So then, after the disaster hits, we should use resources to save your father, at the possible expense of people that would have LOVED to get out, but didn’t have the resources to do so? Your father, who had every opportunity and the means to leave, but chose to stay, should now be rescued with the same priority and posssibly ahead of some poor shlub who wanted to leave ahead of time, but was too poor to do so?
That isn’t what I said, nor what I implied, so I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth. I merely expressed surprise that I’m seeing Republicans advocate for more government interferance in personal matters, especially when it comes to protecting one’s home, especially after having heard my father express the exact opposite position.
Shayna, the basic idea here is that if someone refuses a mandatory eviction order and subsequently needs to be rescued, then a civil fine should be imposed. The threat of that fine, in theory, would discourage people from using resources that might be spent rescuing others who were unable to obey the order.
Yeah, I get the “basic idea.” What, do you think I’m stupid or something, and I can’t tell what this thread is all about after 100 posts? I simply haven’t shared my personal opinion on it, and I resent when others get all indignant about things I never even fucking said. Is that ok with you?
I think the problem is that you came into the thread, threw out accusations against “you guys” and offered some personal anecdote. It would have been better if you made your case directly, and offered any accusations to the specific people who you found to be offensive. “You guys” is not usually received very well…
I can see now that you were offering the anecdote about your father as “he’s a conservative, but he doesn’t think you conservatives”, but it could easily have been interpreted as you condoning his potential behavior in some way-- ie, how dare you not rescue my father, even if he stubornly refused to leave. You didn’t mean that, but it could be read that way.
Hey. whoa! Anything you do is just fine with me. I understood you to be objecting the to the evacuation order itself.
Did I misunderstand?
Yes, you misunderstood. I was quoting my father’s sentiments. He would not evacuate and didn’t feel the government had any right to force him to. Him being a Republican and all, and his sentiment basically expressing what I would expect from a Republican, seeing all the Republicans here voicing exactly the opposite really surprised me. It seems to contradict what Republicanism stands most for, on principle – less government interferance.
Then I would assume that he would not request assistance from the government if he later chose to evacuate. Is that fair?
The government interference to which you refer is the mandatory evacuation, correct? It is the premise of the OP. If one rejects the premise there really is nothing else to say about it. It is certainly possible to have a discussion about whether a fine for non-compliance is a good idea without saying anything at all about whether the mandatory evacuation is a good idea, wouldn’t you agree?
Why would you assume anything about someone you don’t know? He’ll he’s my own father and I wouldn’t have the vaguest idea what he would request or not request. All I know is that he told me no one could force him to leave his home if he didn’t want to. And seeing all the Republican sentiment here, saying that people who stay on to defend their homes, even under dire circumstances, should be fined for doing so, not only contradicted my father’s statement, but seems to fly in the face of everything I’ve always believed about what the Republican party stood for. I don’t know how many more ways I can clarify.
I’m not sure. I think you’re conflating 2 different issues, and I don’t think anyone’s even brought up whether or not mandatory evacuations are good ideas or not.
Look, if it were me, and I had warning that a hurricane of that magnitude was heading my way, and I lived in a fish bowl and my mayor said get the fuck out, I’d get the fuck out. Apparently my father might not, I guess depending on how he assessed the circumstances. Or he might, but just wouldn’t do so on the orders of the government because he doesn’t feel they should be able to forcefully remove him from his home.
I’ll call him and ask him if he’d want to be rescued, and if so, if he’d be willing to pay a fine for standing up for his perceived right to stand his ground in the face of a mandatory evacuation order. I’ll let you know what he says.
Ok, well, he’d happily pay the fine if his choice to stay resulted in him later having to be rescued. He said, “Sure, I’d pay. Kindof like a cab fare.” He was leaving to go to the ballgame, so I couldn’t grill him in too much depth. But suffice it to say, no one would have to foot the bill to drag his ass off his rooftop if it came to that. But, he can afford it, remember, so I suspect that clouds his opinion at least somewhat. So there you have it, I guess.
I am in complete agreement with your dad, I think. He understands that by chosing to ignore the order, he opens himself up to a potential fine if he has to be rescused, and he’s OK with that; he takes personal responsibility for his actions.
THAT is what the Republican party is about.
No penalty should be assessed, but if people were ordered to leave, and had enough time to make it to saftey on their own (even walking), and they choose not to, they have to be responsible for their decision to stay. This includes the cost of rescue by civil authorities or private means. Also people needing rescuing place the rescue workers lives at risk.
Again charging someone for their rescue when they had the option to leave, is a personal choice, the reason is not relavant. No penalties should be charged, but if rescue is needed the person choosing to stay should flip the bill. .
Yes, but that’s a far cry from believing the government should impose penalties on other people who choose to exercise that same right. Remeber, he has the means, so for him, standing up for his right to protect his property would not be a hardship financially, should it come to that, so to some degree I suspect that fact colors his response. And like I said, he was walking out the door, so I didn’t have the opportunity to press him any further, as to whether he feels it should be legislatively mandated or not.
If you’d been there and not left during the storm, would you still stay there now? http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411749/609605 For goodness sake, they are talking about having to force people out at gunpoint now. (The article doesn’t mention that specifically but they do mention that when the military arrives to get people to leave, it “won’t be nice.”) People who don’t have electricity, running water…people who are surrounded by filth and a possible onslaught of various diseases that are associated with stagnant water and sewage.
I just don’t understand this way of thinking and I think that is the real debate here. I think that people who understand why people would want to stay are less inclined to point the finger of blame at any of these people, no matter what their reason for staying was. The people who are more willing to impose fines on those who would choose to stay are those who, like myself, do not understand why someone would put himself or herself in harm’s way if it weren’t necessary. I guarantee you there are some who could not leave who would have gladly taken the option to leave if they could have done so.
I have lived more than half my life in a smallish coastal town in Georgia. We have been a lucky town (knock on wood) - we’ve been threatened by Hurricane Hugo and numerous other storms but there has not been a major direct hit by a hurricane in our area in decades. The last two major hurricanes to hit this town directly were in the 1890s. Despite our luck, signs have been erected throughout town showing what the water level would be in certain areas if a Cat 3 storm were to hit. When we get the warnings to leave, I take them seriously. It would be irresponsible of me to do otherwise. Yes, it gets old having to run away once every few years. However, I would feel really dumb if I got seriously injured or one of my kids was injured in a storm that I knew about days in advance.
Firstly, I don’t understand how people can actually say that there were many people that possibly weren’t aware of the hurricane’s approach. During hurricane season you cannot throw a stick without hitting someone talking about the newest tropical storm. People down here know when the storms are coming. I find it difficult to believe that people wouldn’t know about a hurricane days before it made landfall. Maybe they don’t know about the mandatory evacuations, but wouldn’t that make them highly irresponsible for not following the latest information about a storm they know is headed their way days in advance?
People stay many times because they want to. I’ve seen it time and time again here and in other communities in Florida, Texas, Alabama and Louisiana - heck, in every state that is threatened by hurricanes. This time there were people who couldn’t afford to leave but the stories about the stubborn 80 year old grandmothers is not new to this storm. Frankly, I think that old lady should be ashamed of herself. She put her entire family at risk, including her five year old grandson, because of her stubbornness. I think that’s asinine. I realize that my position on this may upset some people but that is not my intention. People who make a conscious decision to stay in harm’s way lose their right to be a priority for the rescue workers later. As others have stated, those rescue workers are putting their own lives on the line for those people who couldn’t/wouldn’t evacuate. If I were a rescue worker there, I’d be perfectly ok risking my life for someone who couldn’t leave. I wouldn’t be nearly so happy to risk my life for someone who was just too stubborn to leave.
Some posters have mentioned that some might have stayed because of the possiblity of looting. Is anything in your home worth more than your life? Is anything in your home worth more than the life of a police officer, firefighter or any other rescue worker who might have to attempt to save you in the worst case scenario? Looting is shameful. Criminals don’t need a flood or a hurricane as an excuse to steal from you. You go to work every day, right? Shouldn’t you be at home protecting your house from the looters?
While I feel that some people in this thread are right, the costs associated with charging these people for not leaving during a mandatory evacuation could be more trouble than they would be worth, I also feel that the goal of the posters recommending this is not to make money for the government. It is to make people more aware of the dangers of staying. It is to give people another reason to take these warnings seriously. I think the statements made by the posters here are more out of frustration and feelings of ineffectiveness in the aftermath of such a devastating crisis. More people could have been saved if - if the officials in charged had acted faster and more efficiently, if the people who stayed by choice had left, if the warnings had been heeded, if the levees had been stronger.
My hope is that this disaster is enough. My hope is that in the future, people will look to Hurricane Katrina and see what they risk by staying behind when they know better. I hope that we wouldn’t need to impose government sanctions on anyone for choosing to stay during a mandatory evacuation after this disaster. Unfortunately, I know that even this lesson will not be enough for some.
tdn, I hope it’s obvious to you that not everything I am saying is directed at you specifically. Your post just happened to be the last one at the time I started this (way too long) post that was in favor of staying in NO even knowing what we know now. Also, it is my understanding (as a CJ student) that your usage of ex post facto is, indeed, correct. Ex post facto means basically that a law cannot be made retroactive. In other words, I cannot be charged with a crime for something I do today that is made illegal in the future.
As others have observed, yes, in retrospect. And that’s the practical reason I don’t see this as being a workable idea.
I pointed this out in the “will we learn our lesson?” thread, but it bears repeating here. If this had been another Camille, if the levees hadn’t failed, if the storm had blown through, killed a few dozen or maybe a hundred people, if the city didn’t need evacuating, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and nobody would be talking about the necessity of punishing those who “took up rescuers’ resources unnecessarily” or whatever.
Hurricanes happen in that region with some regularity, I understand. And usually, they aren’t anywhere near this bad.
So how would this law actually work, in practice? Say, a hurricane is bearing down on Charleston, or Galveston, or Miami, or wherever. Category 4, spinning up to possibly be a 5. Point of landfall is uncertain. Best case scenario, the storm weakens, misses the city, you lose a couple of trailer parks and eight or ten people; Red Cross brings in food and water, rebuilding starts within a week. Worst case scenario, the storm becomes a monster, direct-hits the city, billions in damage, thousands die, sustained search and rescue.
At the point you need to decide whether an evacuation is mandatory, what does an announcement under this hypothetical law look like? “Attention citizens. The imminent storm may be really, really bad. We think you should leave. If it is really bad and you are able to leave but don’t and you end up filling a seat in a rescue boat, we will fine you a thousand dollars. Of course, if it isn’t, then, hey, no charge.”
Honestly, what do you think people are going to do?
If people knew it was going to be this awful, there’s no way in hell everybody drawing breath wouldn’t have tried their damnedest to get out of town. But nobody knew it would be this bad, either the effects of the storm or the total incompetence of the government response following. Yawn, another storm. Board up the windows and make sure we’ve got candles and camp fuel. Nobody in their right mind stays put when they’re staring into the twin barrels of a Biblical catastrophe. But nobody actually expects it, either.
Okay, so, under that hypothetical scenario, you issue a warning. Nine times out of ten, nothing greatly untoward happens. The storm is not as bad as it could have been, and the legal conditions for prosecuting dilly-dalliers are not met: no prosecutions result. First time, everybody clears out. Second time, not so much. Third time, back to business as usual, and the government’s threats are treated as background noise. And the tenth time, when the Wrath of an Angry God scours the city down to the soil, you actually think you’re going to get away with putting a hundred thousand anguished survivors in a defendant’s chair? Really?
Fine. If you really want to motivate people, then do this. Instead of threatening to fine or imprison people for failing to evacuate, instead of making an announcement that “if it turns out to be really bad and we have to rescue you while you could have gotten yourself out ahead of time,” make a different announcement.
"If it’s really bad, there will be no rescue operation."
That would get people off their butts, wouldn’t it?
And it has the added advantage of being much, much cheaper. Screw spending money on sending food and helicopters and cadaver dogs into the devastated city. They didn’t leave, they knew the risk, they deserve what’s coming to them, right? Right.
If you’re going to advocate a cruel, heartless policy on the grounds of its effectiveness, then fucking commit to it. Don’t hide behind a namby-pamby law-and-order philosophy. Embrace the cruelty.
Fuck.
Two points: First, Mr. Santorum is a meathead, IMHO, and does disservice to the GOP every time he opens his yap.
Second, I can understand reluctance to leave one’s homestead. I tend to provide for myself ahead of time such that it would take an extreme situation for me to vacate my home. Emergency workers are taxpayer funded, yet revisiting the same address as a situation worsens taxes resources already stretched thin.
I hope that you are never in a situation where you have to abandon an elderly or dying person who has to stay in order to follow the evacuation order “to the letter.”
I also hope that you are never that person who cannot leave.
Some did not leave for the sake of humanity. Thank God for these people who were “pigheaded” and did not follow the letter of the law:
I think of the doctors and nurses that stayed at Charity Hospital. The dead were stacked in the stairwells because the morque was flooded. No food. No water. No medicine. The doctors and nurses sang songs to the patients to encourage them, "We need you to survive…"
Drag them into court, Mr. Moto.
tdn beat me to it. Punitive. You are a very hostile person.
Tale it one step further- follow the mandatory evacuation order with a declaration of no-man’s-land. Anyone found in the area after a certain time will be guilty of violating the order, and will therefore be a felony suspect.
No rescues, anyone trying to leave will be arrested, and when the area is cleared anyone remaining will be arrested, and if they resist lethal force may be used.
Hell, it worked in the past…
As was already pointed out, obviously many people would not be subject to a mandatory evacuation order. Indeed, some might be ordered to stay and help.
I’ve been on both ends of this equation, Zoe, so I have some idea what it is all about. When I was a trainee in the Navy, I filled several hundred sandbags to protect Dam Neck Naval Station in Virginia Beach from Hurricane Emily, and was then evacuated to a more secure location than our barracks right on the beach would have been.
That one was a near miss.
Later, in January of 1995, during the “Mediterrenean Hurricane”, I had to directly support search and rescue efforts for missing merchant seamen. I was working with P-3 aircrews at the time in Sicily.
And while we weren’t subject to an evacuation order for Hurricane Isabel, we were warned to take precautions. We wound up sleeping in the basement with our twin infants. And we were well stocked with canned goods, water, lanterns, and a Sterno stove, just in case.
So this notion that these opinions of mine are motivated by hostility is, frankly, false. I’ve delt with this a couple of times now. I’ve helped search for victims, which is more than lots of folks can say.
We have a problem here of people not leaving their homes. My cite above illustrates that this problem will persist even if everyone had the means to do so. What do you propose, Zoe, to address this?
Mandatory evacuations aren’t that common. They screw up normal life and business pretty royally, so governments aren’t happy about issuing them.
So if it comes to that, damn straight they should be enforced.
And I don’t agree with you that there should be no charge in the near misses. I think that’s when the enforcement should be strictest, to drive the point home. Anyone caught in the zone without a damn good reason gets cited.
That way, when the big one hits, more folks hit the road. And any stragglers might be dealt with leniently by prosecuters and judges then on humanitarian grounds, case by case, without diluting the lesson overmuch.