I think Milton got pretty good compliance because the images of what Helene did were still being played on the news. That was fresh enough that at least some scoffers were turned into believers.
I also suspect that the “I do my own research before deciding” crowd is much more receptive to threat warnings from officials of their own party. How much that leans net left or right is an interesting question I’ll sidestep here. Certainly lots of anti-vax nonsense has been from lefties.
We’ll see if Helene or Milton were exceptions, but I’ve never really seen any particular particular lean in the past to folks who decide to test a hurricane.
I know the old saw about atheists and foxholes isn’t true but it does seen to be true of major weather events. There are few people so brainwashed they’re willing to risk their own personal safety due to their political beliefs. Other people’s safety, sure, but not their own. There are people who let past experience of smaller storms give them a false sense of confidence, but at least that’s rooted in something real, if still misguided.
Finally today we have boil-and-use water. We can take showers! Hurrah!
Seriously the response here from government, private, and neighbor-helping-neighbor has been so great. The area water system in tough terrain is being repaired much faster than I ever could have expected. I feel like this is a huge positive story here in Western North Carolina that has shown many folks at their best. Donation and clothes/ food distribution are overwhelming.
We have a long way to go still, especially in many of the worst hit areas. It will take years. But I am hard-pressed to think how the overall response could have gone much better. What seemed impossible two and a half weeks ago is actually happening. And how musically beautiful is the sound of a flushing toilet!
Yay water! That’s a huge step towards normalcy.
Congrats!
adding in:
people who might have a lot of pets …
we live on a fairly large patch of land (for our environment) - so we have 5 dogs and a few cats … like most of our neighbours … how do you fit that and your family into a car and where do you go to?
One could turn that around and say that maintaining one’s household in a readily portable configuration is part and parcel of sound disaster prep wherever you live, but especially if you live in someplace where evacuation orders are common foreseeable occurrences.
Once can’t necessarily help being elderly or infirm or poor. But absent those obstacles choosing to make one’s household immovable is akin to learned helplessness and amounts to imposing an extra burden on the emergency services to make up for one’s failure to plan for the statistically inevitable need to evacuate on short-ish notice.
Bottom line: for those who live in disaster-prone areas, there is a burden of preparation that people in non-disaster-prone areas do not share. The specifics of how you prepare depends on what your local disaster risk is: hurricane, earthquake, wildfire, etc. But prepare you should if possible. Note I said “possible”, not “convenient”; prep is always inconvenient and costs money we’d all rather spend on something fun.
Given the amount of destruction and the difficult terrain it’s nothing short of miraculous that y’all have come as far back as you have. I was watching one of the weather channels (Fox Weather, I think), with a chyron saying there’d been 800 (!) landslides. It was an interview with a man from the US Geological Survey, who noted how difficult it was to determine a firm number of slides, but that through air surveys and on-the-ground investigations they’d determined that in fact there’d been over a thousand (!!!). Somewhere else I saw a statement that around 500 roads were still closed. I daresay sections of some of the closed roads simply don’t exist any more.
And all this despite CT-fueled militia yahoos trying to shoot the people who are trying to help. Surely Americans ae their own worst enemies.
I’m only in the eastern part of the state, and the people I know who live in western NC lost power and water, not family or property. I’ve gotten a direct view into what’s going on out there through them. Having learned from them - and having seen how devastating a storm can be to infrastructure through my own hurricane experiences - I’ve never doubted that help was on the way (though it would be massively hindered by the amout of damage to the region), or that local response (neighbors helping neighbors) would be the first help many people would see. This has been so horrifically distorted though. 
Now people are even claiming that the numbers of missing and dead are being distorted. Did people not see those floodwaters on TV???
And now we’re into the stage where donation sites are explaining that people need to stop using the donation process as a way to get rid of dirty, worn-out clothes. Again, based on my own hurricane experience, this is sadly true. I’ve personally found nasty, stained undergarments when sorting piles of donated clothes. Most people agree that donated goods should be new or gently (very gently!) used, but there are a few outliers who insist they would be grateful even for stained clothes in a time of need. One lady even suggested that folks should make plushies out of the dirty clothes. 
My wife, working at an Asheville donation site, dealt with a donation of two bottles of KY Kelly. At least they were unopened; but I think someone might not be understanding donation priorities.
I spent the last week working in our schools for a very shortened day. My school was the only one open in the district, and we had hundreds of kids, from kindergartners through high school seniors, spend the day there. It was wonderful. Next week we have work days, and the children return on the 28th.
I think everybody is so, so ready.
We are less ready for Trump’s announced Asheville visit on Monday. Of all the debris we don’t need in our city…
With aid workers, first responders, utility repair personnel, public safety officers, etc., all stretched to their limit as it is, yeh, all that disrupted for a photo op?
Suddenly, we have two new tropical storms:
It doesn’t look like either will affect the U.S.
Barring very unexpected change in direction, it doesn’t, no. But, they do demonstrate that the Atlantic basin and the Gulf are still very warm, and more than capable of spawning tropical storms, here in the latter half of October.
Cuba has had two days of entire power grid collapse, with some recovery. There are lots of people there that have no power, at least as of yesterday. I know Oscar is a tiny storm, but I hope those in the affected area get proper warning.
It is a comparatively minor problem, but I see on Facebook today that there are local areas that still don’t have their Charter internet back up from Helene.
Probably too many militias running around shooting at strangers who might be the black helicopter FEMA people they’ve heard so much about.
So Charter is understandably reluctant to send a cable repair truck & crew into harm’s way. Everyone who ever saw the documentary *Close Encounters of the Third Kind" knows the evil secretive government agencies and their evil contractors all drive vehicles disguised as ordinary innocent commercial whatevers.
For freakin real.
Oh, and I just remembered my favorite donation incident! Last Monday I was at my school, seeing boxes of donated books going in for distribution to students. Lots of lovely new books for our kiddos–and atop one box, a copy of Black Leopard, Red Wolf.
Rather than tell you why I was, uh, surprised, I’ll just link to the website “Book Trigger Warnings.”
I set the book aside.
For what it’s worth, the book is deliberately written in a non-Western style and near impenetrable to most people. I would say any student (or anybody, really) who can actually get past the first few pages is probably going to have the intellectual maturity to handle it. “War and Peace” would make for easier reading.
That said, yeah, that’s an odd one for a donation.
I looked it up, and although it definitely appears to need those trigger warnings, it sounds intriguing.
But not for elementary school children! What were they thinking???