storms, numbers, and how to be an irreverant fuck

So just to have a little bit of fun with death, I think I should write a bit about the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.

Apparently, a lot of the country has trouble with the fact that so many of the people in Southeast TX ignored the mandatory evacuation order and stayed behind. I'm not one of the types who is going to throw any stones at the people who decided to ride it out; people have lots of reasons for doing what they do. Some of them probably stink to high heaven, but until we walk a mile in their shoes, I find it a bit pointless to play that hypothetical game of "If I were a totally different person with a completely different personality living under conditions that I'm not even remotely familiar enough with to guess at, I would have done THIS!"

The world runs rampant with stupidity, and to date, there is no known cure. It comes in many forms; this was only one of many.

I've always liked numbers, although to be honest I kinda suck at math. Number manipulation has served people so well though ...I think I'll hop on that particular bandwagon for this post. (and PLEASE, nobody take me too seriously here ..it's called "gallows humor" for Pete's sake!)

So let's take a look at the numbers. Roughly 90% of the population left for Ike, leaving about 140,000 who decided to ride it out. Out of that 140K, there have been over 2000 rescues reported. Meaning so far, that about 3% of the people who remained chose VERY unwisely (about .3% of the actual population, which is probably pretty close to the percentage of "village idiots" pretty well anywhere). Although some people might LIKE to think that the other 97% are merely WAITING for rescue, I think anyone with a brain knows this probably isn't the case. I'm sure a good 50% or more rode it out and came out reasonably okay (meaning at least intact enough to start working on assessing the damage); given the fact that the 90% who evacuated aren't being allowed to return, I wonder how many of THEM might wish they would have stayed by the time they ARE allowed back in (uncertainty is such a terrible thing where one's home is concerned). It also might be interesting to find out what percentage were people who merely felt like they couldn't afford to leave, vs those who just thought they know their house well enough to try to stick it out.

As of this morning, Ike has been blamed for 26 deaths, 5 of which were in or around Galveston. Two of those deaths were in Tennessee, and were a couple of golfers who had a tree fall on them, so almost (not quite) 10% of the death toll as of this morning were golf-related fatalities, while less than 3% of the people who chose to remain in a hurricane zone actually required rescue.

I wonder if those golfers were discussing how stupid them Texas folk were for ignoring evacuation orders when the tree fell on them?