That's a load of crap. It's their jobs to save people's lives. There's no excuse for saying, "oh well, we weren't in the cone of certainty so it meant we wouldn't be affected" when NOAA states explicitly that the "cone" is just where the EYE, not the storm, is likely to hit. You can't seriously argue that this is normal. Why is it that gulf state communities always seem to screw up with handling a disaster they know will eventually happen???
Except that we've seen where things have changed and rather quickly. That's what happened in Rita. There was a lot of predictions that Houston woudl be hit. There was an evacuation of Houston that didn't go well and ultimately Rita missed Houston. That is why they call it the "Cone of Uncertainty". Yes this happens far more often than not. Even NY leaders got criticized for not preparing NYC when Sandy hit. There was uncertainty then about how much NYC was going to hit. Hurricane Fiona hit New Foundland a few weeks ago and there was talk whether Canadian officials prepared well enough. IT is a fair to say that Lee County should've evacuated sooner but to paint this as some exceptional failure on the part of Florida officials I think is unfounded.
You are making my point for me here. There's only a 66% chance that a storm makes landfall within the "cone of uncertainty" - given that, how can Florida officials make the excuse that, "we thought we were safe since we were outside the cone" - you've just shown how poor of a job they did. EDIT: Also, Ian made landfall at a point that was INSIDE the "cone of uncertainty" as it was 72 hours earlier. So saying that the storm shifted out of that cone is a bold faced lie. They were not outside the cone. Sandy was a 1,000 year event and actually followed the forecasted path accurately. There was not much uncertainty about how much NYC would be hit. A large storm surge was predicted for Staten Island. And yes NY leaders deserve criticism for not evacuating sooner once the storm trek came out from NHC with the surge warning. I know this because I lived on waterfront property during Sandy. The fact that this happens far more often than not is even more reason why it is unforgivable to happen with a near cat 5 storm where a life threatening storm surge was predicted 3 days in advance. People should have been evacuating Sunday. You have to have a strong plan in place long before a hurricane is threatening to hit - and the US is woefully prepared as a whole for this. That's not an excuse for Lee County officials. You can't just tell people to watch the storm and follow local officials. You need to put buses into these communities and pull people out. But the reality is that no one actually cares about most of these people, and that's why we have the system we currently do.
Rita was an ad-hoc evac order (was a huge over-reaction to Katrina from both officials and the public - most of Houston should have just stayed put but 42% of people outside of the evac areas left - the overreaction was so crazy, I still remember clearly) that was not well planned out at all. FL, you would think, have learned from that biggest failure of an evac order ever in the US. I think Bush requested every metropolitan area to review their evac plan after that failure. What I'm getting to is yes, we know it's very tough, but that isn't a good excuse in this case for several reasons 1- lesson learned from previous failure, 2- their own emergency plan said they were supposed to issue an evac order sooner, 3- they did have the information (as early as Sunday) to issue the evac order sooner. There is definitely a gov failure here and it's a pretty bad one. I still don't know what the impact of that failure is (haven't kept up).
I mentioned FL property insurance a few times in this thread... it's about to get worse. What happened while Ron DeSantis was fighting the culture wars (popular.info) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has had a busy year. He has enacted legislation prohibiting teachers from acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people. He has banned private businesses from conducting trainings about racial bias. And he has flown dozens of migrants from San Antonio, Texas to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, under false pretenses. But while DeSantis was fighting the culture wars and positioning himself for a future presidential run, he has failed to meaningfully address one of the state's biggest problems: its dysfunctional and collapsing property insurance market. Florida's property insurance system was in crisis even though the state had not been struck by a major hurricane since 2018. Then Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida's west coast, killing at least 74 people and inflicting tens of billions of dollars in property damage. Things are about to get much worse. Florida property faces catastrophic risks from weather events that worsen each year due to climate change. For years, many of the nation's major insurers have wanted little to do with covering property in Florida. Currently, State Farm covers 8% of Florida’s home insurance market, but "no other major national insurer has more than 4%." That leaves Floridians reliant on thinly-capitalized local insurers with very high rates. Floridians pay an average of "$4,231 a year per [property insurance] policy, compared to a US average of $1,544." Premiums have increased as much as 30% per year. Nevertheless, these companies are having a hard time surviving. In the last five years, six Florida insurance companies have gone out of business "without responding to a hurricane, and four more are in the process of liquidation." The collapsing market has left many Floridians reliant on the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., a state-run agency that is supposed to be the "insurer of last resort." It now provides property insurance for more than 1 million Floridians. But Citizens has limited resources. It currently has $13.5 billion available to pay out claims — a pool of money that will be depleted, if not exhausted, by Ian. If Citizens runs out of money, Florida law "allows [Citizens] to assess non-customers to pay out claims." This assessment, known as a "hurricane tax," would result in increased costs for Floridians that don't even own homes but carry auto, renters, or other forms of insurance. Florida State Senator Jeff Brandes (R) warns that Floridians could "see rate hikes of up to 40% next year as a result of Ian." ...
One current and one future US President. The future one in a pensive state, which is appropriate, given the crisis he has to manage. The current one wondering where he is.
I never said it shifted out of the cone of uncertainty but that there is a cone of uncertainty. By definition that shows accurate predictions are very difficult. So you’re acknowledging they even NYC authorities didn’t do a good job. As I stated mistake will happen. That is the nature of such large disasters. Also Ian was an exceptionally strong storm. Again You’re making the point that with these situations they are complicated and chaotic. It’s also not that easy to evacuate and where people evacuate has to be considered carefully. For example initially people from Tampa were evacuated south towards where the Hurricane eventually hit. Part of why was that there were paths showing it might hit further northwards on the panhandle. evacuating a large number of people isn’t easy and just shuffling people around to try to keep up with the changing path of a disaster is even harder. Again look at what happened in Rita. So yes Lee county probably could’ve evacuated earlier that said I don’t seen anything exceptionally bad about FLs preparations compared to other disasters. You seem to be holding them to a standard that practically no state has met before.
Again you are contradicting yourself here and honestly it's a bit infuriating The point of landfall for Ian WAS INSIDE THE CONE for 3 DAYS. In other words, when they say they were outside the cone, they are flat out LYING. What's so hard to understand? Sandy was a tropical storm so people didn't take it so seriously unfortunately...what's the excuse for Ian which was clearly a catastrophic storm. I don't get why you are defending decisions that really are criminal as just, "oh well it's a disaster and this happens" kind of thing.
I wish DeSantis would stop being a social justice warrior and do more things that actually help Floridians like addressing insurance issues........ having said that, people in Florida SHOULD pay more for insurance, they are a prime candidate for hurricanes and some other natural disasters. The same is the case in California with earthquakes and wild fires.
There are so many billion $ extreme weather disasters (tropical storms, hail, tornadoes, flooding, droughts, wildfires) across the nations in recent years that I'm not really sure. If we are just looking at tropical storm costs over the past decade, TX has been hit the hardest with ~$160B in cost, followed by LA at ~$120B and then FL at ~$110B (not counting Ian). So just based on that, it doesn't make sense that FL property insurance is much higher than in TX and LA. edit: Source: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/events/US/2010-2022?disasters[]=all-disasters
