directly on social media so this may be nothing unusual - just unusual for me to read it.)

I think many have their faith in the wrong place.
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Yes, if Irma is here to wash away the sins of man, then I may not be posting for much longer.
 
I just watched the local news report on the CBS-TV station in Miami. The weather reporter said Friday will be a fairly normal day weather-wise, but Saturday will be windy and squally and Sunday Irma will arrive. The track as of now is almost due north/south through the middle of Florida. It was very sobering to watch. To listen as the forecaster explained about the storm surge and warned: "We can survive the high winds, we can't survive the storm surge."

This is from a report in the Miami Herald:
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez expanded evacuation orders Thursday to the county’s coast and other inland areas as Hurricane Irma threatened to bring severe flooding to South Florida.

“I’ve been here 60 years. I’ve never heard of this kind of evacuation,” Gimenez, a former Miami fire chief, told reporters Thursday...He said he decided to expand the orders after studying storm-surge maps provided Thursday morning by the National Hurricane Center after it issued a hurricane watch for South Florida...With his expanded order, Gimenez has now instructed more than 650,000 people to flee their homes in advance of a Category 5 hurricane expected to bring tropical-storm winds Saturday before potentially making landfall Sunday. Link
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I have family in the Fort Lauderdale area and I am very worried. This is scary stuff.

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alfaniner said:
There's a 50% chance you are correct.
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And there's a 50% chance you are correct.

I'd take announcements made while stepping over rubble, well, with a grain of salt if you can find any. It'll probably turn out to be different percentages anyway but is that 90% by square footage or 90% by number of edifices.
 
marplots said:
My impression is that Cuba, as a soon to be scrubbed island, is being under-reported.

Maybe it's a conspiracy of some sort in an anti-Castro holdover, or maybe just the lack of a good B-roll.
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I think it's more about the ratings. If a storm approaches Cuba from the south, it'll get a lot of "Cuba to be slammed by Hurricane Wally" headlines. There are enough Cuban-Americans that it's an interesting draw in Florida and in Tri-State NJ/NY/CT.

But if the action's to the north, do you make headlines about Cuba getting bashed or about OMG Irma Going To Destroy Florida? The latter sells more soap flakes.
 
The latest news report from Miami actually made me gasp. Police are escorting tanker trucks so they can make it to the gas stations.

Reminds me uncomfortably of a movie...
 
It kills me to say so, but where Bush and his people screwed up Katrina, Trump and co. seem to be on top of Harvey and Irma. If Bush deserved blame, Trump deserves praise. Now pardon me while I go get drunk.

This signature is intended to irritate people.
 
Beady said:
It kills me to say so, but where Bush and his people screwed up Katrina, Trump and co. seem to be on top of Harvey and Irma. If Bush deserved blame, Trump deserves praise.
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Not necessarily. First, a lot of the emergency efforts being put in now are automatic and only depend upon the governor or president to declare a state of emergency.

Second, a lot of the infrastructure needed to mitigate such an event was never built - here, New Jersey, Texas, Louisiana or anywhere else. I'll side with the president who gets preventative infrastructure built (and who admints that humans are the cause of global climate instability). So far, that's no one.
 
Loss Leader said:
Not necessarily. First, a lot of the emergency efforts being put in now are automatic and only depend upon the governor or president to declare a state of emergency.

Second, a lot of the infrastructure needed to mitigate such an event was never built - here, New Jersey, Texas, Louisiana or anywhere else. I'll side with the president who gets preventative infrastructure built (and who admints that humans are the cause of global climate instability). So far, that's no one.
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YMMV, but I am very impressed with the way the military has been deployed, and there is absolutely no comparison with FEMA's performance, Bush and Trump.

This signature is intended to irritate people.
 
NoahFence said:
He is dealing with scandals not of his creation better than I imagined.

Too bad his scandals outnumber natural ones like 18-2
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He isn't getting in the way of the systems in place. That's the best I can say about him.
 
Beady said:
It kills me to say so, but where Bush and his people screwed up Katrina, Trump and co. seem to be on top of Harvey and Irma. If Bush deserved blame, Trump deserves praise. Now pardon me while I go get drunk.

This signature is intended to irritate people.
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I expected he would be good at disaster response. Running a tight supply chain and expediting changes to get his buildings up on time was something he actually did well.
I would guess he is enjoying this rare burst of fast paced productivity.
 
Now all we need is an earthquake and a tsunami.

(Damn. I wish I'd posted this yesterday when I thought of it. I didn't really want one! But it was in Mexico, so who (in the current administration) cares!)
 
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