Hurricane Season: Are You Ready?
I admit it. After decades in the news business I’m jaded.
Bored, too.
Especially with the tedious, fear-inducing fluff pieces that news outlets sprinkle throughout the year as their reporters obediently attend press conferences and act as stenographers for bureaucrats.
You know, the stories with ridiculous “safety precautions” published year after year at Halloween that turn trick or treating into a weird evening of parents hovering around kids and forbidding them to eat at single M&M until Mommy and Daddy can examine their sugary booty. (You do know that there’s never been a verified case of a razor blade in apple, right? Yet this single urban legend is trotted out annually.)
Every July we get the usual warnings about the dangers of backyard fireworks for Independence Day. Apparently, somewhere out there, someone still needs to be told not to look down the business end of a bottle rocket.
Every August we get the same self-evident tips on surviving a heat wave: dress in light-colored clothing, drink water, stay out of the sun.
Yep, somewhere in America there must be idiots who dress in black, march around at noon and refuse to drink water when the temperatures are in triple digits.
And this, being the first week in June, means state officials will issue stern warnings about hurricane season, which technically started on Monday and lasts until November 30, even though we rarely see a major storm before August.
Right on cue, state honchos - including the governor - convened yesterday in the capitol for the exact same hurricane preparedness briefings the executive got last year and the year before and the year before that.
Afterwards, Abigail Spanberger and the crew cautioned us to have a plan in place, build hurricane kits and review evacuation plans.
Now!
In June? Sure, Jan.
Spanberger encouraged Virginians to begin by developing emergency plans for their households. That includes identifying evacuation routes, choosing meeting locations if family members become separated and signing up for wireless emergency alerts, reports the Virginia Mercury.
“The first thing that we can all do to get prepared is to just make a plan,” she said. “If you need to evacuate this hurricane season, you can get your family to safety faster if you have already thought about what to do. Where would you go? How will you get there? And figure out how to reconnect with family if you’re not together at the time that a storm hits.”
Where will we go? Seriously? Has Spanberger BEEN to Tidewater? Has she ever driven through the tunnel?
You can’t get to Williamsburg on a Friday afternoon in the summer without allowing an extra four hours for traffic.
With a Cat 5 hurricane bearing down on us? Traffic on I-64 would be gothic.
No one down here in the land of congested tubes can evacuate unless they leave a week in advance. Employers frown on that sort of thing.
We all know that in the event of a major hurricane most of us will stay put, wear lifejackets and write our social security numbers on our forearms in Sharpie. Better to be home than riding out the storm in a colossal Tidewater traffic jam.
“Preparedness starts long before a storm appears on the forecast map,” said Lauren Opett, acting state coordinator of emergency management.
“The best time to gather supplies, review evacuation plans, and discuss emergency procedures with your household is now.”
Opett means well, she’s saying what factotums are supposed to say this time each year.
Truth is, most of us won’t fill our hurricane boxes until Jim Cantore is lashed to a light pole on the boardwalk.
If we’re honest, the supplies in that box mostly involve ice and cork screws. Oh, and candles, which the “experts” don’t want us to use when the power goes out because we can’t be trusted with matches.
Go ahead and do what the governor says. Be prepared.
Me, I’ll be at Taylor’s Do-It Center when Cantore gets to town.
