Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands • Hacker News Board

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#91

Post by chirau » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:06 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #65

importantbrian wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in South Florida and this nails it. My friends who have lived here a short time are already planning to pack up and leave. My friends who have been here for 10+ years are all just going to stay and ride it out. I think even if they issued mandatory evacuations many of them would still not leave. They all speak longingly of having neighborhood "hurricane parties" while they wait for the power to come back on. T…

>They just don't see the threat as being that serious. Which is fine, until it isn't. One problem with having survived a few hurricanes is that they aren't "that bad" until you hit one that was. I've seen bad enough that I'd never want to see a stronger one. Even without any additional risk, a week without power or fresh water in a hundred degrees isn't anyone idea of fun. If the climate models are right on this, we'…

To be fair, most people just don't respond as rapidly to anything they are used to. It's the same reason why New Yorkers are not bothered by fire trucks at all and/or fire alarms.

To quote you, "Which is fine, until it isn't". Looking from the outside in, it's easy to question their logic, but i am sure we all have traits that outsiders would wonder why we are so nonchalant about it. It's adaptation, it's human conditioning, it's nature.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#92

Post by jofer » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:27 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #80

S_A_P wrote: post #30

Having just lived through Harvey, I cannot stress enough that if you are in a position to evacuate, please do so. We were lucky to narrowly escape flooding in our home, but for 3 days we had no water, septic or power(need power for the other 2). The flooding had us stuck in our neighborhood but we were able to kayak out to safety. In addition to high winds(which Houston fortunately avoided) flooding is very dangerous…

What do you think of city mayor's decision not to order a larger scale evacuation. NYT seems to think it was absolutely (their word) the right thing to do. Being on the ground there, would you agree?

The last time an evacuation was called for in Houston (Rita), over 100 people died trying to evacuate before the hurricane even hit. (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Rita#Evacuation_deat...)

In terms of life lost, evacuating would have been a disaster. You'd have had gridlocked interstates underwater.

Mayor Turner absolutely made the right call by not evacuating. Living in Houston, I'm probably a bit biased, but I find the criticism he's received for making the decision not to evacuate a bit absurd.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#93

Post by jofer » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:32 PM UTC

zxcvbnm885 wrote: post #83

paul7986 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you evacuate 4 million people in a few days? Wouldn't they all clog up the roads and consume all the gasoline? At first I thought he didn't make the right decision then history shows that a few weeks after Katrina another storm prompted an evacuation. Many more died then evacuating.

How about just evacuating the most vulnerable?

If you publicize that, tons of other people evacuate, and the interstate system quickly becomes gridlocked. It's counter-intuitive, but every study and disaster plan for Houston has consistently called for shelter-in-place over calls for evacuation from an official source.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#94

Post by chrisco255 » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:34 PM UTC

r0fl wrote: post #89

S_A_P wrote: post #30

Having just lived through Harvey, I cannot stress enough that if you are in a position to evacuate, please do so. We were lucky to narrowly escape flooding in our home, but for 3 days we had no water, septic or power(need power for the other 2). The flooding had us stuck in our neighborhood but we were able to kayak out to safety. In addition to high winds(which Houston fortunately avoided) flooding is very dangerous…

Evacuating is very difficult and dangerous. This is a great read as to why: https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6wcpt0/la_vita_bella_n...

Not if you're in Florida and leave today. Plenty of time to get out of harm's way. Florida orders evacuations routinely for hurricanes.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#95

Post by astrodust » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:39 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #90

astrodust wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some kind of classification system where people and/or households could be grouped together by urgency or sensitivity to calamities (e.g. diabetic, disabled, elderly) would make this process a lot more straightforward. If you're in group X you go at time Y, etc. Not that this would ever fly in Texas where if the government tells you to do something it's just them interfering in your life. Cuba has this down to a scie…

Hn: privacy is the most important thing, the government is making lists and out to get you. Also Hn: let's make a detailed enough list of the exact medical condition of every household in the country that we can evacuate everyone more than X vulnerable in a few days. Unrelated: you're aware Cuba has roughly the population of NYC, right?

HN is an odd mix of politics, that's for sure.

Cuba has a fairly large population and very limited resources which makes their system all the more impressive. Their system is worth studying, as if Cuba of all countries can do it, surely the US can: http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-lesson-for-the-us-cubas-respo...

> Cuba’s intersectoral preparedness and response to hurricanes, which include education, drilling and how the country’s relatively small civil defense force is deployed at provincial, municipal and local community levels when a storm is first detected.

The US response seems to be ignoring the experts, blaming the victims, and trying to profit from the resulting mess.

Though of course "can" in a technical sense and "can" in a political sense are worlds apart.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#96

Post by kozikow » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

swasheck wrote: post #17

I know that this is slightly off-topic so feel free to downvote if you feel so inclined: There's a lot of money that goes into disaster relief and recovery. I think that's great and very worthwhile, thoughts on charity accountability notwithstanding. What I wonder, though, is if there are any organizations that provide pre-relief (prelief?) for disasters. For instance, the comment in this discussion about the airline…

Not necessary pre-relief, but some companies assess risk of a damage prior to the disaster.

E.g. at tensorflight we are assessing building insurance risk via computer vision and significant part of features we detect are useful for hurricanes (e.g. building construction type, potential windborne projectiles, trees dangerously close to the building). Although our business model is selling this data for insurance, we could offer an assessment to individual users close to the catastrophe. Do you think individual users would be interested in potential suggestions (e.g. trim the tree, move chairs in-house, or flee ASAP :P)

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#97

Post by JshWright » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:49 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #80

S_A_P wrote: post #30

Having just lived through Harvey, I cannot stress enough that if you are in a position to evacuate, please do so. We were lucky to narrowly escape flooding in our home, but for 3 days we had no water, septic or power(need power for the other 2). The flooding had us stuck in our neighborhood but we were able to kayak out to safety. In addition to high winds(which Houston fortunately avoided) flooding is very dangerous…

What do you think of city mayor's decision not to order a larger scale evacuation. NYT seems to think it was absolutely (their word) the right thing to do. Being on the ground there, would you agree?

Not in Houston, but have a fair amount of experience in emergency management.

The mayor of Houston picked the best of a number of bad options. Evacuating would have almost certainly resulted in several times the number of casualties. Harvey intensified very quickly, and by the time the threat was clear, it was too late to cut and run. You would have had freeways turned into parking lots, which would then be under 10' of water.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#98

Post by martin1975 » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:50 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #94

r0fl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evacuating is very difficult and dangerous. This is a great read as to why: https://np.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6wcpt0/la_vita_bella_n...

Not if you're in Florida and leave today. Plenty of time to get out of harm's way. Florida orders evacuations routinely for hurricanes.

To add - evacuation doesn't have to mean go hundreds of miles... I lived in FL for 7+ years, if I was really worried, I'd just travel more inland. Typically hurricanes of any strength rapidly degrade as soon as you cut the legs from underneath them, meaning, they travel over land.. I'd say about 50 miles inland, you'd get a badass storm, but not hurricane strength winds...

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#99

Post by Shivetya » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:52 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #44

S_A_P wrote: post #30

Having just lived through Harvey, I cannot stress enough that if you are in a position to evacuate, please do so. We were lucky to narrowly escape flooding in our home, but for 3 days we had no water, septic or power(need power for the other 2). The flooding had us stuck in our neighborhood but we were able to kayak out to safety. In addition to high winds(which Houston fortunately avoided) flooding is very dangerous…

I wonder how flat is the houston area. West indies are often volcanic islands. Meaning the high ground will probably be "safe" from flood, the lower parts on the other hands.. Somehow they're a bit used to storms so they're not going full noob on this.

cannot be too flat, have family friends who were high and dry but they didn't have far to go to find flood waters. Interestingly enough Houston didn't suffer flooding problems due to bad zoning, it has more absorbent surface coverage than most cities including some in similar positions relative to the sea.

Suffering a stalled storm is not what you can really plan for. the water simply had no where to go.

Re: Category 5 Hurricane Irma Brings 180-MPH Winds to Bear on Caribbean Islands

#100

Post by JshWright » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 10:53 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #52

leggomylibro wrote: post #11

Oof. This is ramping up to be quite the hurricane/monsoon season. I don't know much about meteorology, so I'll post this without comment besides the article's subject; maybe someone else can make an informed value judgement. But apparently as global temperatures rise, the atmosphere is going to be able to hold a lot more water: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/the-stra...

Cliff Mass (whose blog is really worth following) points out that this is not an abnormal hurricane season by historical standards. There is not a big temperature anomaly in the waters fueling these storms: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/08/global-warming-and-hur... In other words, this is the kind of storm season you can expect to get once in a while even before factoring in the effect of warming seas.

Indeed. It is more or less impossible to say "this storm happened because of climate change". What climate change does is shift the storms/year bell curve slightly to the right.