When Nature Blows

"...thousands of people simultaneously went bug-eyed and slack-jawed over the following theretofore unpredictable consequence of a big-time hurricane..."

Yesterday, Barack Obama visited the "victims" of the Iowa floods. Wasn't that special? I hear things went well, inasmuch as nobody asked him anything like the following questions:

1. Where the heck is FEMA?
   
2. When do I get my check?
   
3. What stadium should we hole up in?
   
4. How long will it be before we start to cannibalize one another?
   
5. Where are all the movie stars to lend their support?
   
6. Did the Republicans blow up the levees?
   
7. Is it true that George Bush hates rural Midwesterners?
   
8. Where will we be housed, more or less indefinitely, at taxpayer expense?
   
9. Why us? Good God, man, why is it always us?
   
10. What's the best place to start looting?

Instead, they listened politely as Obama speechified; then they got back to the business of drying out anything that was still wet, and generally getting on with their lives.

Those fools! Where is the outrage? Where are their demands?

*************

I lived through Hurricane Wilma in 2005, which, according to Wikipedia, was "...the most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin." Hurricanes (like hurricane Katrina, for example!) usually give plenty of warning. We knew for several days that Wilma was coming, and that it would hit Monday morning.

So... Sunday I went out and 1) bought enough ice to fill all the coolers, 2) topped off the cars with gas, and 3) got some cash from the ATM. I already had a box in the garage marked “hurricane,” with batteries, battery powered lights, and a little battery powered TV, plus some small propane tanks that are part of the camping gear. I checked and had a full tank of propane for the grill. All that took less than an hour.

I like to procrastinate as much as the next fellow, but even I was able to manage that level of preparation.

Then the storm hit, and thousands of people simultaneously went bug-eyed and slack-jawed over the following theretofore unpredictable consequence of a big-time hurricane:

The power went out! The electrically powered gas station pumps didn’t work, so no one could buy gas who hadn't bought it already. The few enterprising gas stations with owners who eventually hooked up to generators were so popular that people sat in lines for as much as 12 hours at a time–and sometimes they still didn’t get gas, and had to return the next day for another long wait. There were occasional fistfights, and police had to manage the traffic.

As I say, the power went out. Therefore refrigerators and freezers were not functioning. After the first couple of days, a government agency was handing out bags of ice at various locations. People stood in lines for endless hours for their allotment of exactly two bags. Most of them had walked to get the ice because they happened to be the same people who hadn’t put gas in their cars prior to the storm. Then they walked home again. Before they got home, the ice had turned to water. Astonished, many of them started the whole process all over the next day, and the day after that, each time with—brace yourself—the same result!

Did I mention that the power went out? Generators were a hot commodity. Home Depot had them, in very limited supply. Three hundred people would begin to queue up four hours before the stores opened. The first thirty or forty people got generators. The rest went home and came back the next day, when (it was rumored) there might be a delivery of a few more.

Still, everybody handled the entire crisis with seamless grace and aplomb, compared with what happened in New Orleans.