Arresting People Who Stay to Protect Their Property During Disaster

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I agree with Deckard and am somewhat conflicted about this law.

I think people should have a right to protect their property, even if the situation is very dangerous. Having been a disaster responder myself though I agree with Rimrocker and Refman's points also and have seen what can happen when a resident tries to stay only to find they are unable to deal with the situation. Consider during Ike how several people who thought they could stay only ended up fleeing when the eye passed over Galveston.

Residents that try to ride out a disaster often end up putting more than their own lives at risk but also rescue personel who have to go out in the thick of the disaster to try to save them. You can't tell rescuers to not save them as in many cases the rescuers are morally and legally obliged to save them. People who try to ride out a disaster that they have been warned about often end up wasting resources and putting more lives at risk.

 

I think there is more to those stories than is being told in the video. In all of these stories except for the last one gun confiscation appears secondary to evacuating the people from the disaster area and without seeing more of the footage or the story I don't know why the police confiscated the guns. Its possible in the first story with the old women the police might've felt threatened by a woman refusing to evacuate and holding a pistol. In most of the stories the people did get their guns back though.

 

I have mixed feelings about this too, but mine are more about definitions than anything else. I totally agree with rimrocker that there are many situations where mandatory means GTFO! I was not completely convinced, however, that we should have been under "mandatory" evacuation in our location in Clear Lake for Ike.

That isn't even to say that we would have stayed, given that we had 2 and 4 year olds with us, but (and I admit, this is totally based on "Ike didn't hurt us how can this hurricane do any damage") certain parts of my ZIP code have very little to fear from a hurricane unless it is a CAT5.

In a disaster, lokky-loos suck hard. I don't rubberneck (even if the rest of the traffic is 5 mph) at traffic accidents, mill around for fires, or try to get on TV during problem events.

 

I didn't mean livestock would save us, I meant we had to save the livestock.
I thought this made it clear

If everyone in the current ME area leaves the roads will be jammed. If they want to do this they need to be way more conservative on ME. 20 miles in can no longer be ME.

 

One other point from personal experience...

If 90% of people leave, how do you effectively prevent looting? You don't have time to check on the actions of a bunch of people who may be "just late in evacuating some things from their house" when it's not really their house.

When we call for an evacuation, we try to do it at least 3 hours in advance to give people time to move out and local law enforcement time to deal with people. We also try to start an evac during daytime. If you wait until night, rousting people out of their beds and accounting for folks is damn difficult. This can push an evac out several more hours if, say, we're expecting a frontal passage at midnight that might spread a lot of fire. So to GRowdy's issue, yes, there are times when we evac areas and then the winds don't come on as strong or we're more successful in suppression operations than we expected and it ends up looking less severe than originally forecast. From my perspective, that is greatly preferred to waiting until we are sure it is needed and trying to evac at 11:00 pm in the middle of a night firefight, which would infinitely add to the dangers faced by firefighters and public alike.

 

Well said. Rescue crews shouldn't be risking their lives for a few stubborn folks who think they can ride out anything. This law is more about keeping people safe and saving lives than saving possessions. Priorities?

 

Houston is a city of millions. Mandatory evac zones are right next to non mandatory zones. People will drive for miles to loot, just like they do to attend garage sales. This makes nobody safer. It just gives the government more power to abuse.

 

I'm not conflicted. This is a good law. It will put more pressure on government to make the right call when they declare a mandatory evacuation. But, on the balance, it will probably still help them more than hurt.

EDIT: Southern: The difference is that a cop in an evacuation zone can feel free to arrest anyone civilian he comes across in the area without needing to prove he is looting.

 

Welcome back Weslinder, it is interesting to have a libertarian idologue on the bbs.

 

I cant wait to see how it effects important federal NASA/government employees in NASA area. This type of control is outrageous.

 

No kidding! Glad Wes has made an appearance and sticks around.

 

They won't be driving around the area, they will be holed up on NASA property with everything they need provided on site.

My mom works at NASA, primary source.

 

^ I'm also guessing that NASA as Federal property isn't subject to local jurisdiction.

 

I don't think people don't live at NASA.

Think of all the zip codes that had mandatory evacs during Ike. It was thousands and thousands of people. If I am understanding this correctly, they could arrest anyone for staying in them? That is just crazy to me.

 

If a looter is driving in a zone that has been evacuated, they will be arrested. Simple. If it isn't mandetory, how do you know if they are a looter?

Another consideration, is safety aspects AFTER a storm to first responders. Dead or alive.

Afer Ike, we used tax payer money to scour every residents to search for bodies. That shouldn't be necessary if they left.

Or if you lived, you may still need emergency assistence ...which puts responders in harms way again.

 

Then allow me to be very blunt. Once somebody is dead, it does not matter how many head of cattle they had.

You survived. I am very happy for that. Under slightly different circumstances, you may not have been as fortunate.

Sigh. Really?

You would do well to take a look at this. http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2008/09/post_39.html

It may not be 20 miles in, but areas all over Galveston County, Chambers County and southern Harris County would be in deep trouble from the storm surge. That is serious flooding before a drop of rain has fallen to add to it.

The ME areas for Ike were predominantly the ZIP codes adjacent to Galveston Bay. League City, which is 10 to 12 miles from the Bay was not an ME.

 

According to this statement, you think people live at NASA.

I am going to go with what I think you meant, that people don't live at NASA. This is true, but during a hurricane, especially if there was a mandatory evacuation, the skeleton crew that would stay at NASA has arrangements to stay on-site complete with meals provided (since no stores or restaurants in the area would be open during a mandatory evacuation) and no "driving around" necessary.

So, the people at NASA wouldn't be in danger of being arrested under this law.

It may be crazy to you, but if we were talking about NOLA before Katrina, Bolivar and Galveston before Ike, or some other such emergency, I would prefer that emergency personnel be able to operate without idiots and looky-loos milling about and diverting resources from the more necessary tasks.

 

You know when I read this first thing that came to mind is that this is going be a law that is enforced only in the most extreme situations as the police just don't have the time, manpower, capabilities or the resources to enforce it at all.

And low and behold I read this article this morning:

Source:
http://www.caller.com/news/2009/jul/26/police-can-use-force-compel-hurricane-evacuation/

Look for this to be the prevailing opinion when it comes to the implementation of this law.

 

Hopefully the liberals will fund a jail that big so they can necessarily control the masses.