What have we learned?

"Potable water is still the number one thing victims of these storms need. Same as it was in 1969 during Camille. What has FEMA learned? What have the coastal states learned? What have coastal cities learned. Not much."

Have you even noticed that we don't seem to learn our lessons, even when we get hit between the eyes with a 2 X 4 (figuratively)? Like what you might ask? I could make this about the lessons forgotten, from Viet Nam to Afghanistan. The endings of both wars were similar. And both were long and costly. But this is not about that. This is about our weather. In particular, hurricanes. We just refused to learn anything, as we lurch from one disaster to the next one. 

I have told this story from time to time in the past. In August of 1969, I had just arrived in Pensacola, Florida. It was hot, it was humid. And the locals were buzzing about some big storm in the Gulf. Hurricane Camille was sitting in warm Gulf waters, growing in strength, and trying to decide what part of the Gulf coastline it was going to hit. When it did hit, it was somewhere between Biloxi and Pascagoula. It was one of the five most powerful storms (to this date) to ever hit the Gulf coastline. 

At the base I was stationed at, we only got the outer bands. That was bad enough. As a Minnesota kid, I had been through all kinds of thunderstorms and a twister or two, but NEVER anything like Camille. It took weeks to clean up the damage in Pensacola. There was sand everywhere. Where the eye hit, looked like an asteroid had hit. 

That was 1969. Katrina hit New Orleans in August of 2005. It was a major killer. It killed 2,000 citizens, and displaced about 1/3 of the population New Orleans. It took years to recover. What did we learn from Camille to Katrina? Nada. Zip. Houses had pretty much the same building codes, and nothing could withstand a Cat 5 storm, with high winds and tons of rain.

Speaking of tons of rain, we can't forget what happened to Houston when Hurricane Harvey hit in August of 2017 (why do the bad ones always seem to hit in August?). Harvey killed 100 citizens, mostly by drowning in the 30 inches of rain which fell. Was Houston prepared to funnel away that much rain? Not a bit. It was a mess, and took months to get back to halfway normal.

Now in August of 2021, we had Hurricane Ida. Another monster storm. It laid waste to over a hundred miles of coastline. Tens of thousands in New Orleans and the surrounding area, were without power. Many still are. Some might be without power for a month. In that horrible heat and humidity. Why was there so much damage? Because we never learn. We don't think the "big one" will ever hit again. 

Now the leftovers from Ida, are ripping up the East Coast and New England. More people are dying, mostly from the huge amount of water this once Cat 4 storm was dumping. NYC was particularly hard hit. One would think that after Super Storm Sandy, NYC would have learned how to deal with the kind of rain that Ida dumped on her. They did not, and people died.

I am just for a minute, agree with the climate alarmists and say our storms are getting stronger. Would it not make sense to change our building codes? Our local and individual bunkering? Potable water is still the number one thing that victims of these storms need. Same as it was in 1969 during Camille. What has FEMA learned? What have the coastal states learned? What have coastal cities learned? Not much. 

Next year come August, we should look for more of the same. And the more of the same, will continue until we learn. Will we ever learn? Good question.