At what point do you cut off aid?

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

People refuse to leave Ike-ravaged areas

We had a discussion before about skiiers or hikers who need rescue and are then billed for the costs of the rescue. These are people who went out of their way to put themselves into a situation they knew could be dangerous to themselves.

What about people who live in the Galveston area who didn't go anywhere dangerous, but the danger came to them? Some evacuated (a "mandatory evacuation" order had been issued); some didn't have the chance to evacuate because high waves and flooding preceded the storm earlier than expected; now some are able to leave but refuse to.

Ike's survivors have already walked for miles and waited for hours at supply distribution centers, gobbling up all that was offered: 1 million bottles of water, 1 million meals and 600,000 pounds of ice in just the first 36 hours after the storm passed.

It's not enough, and those dispatching truck after truck to distribution centers around the city know it. One center north of Houston drew 10,000 people Monday in search of food and water.

...Many of the elderly huddled in damaged houses, walking or using bikes when they had to leave because cars were destroyed or damaged. Some pushed salvaged shopping carts down the seawall avenue filled with crates of bottled water and plastic brown pouches holding army MREs obtained from relief centers.

"They're all over the place," said Sheila Savage, a Galveston resident who has been bringing food and water to elderly friends who wouldn't leave because they have no family or other relatives elsewhere. "Their homes were all they have."

Officials on the barrier island said it could be months before the city of Galveston reopens. The main gas and a primary electric transmission line to the island were severely damaged by Ike, which also tore at the wharves in the city's port. Officials warned that mosquito-borne diseases could begin to spread after one elderly man was airlifted to a hospital covered with hundreds of bites.

We can all understand why they would want to stay - their homes are all they have. On the other hand, the costs of bringing them aid instead seem considerable, not to mention the costs of other aid they may need as a result of post-storm unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

Should they be told the meals won't be coming any more and they need to leave?
Should they be taken out forcefully by the police?
Or should aid agencies (public and private) continue to provide services that will allow them to eke out an existence in their homes for the duration?

[eris esoteric]

Oh, man, never put me in charge of making decisions like this. Never.

I think I'd have to go with keep supplying the aid. Unless you're going to have the people providing the aid quiz those in need of the aid as to why they need the aid (Sir, before I give you this sandwich, were you unable to evacuate, or did you simply choose to stay?) I'd have to rate "save those who are in danger through no fault of their own" as being more important in these circumstances than "weed out the stupid."

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Ah, but the situation now is that they CAN get out, they just refuse to. So no need to question them, they're there and the situation isn't safe for them and it's costly to provide the aid, and it's likely that this aid will be needed for weeks, but it's their homes... now what?

[jgibson2[$]]

I think it's important to weigh the risk to those who are serving up the meals and water in addition to the cost. I have a problem with forcibly removing people who can manage on their own, but I don't have a problem saying "get on the bus if you want to eat" to the rest of them.

[sleeper54]

...
Perhaps just as important as the short-term solution is the long-term solution.

I was looking at Googlemaps views of Galveston last night. Pre-storm of course.

We should not allow the island to be rebuilt as it was. We should not finance the rebuilding of the island as it was. It was a disaster waiting to happen. A disaster come home to roost.


...tom...
.

[pippadaisy[$]]

Zero aid. If you can get out and refuse to, then suck it up, because I'm not helping.

[sleeper54]

pippadaisy said

Zero aid. If you can get out and refuse to, then suck it up, because I'm not helping.

You may not be helping . . .but your Uncle Sam is big-time...


...tom...
.

[drmomentum[$]]

Someone in charge needs to make certain that the bravery or rescue workers will not be exploited.

However, there is an additional factor to be considered. If professionals are not helping out, brave civilians will sometimes try to do rescue work, which is riskier than having the pros do it. So there is an additional risk to cutting off aid.

-JP

[lynnzop[$]]

Call me a bitch, but I'm with Pippa on this one.

[jgibson2[$]]

Let the professionals stand guard at the bridges to keep the amateurs rescuers from causing more trouble. Provide buses for the hungry and let the survivalists have at it in their own homes. No need to encourage people to stay where it isn't safe for them.

[brian_igo]

I would have agreed with everyone here...until I went through a couple of hurricanes in Florida.

The scale of the damage from a large hurricane is really hard to imagine. It's not like a tornado or an earthquake, where even if you are forced out of your home you're going to be able to stay relatively close and you can get into replacement housing near your old home in a week at the most. When a hurricane comes ashore you're going to be talking about an impact zone that's at least thirty miles wide, and there will be severe wind damage and extended power outages for more than a hundred miles inland.

Everyone who lives in a hurricane zone knows that if you have to evacuate, which only happens if you live near the coast, you'll be sent hours away and it will be weeks at the minimum before you're allowed to move back. Try to imagine how disruptive that would be in your life. Dealing with insurance companies after a hurricane is a massive pain in the ass under the best of circumstances. Try to imagine doing that when you're a couple of area codes away. If your company gets back on its feet quickly, you have to find someone to stay with or give up your job. And your housing choices are a hotel, relatives, or a cot. If it was a couple of nights it wouldn't be that bad, but for weeks on end, hours away from your home?

There's also the psychological factor. If you can get back you can start to rebuild and put it behind you, even if its sweeping up debris. Being evacuated can literally drive you nuts because you never get out of that storm mentality.

Finally I think the economic argument MJ makes about the cost of relief is a faulty argument. Someone, either government or charity, is going to be providing meals, water, showers, etc, if they are in a shelter in Dallas or living in their yard in Galveston.

If I lived on the coast I'd evacuate, but I'd be one of those people fighting to get back, too. I don't know anyone living in a hurricane zone who wouldn't.

[jgibson2[$]]

Brian,
Cleaning up is one thing. Living in an area with no power, no water, no fuel, no food for weeks is entirely different. People who can stay in their homes safely have that right, but those who are totally dependent on the care of others need to move out for a while. Maybe permanently. They're talking about fragile elderly folks whose only possessions are in their ruined homes. Get them a truck, then, but don't leave them where there is no communication and where a much smaller storm could finish what Ike started.

I'm also with Tom in believing that rebuilding in areas which are likely to be demolished by another storm isn't really a wise use of resources. Buy out the people and relocate them inland. Make the island a park and use it a barrier to protect the mainland.

And do that with the vulnerable parts of the NC outer banks, Maryland's barrier islands, and various other places that periodically get flattened by hurricanes.

[brian_igo]

How is it different to give someone support where they live than to house and feed them in a shelter or temporary housing a hundred miles away? It certainly doesn't cost taxpayers more.

The elderly and infirm are different. But an able-bodied person can get back to work faster and will accelerate the recovery if they are able to return.

About permanent depopulation? It's damn easy to say when its not your home, where you've raised your family. But aside from that, who's going to pay for the buyout? Even if the house is wiped off the map, the insurance only covers reconstruction. For a house anywhere in sight of a beach the land underneath will be worth multiples of the cost of the building on it. In some places you could be talking about nine figure property valuations just for the lots in every single mile. Even more in some areas like South Beach.

And exactly which areas are most vulnerable to being hit again? How many places have ever been hit repeatedly by major storms? The answer is, not many. Galveston had not been hit by a major storm in a hundred years. New Orleans had seventy-five years between catastrophic floods.

And even if you depopulate the barrier islands, you'll spend a lot of money maintaining their beaches and seawalls because they are the only thing protecting the city that's usually on the other side of the Intercoastal. If Galveston had been abandoned after the 1900, the island would be mostly gone today and Ike would have plowed straight into Galveston harbor and Houston.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Having been in both situations, I can say it is immeasurably easier to feed a bunch of people three times a day if they are where the food is as opposed to having to drive the food out to them. Given the price of gas, it may very likely be cheaper too.

[brian_igo]

I don't know if you understand what I'm trying to say, MJ. Even if all of the evacuees from Galveston and the coastal areas obeyed the order to leave, you'd still have a huge relief operation going on in Houston because over one million homes still don't have power or drinkable water, and the stores that can open can't carry enough inventory to supply the whole community.

After Wilma came through Florida there were ice, water and food distributions across Fort Lauderdale daily for over a month. There were no evacuation orders because it was a category 2 storm that came over the Everglades, and that meant no danger of a storm surge and there was no risk of wind-driven building collapses. But it destroyed the electrical grid, and that takes weeks or even months to restore.

Unless you evacuate an entire metro area, you will have millions of people who will need food and water for weeks. Even an additional 50,000 evacuees who return or never left will be a drop in the bucket.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Brian, did you read the story I linked? We are talking about 250 people on a peninsula who are in the most dire situation and that they are talking about forcing to leave. We are not talking about places where it's OK during the day and you can pick up the phone and your insurance agent can drive over in his SUV in the afternoon. We are talking about a section where it is very difficult to get the food and the water to the people because of debris. We are talking about an area that is Not Safe for the people who are trying to stay there and Not All That Safe for the relief delivery personnel. We are not talking about forcing all the residents of Fort Lauderdale to decamp.

[amykhar]

Tough question, MJ. I think I have to say, 'no'. They should not be charged. Society has people who will fail at one time or another to take care of themselves. Some of these people are disabled. Some of them have screwed up. Charity is a safety net that takes care of both the innocent and the stupid. We give charity to others because it is part of what makes us human. We take care of stupid people because we know there may be a day when we do something boneheaded ourselves and need help to get out of it.

After a huge tornado in 1979, my family was without power and running water for several weeks. It actually wasn't that bad because it was Springtime. We didn't need heat or air conditioning. I don't remember it as being all that horrible. Nor did we need aid from the Red Cross. My dad drove to work each day and brought home water and ice and enough food for the day. We cooked outside on a charcoal grill. I think many, if not most people in Houston will be able to get by without much aid. Galveston may be a different story.

[brian_igo]

mjfrombuffalo said

Brian, did you read the story I linked? We are talking about 250 people on a peninsula who are in the most dire situation and that they are talking about forcing to leave. We are not talking about places where it's OK during the day and you can pick up the phone and your insurance agent can drive over in his SUV in the afternoon. We are talking about a section where it is very difficult to get the food and the water to the people because of debris. We are talking about an area that is Not Safe for the people who are trying to stay there and Not All That Safe for the relief delivery personnel. We are not talking about forcing all the residents of Fort Lauderdale to decamp.

Yeah, I read the article. Here's a map of where they're talking about


View Larger Map

And from the Chronc's site, here's a NOAA page with post-Ike satellite photos of the area. The big problem appears to be a bridge that washed out on the east end of the peninsula.

I get what you're saying. I'm saying that life for the people on that peninsula isn't going to be a lot different than it is for someone in Houston who doesn't have power or drinkable water, and there are about five million of them.

If the government can't get rescue supplies to the peninsula, tell them that and give them the option to stay or go. From the satellite photos I saw above, about half of the structures on the peninsula are still standing. There's a stocked freshwater lake on the western end of the peninsula, which means there's also a source for drinking water if you have purification tablets, and more fishing on the gulf. If you want to really help, get them a small boat they could use to get someone across the bay to Texas City, if they don't have one that survived the storm.

The part of your reply I bolded is because that's not happening for anyone in Houston. Again, I don't mean to sound patronizing, but I don't know if its possible to appreciate the scale of something like this. Anyone in the metro Houston area who has a medical emergency is going to be in deep shit for another week or more, because of debris clogging the side streets, overloaded cell phone circuits (where you have a signal at all - Delia and I had to drive over ten miles after Wilma to be able to make a call) and traffic snarls because of traffic lights being out. If people on the peninsula can fish it will be easier for them to eat than most other people in the city. (And getting water and food to a handful of people on this peninsula is the least of FEMA's problems.)

For someone who is healthy, the choice is to stay home and start cleaning up, or go to a high school gym for the next month. Should those people be forced to go? No.

[mtomm[$]]

pippadaisy said

Zero aid. If you can get out and refuse to, then suck it up, because I'm not helping.

I thought my MIL was in here for a minute.

She said that the Red Cross should just go out of business if they are having to borrow money now.

But I know that isn't our Pippa!

[pippadaisy[$]]

Here's where I'm coming from. We can't help everyone, everywhere. They did not evacuate Houston because they CANNOT evacuate Houston. Last time they tried, more people died in the evacuation effort than in the storm. So those are people who have to be helped, and then we are supposed to send aid over to people who have some sort of demented need to stay somewhere unsafe.

Charity isn't for the stupid, IMHO. We can't help everyone, and the risk and effort involved in helping those who are too stubborn to accept the available help takes away from those who need help due to no fault of their own. It's prioritization and I have zero patience for people who won't leave due to convenience issues, or sentimental feelings (and I just realized the big old MENTAL in sentimental).

G has lived in Houston. And said he'd never live there again. Some places just aren't meant to be lived in, and our insistence on ignoring Mother Nature is getting us in trouble.