Hurrican Rita - or otherwise known as a practice run

So, the way the media was covering Hurricane Rita last month, you would have thought it was armageddon around here. The storm was to hit Sat at 4am. If you were not out of town by Wed afternoon, it was too late or your 4 hr trip was turned into a 24 hr one. Not to mention the gas shortage, then absolutely no gas for a day, then no water anywhere Wednesday afternoon.

Being in property mgmt, the mgrs and asst mgrs usually stay with the bldg. My mgr let me go home knowing I had little ones. Which was a good thing. It took me 2 hrs to get home that Wed, then Thurs it would have taken me at least 3 hrs because I have to use a road that gets people to I-10. Luckily, the storm went more East but it made me realize that a) We are going to be more prepared in advance rather than fighting for basic supplies with people and b) we are not leaving, we don't have a reason to evacuate seeing as we are 80 miles inland from the coast. Sure, we'll get wind damage, tornados, etc..but our houses won't flood and we will most likely survive. The Cat5 that came through here back in the 40s only caused 21 deaths. Out of millions, that's not bad. Considering nearly that many dies trying to evacuate. Pets died from carbon monoxide poisoning from all the traffic, even some people were affected by the carbon monoxide. And then there were the poor people who were overheated, as temps were in the 100s. Ugh, what a mess.

What I hated was the way the media fed this sense of panic. Destruction. Catastrophy. these words were used to describe our situation. How do you expect people to react?

Next time, give me beer, water, flashlights, some cards and we hunker down.