Hurricane Irma

[Rum]

Wanna see a nun with a chainsaw?

[JimC]

Sister Ripyouanewarsehole!

[Hermit]

What's the way in Oz? If there is a hurricane, just house sex offenders and felons with warrants out for their arrest in the same room as everyone else, no questions asked?

We don't get hurricanes, we have no sex offenders and we have no felons with warrants out for their arrest, 42. Your question is meaningless

What would the Ozzies do differently?

OK, seriously now. We do get cyclones, which are the same as hurricanes, typhoons or whatever else low pressure area with high winds and rains are called. Of course we also have sex offenders and criminals with outstanding arrest warrants. We don't often get situations where mass evacuations are necessary, though. The most recent example I can think of happened in 1974, when Cyclone Tracy flattened 75% of Darwin, a town inhabited by 47,000 people at the time. The unpreparedness was massive. None of the buildings were designed to withstand cyclones to begin with. Cyclones just were not factored into the scenery even though the area had been hit by one in 1897 and another in 1937. When the weather bureau published a warning concerning a small depression and mentioned it may develop into a cyclone, everybody basically ignored it. There had been a number of similar warnings recently, and nothing horrible ever eventuated. The lows just kept dissipating elsewhere. Nobody boarded up their houses. The time was spent on visiting friends for Christmas eve parties instead. Darwin could not possibly have been less prepared for what was about to hit it.

Initially, Tracy appeared to pass harmlessly by, just like all previous cyclones. Then it changed direction from southwest to southeast and went straight over the top of the town. Not only were 80% of all residential dwellings and almost as many of the commercial buildings totalled, but communications were cut as well. There were no antennae left standing to transmit through and the roads were impassable. Eventually, a couple of ham radio operators jury rigged their equipment and sent messages to the outside world via Morse code. Relay stations by other ham radio operators passed the messages on.

Major-General Alan Stretton arrived at the scene later that Christmas day. What he saw convinced him that most of the town's inhabitants had to be evacuated for health reasons. There was no potable water, and apart from the two hospitals filled with 500 injured and 71 dead, there was no power. The stench of rotting meat coming out of overturned fridges and freezers was already pervading the area in the tropical heat. After mass inoculations for typhoid and cholera, it was estimated that maybe 10 or 12 thousand people could safely remain and get busy cleaning the mess up. The rest had no roof to rest under anyway.



Stretton called the RAAF in, and within two days 10,000 of them were airlifted out of there. In the next three days another 25,000 were spread all over Australia, chiefly in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. There was no time for warrant checks. People were just loaded onto aeroplanes as they came. Most of them had no clue where they would finish up, and much of the time the pilots were given destinations after they took off. Places were basically found on the run.



60% of the evacuees did not bother returning, but Darwin was rebuilt after new design codes were enacted to prevent a repeat of the catastrophe that was cyclone Tracy, and 142,000 people live there today. I don't know how many of them are sex offenders or fleeing from arrest warrants, but the Northern Territory being what it is, the per capita number would probably be well above the national average.

[JimC]

I love Darwin, I wish I was there now, and away from chilly old Melbourne town...

[pErvinalia]

What I find interesting (and scary) is the latitudes that Atlantic hurricanes can occur at. Miami is around about the same latitude as Brisbane, yet we only get cyclones that far from the equator extremely rarely.

Hong Kong, where I lived as a kid is on roughly the same latitude as Miami and of course they get typhoons most years round about this time of the year, which are more or less the same phenomenon though they tend to be smaller and a little less destructive. The geography, heating of shallow seas and such I am sure play as big a factor in creating these deep low pressure bastards. Your area I guess doesn't have the same configuration - thus your cyclones are less intense.

The cyclones are massive in north Queensland. I guess that's close enough to the equator for them to generate in the deeper waters. Brisbane often winds up with the remains of north Queensland cyclones and gets a fuckton of rain dumped on it. The cyclones often track SW to the nth QLD coast, and then once inland they get pushed SE down the coast to Brisbane. On the very rare occasion they can be pushed back out to sea NE of Brisbane and then reform into a small cyclone. But I don't remember any of them happening in the last 20 years or so.

[Brian Peacock]

I love Darwin.

[Alan B]

I was listening to an interview on the radio a couple of days ago with the UK political clown 'Bojo' Johnson. He was being asked about the help the UK was going to provide to the BVI and associated islands with the damage caused by Irma. The tax haven role ('financial institutions') of the BVI was mentioned which Johnson said were 'important' (he might have said 'very important'). The thought immediately came to mind: "Gosh! Are these 'tax dodgers' going to release their funds to repair the damage..."

On reflection, I think not.

[Forty Two]

60% of the evacuees did not bother returning, but Darwin was rebuilt after new design codes were enacted to prevent a repeat of the catastrophe that was cyclone Tracy, and 142,000 people live there today. I don't know how many of them are sex offenders or fleeing from arrest warrants, but the Northern Territory being what it is, the per capita number would probably be well above the national average.

When dealing with small numbers, I'm sure that there would be less reason for concern. But, when you have a single state with 25+ million people, and counties in that state dealing with 2 and 3 million people at a clip, there are going to be additional concerns. That's all I'm getting at. This is not a suggestion that anybody elsewhere is doing something wrong. I'm merely defending the idea that there might be a reason why a large cinder-block building housing lower middle class and poor people with children in tow in "shelters" might want to weed out some bad apples.

[Forty Two]

I don't see why they don't use land fill to provide raised areas where people can go to be safe when it floods.
Near where I live, there is the landfill site for Gloucester. It's amazing how high it's been banked up. Several stories high at least. The older parts have been finished off with topsoil, and sheep are grazing it. It looks quite nice, almost natural, apart from being evenly contoured. I believe it's positioned to help with the flooding from the Severn.

America produces plenty of rubbish. They could do something with it in flood prone areas.

You want people to shelter on top of a hill? What's on top of that hill? Buildings that remain empty until hurricanes arrive? And, enough to house 3-5 million people?

There are practicalities here. Not only do you need a high place, but you need a high place with food, shelter, and such. It's better for people just to flee inland and get hotels, shelters, family members who don't live near the beach, etc. The places at risk are those on the water -- in the case of Irma it was the Florida Keys, Naples, and Marco Island. For the most part, the rest of the state got a bit of flooding here, and downed power there. The odd tornado dusted up a few trees and did damage here and there, but this monster storm really can only be said to have done major damage to the Keys, Naples and Marco Island and vicinity. Places as close as Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva (beach and island communities) faced very little damage.

It's the direct hit that matters. The problem is, we don't know where that direct hit will occur. So, if you want to build up landfill shelters, you'd have to do so along the entire Florida coast, covering Tallahassee area, Tampa Bay/St. Pete, Bradenton, Sarasota, Ft. Myers, Naples, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm area, Jupiter area, Daytona, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, etc. That's a fair bit of terraforming.

[Hermit]

60% of the evacuees did not bother returning, but Darwin was rebuilt after new design codes were enacted to prevent a repeat of the catastrophe that was cyclone Tracy, and 142,000 people live there today. I don't know how many of them are sex offenders or fleeing from arrest warrants, but the Northern Territory being what it is, the per capita number would probably be well above the national average.

When dealing with small numbers, I'm sure that there would be less reason for concern. But, when you have a single state with 25+ million people, and counties in that state dealing with 2 and 3 million people at a clip, there are going to be additional concerns. That's all I'm getting at. This is not a suggestion that anybody elsewhere is doing something wrong. I'm merely defending the idea that there might be a reason why a large cinder-block building housing lower middle class and poor people with children in tow in "shelters" might want to weed out some bad apples.

Yes. Of course. Every victim of a sexual crime and every criminal who escapes an arrest warrant represents a much greater tragedy when seen on a larger scale. I feel such a fool for not having recognised this.

[Forty Two]

The idea is that vulnerable people who are in shelters with their kids have a legitimate interest in not being housed with persons on the sex offender list, and violent felons who have warrants out for their arrest. I've not suggested anyone is a fool. I've merely responded to the allegation that it is uncivilized and inhuman to try to weed those people out.

[Hermit]

The idea is that vulnerable people who are in shelters with their kids have a legitimate interest in not being housed with persons on the sex offender list, and violent felons who have warrants out for their arrest. I've not suggested anyone is a fool. I've merely responded to the allegation that it is uncivilized and inhuman to try to weed those people out.

That is not at all what you argued in your previous post.

[Forty Two]

In the previous post, I only noted that when you're dealing with a community of 140,000 people in a rather non-urban setting there are going to be far fewer issues of concern. More densely populated areas tend to result in not only more crime but higher crime "rates." So, I'm not suggesting you're a fool. I'm suggesting that small towns would probably not feel the need to be as vigilant as big cities in weeding out bad apples.

For example, I might expect Sheriff Judd in Polk County, a fairly populous county, with significant drug and crime issues, to attend to the issue differently than the Sheriff of, say, Dixie County, which has a population that basically all know each other and go to the same fish-fry on Friday, church on Sunday and say "howdy"
to each other at the county fair.

[Hermit]

Your sophistry has broken the boredom threshold again.

[Forty Two]

Not sure what your problem is, Hermit, but the only argument I've made is that the idea of checking to see if there are sex offenders or wanted felons in the midst of vulnerable people sheltering from a disaster has some reason to it, and is not inhuman or uncivilized.

I've asked what Oz would do differently, and it doesn't seem as if there is much different that they would do. There was some mention of how abhorrent it would be to Australians that anyone would make those sort of checks when people are sheltering from a hurricane. However, I'm not sure why that would be so abhorrent. People flee the hurricane ahead of the actual disaster - if you're not in a shelter before the hurricane starts effecting the area, then you're not going to get there. So, this is not a panic situation where people are fleeing a disaster in progress. This is a calm, orderly process of entering a shelter well in advance of the hurricane arriving.

I haven't attempted to deceive anyone through the use of fallacious argumentation. So, where is the sophistry?

I'm not the one who goes around here calling other countries/peoples "uncivilized" and "inhuman" on issues like this. I've merely defended my own country/people against those allegations.