August 14, 2004
I am watching the news
this morning and it's full of apologies from local news.
They are apologizing for being so over dramatic and over encouraging people to go to the shelters.
In Acadia, (still looking for an online link for this one) people went to the shelter. Lot of them.
The roof came down on top of them during the brunt of the storm. Not sure how many dead there yet.
They are estimating that about 1 million (not confirmed yet this morning) are without power.
There are mobile home parks in places like Ft. Meyers and Port Charlotte where they didn't have enough time to get out where lots of people are injured and homeless.
It was catastrophic damage in other parts of this state directly south of me.
I know many of you thought I was making light of the situation compared to what you were seeing on tv but as I said, what they were calling Sarasota was actually the cities to the south of us.
Such horrible misinformation problems yesterday.
Relatives and friends up north looking at the footage on CNN and other major news channels thought we were in severe peril and people who have relatives in the hard hit towns and cities that weren't even warned, now face the dreadful news late last night and this morning.
We here in SRQ were warned for 5 full days. That storm was coming at us and so the people to the south, the EOCs in those towns and cities, were not warned early enough.
You can't predict these things with any amount of accuracy. This is nature and nature goes and does what it wants.
The whole western seaboard should have been warned and all the cities to the east of the seaboard should have been warned.
They always so say go east, beyond I-75, and that is where it slammed.
They sent people to shelters in the east and the south of us.
There is catastrophic damage in those areas.
The news anchors here are just yapping and yapping about how sorry they are and how lucky we all are and yes, I do feel lucky but damn, why the hell weren't those cities prepared for anything at all?
I don't understand.