My cousin is in the Air Force stationed in Hawaii. I would think it would be terrifying to live on an island in the middle of a hurricane with NO way to evacuate!!!

An old jellie who is no longer involved in Fluther lives there. HawaiiJake. I am worried about him along with the entire state.

Me too.
How vulnerable people must be feeling.
I’m afraid, for people, property, crops, wildlife.

It’s not a great deal of comfort, but they do have a lot more elevation than some islands, where most of the land is at sea level. Yes, prayers uplifted!

According to my local news station, as of 11:00pm EDT they have already had 20 inches of rain with an expected additional 10 inches before Lane clears the island. They are also having mud slides that are closing down roads.

It’s going to be bad. Bit people can live through it. I’ve been through dozens of hurricanes. If they are strong, and resourceful, they have a good chance. They may go through some wild things, but they can make it. Hopefully Trump, will.help them more than Puerto Rico…

Looks like it’s dropped to a Cat 3, and they’re expecting 4 ft of storm surge. I’m not familiar with the topography of the islands being hit, but it seems shitty, but survivable. There will be lots of mess to clean up, but hopefully few casualties.

I wonder if that volcano is still going off. That would make for an interesting day….

I was wondering about the volcano too.
I heard, as background sound, so bits and pieces, that one or more of the islands is without any real shelter capable of withstanding this kind of storm, which could leave a lot of people literally hanging on for dear life. All Navy craft heads for open water and safe spacing during hurricanes. I had to take my craft inland once just before I got out. There was a small bay protected on all sides, a bit like a caldera, where we anchored out for the night.
It’s too bad they couldn’t load up some of the most vulnerable civilians.

^If they individually seek shelter, they have a good chance of survival. It’s no fun. But you can dig into a ditch, or dig into some mud, and just lie there. Pull something over your eyes, and just keep flat. You’ll never forget it, but you were safer than you felt….

^^^ With 4 ft storm surges, I don’t think I’d want to be lying in a ditch!!! Mother Nature scares the hell out of me!!!

4 feet is better, than 20. During Hugo, we had parents putting their kids in the ceiling tiles, of our shelters. These were ceilings in school gyms. The parents just swam around for hours, holding their kids in the ceilings. The water was black, and cold, and there was no power, and just a few old school flashlights. The water will recede, and then you pull the kids down, and start cleaning.

I’ve heard stories about people sheltering inside old logs, or trees. The problem is, if you don’t leave before the storm, you can’t change your mind once the storm is there.

Last year, we were expecting 4–20 ft storm surges during a storm. My friends and I put a bunch of gear in my canoe, and we huddled in a brick house. If the water got higher than our house, a friend of mine and I would have dawned our motorcycle helmets, and armor, and pulled the kids, and women to the nearest available structure. That may seem radical, but that’s coastal living during hurricane season. Most people I know, can’t afford to leave town for every bad storm. People who are confident, experienced, and resourceful, will usually survive these powerful storms. Usually with more experience, and a few stories to tell.

Harsh mental images.

I hope Hawaii, is doing well. The news reports lots of flooding…

Hurricane is catagory 2 now.

Yeah. But they got a LOT of rain, in a short time. They’re going through some serious shit. All that water moving around. It’s going to be rough. I hear they haven’t had a bad storm in a while.

Concerned, although our former Jelly is ok so far.

^May I ask which former jelly? Only out of concern. If they predate my time here, I suppose there is no need…

The second answer way up there tells you.

Oh yeah . Why did he leave?

He didn’t want to stay here any more.

@MrGrimm888 HawaiiJake ate all his ice cream in case the power went out. He last wrote 8 hrs. ago on FaceBook about real estates.

HawaiiJake just gave me a like on FaceBook. So his power and internet still work.

There’s one piece of good news.

Ok….

I thought the Hurricane (eye) was south of Hawaii. I haven’t tuned in to see what the recent path was that it took. It didn’t look that bad to me when I saw the radar two days ago. They had the whole hurricane span to its edges painted red on the TV, a horrible way to portray it, it really pisses me off.

My girlfriend, who is from HI, and who still has a lot of family there said there was some flooding, but I didn’t get to ask her more.

I’m assuming no one has died, I hope that’s the case.

Were there any landslides? That’s the scariest thing I would think. That’s what I worry about the most on those mountainous islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean. The rain and tide is scary on the islands, even if they don’t get hurricane force winds. I think our Keys would be evacuated, when probably HI can’t so easily.

They showed the devastation on the news here. It looked pretty bad . Hope things are starting to get back to normal.

^^Any injuries or fatalities?

None reported but a tree fell on a BBC reporter while he was on air. He seems OK.

Wow. Reporters take way too many risks during these storms.

Oh my gosh!

You can hear the incident as it happened on this link

That’s for the link. I’m glad he’s OK. Must have been a rush!

During the storm that came through Florida last year there was a reporter who purposely stayed outside during the eye walk as it came ashore. It’s just ridiculous. A small tornado whipped right adjacent to him, circular air motion anyway, but dissolved in seconds. He could barely keep his feet on the ground. It’s crazy.

Emergency workers, who rush their lives in a daily basis, aren’t allowed to respond to calls once sustained winds are over 40mph, but there are reporters out in it.

I’m always amazed to see how you guys deal with such strong hurricanes every year with very less or almost no casualties. There was one many years ago in eastern part of our country which claimed thousands. We have to deal with floods every year due to heavy rains though and we can deal with that pretty well by now (not entirely but better than earlier). Floods in Kerala was exceptional though if you’re aware.

To add more about Kerala floods salute to the Indian armed forces for their outstanding job in saving many lives in very difficult situations. They are always in the forefront in such humanitarian activities be it in India or peace missions to be carried out by UN across the world. I’m sure US army would be doing that too!!

^^My guess is much of our housing is stronger and stands up to the hurricane force winds better, especially in Florida. I don’t know what transportation is like in your country, or state specifically that you mentioned, but FL is pretty good at getting people out of the areas closest to the water before the storms.

In some states the damage and death toll can be much higher. Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans killed over a 1,000 people. Mostly due to flooding, and I would bet a lot of the deaths happened after the storm too. The hurricane that went through Puerto Rica last year they are now saying over 1,000 were killed, but I’m not sure exactly what they are counting. I’m sure a lot of those death are after the storm too. I don’t mean after the storm shouldn’t count, only that people tend to not realize they count every related. Like if someone dies in a fire because they use candles to light their house, because the power is out, and an accident happens for instance. Or, people who use a generator and put the thing inside the house or garage and die from carbon monoxide poisoning. Those are people mistakes related to the storm and counted.

In states that get tornados their death toll can be shockingly high from one tornado lasting just a few minutes if it cuts through houses not built well, because there is no time, no warning. With hurricanes we have days to evacuate.

Latest numbers I heard about PR, were over 2,000 dead. Mostly elderly, and people who couldn’t leave their homes, and had nobody to help them. Reports are that many died alone, and probably in pretty terrible conditions…

Many lessons were learnt after the hurricane in Orissa I described earlier and required caution was taken during/ before later hurricanes which helped in reducing loss of human lives to a great extent.

Puerto Rico’s situation could have been handled better. The fact that they are supposedly even less prepared now, is a failure on the part of the US government.

PR was and is still terrible and very upsetting. I still don’t understand why people weren’t evacuated more before and after the storm. I blame leaders, and I partly blame the weather news also. It’s a tragedy that at least some of it could have been avoided.

I would be curious to see how the deaths break down.

I will concede to the Trump haters that on PR he dropped the ball.
It was not entirely his fault. He was given information which was a long ways off from actual conditions.
I would have expected him to do a fly over though, and I don’t believe that happened.
A helicopter trip should have at least indicated that the estimates were drastically low.

I can understand some of his reluctance too.
PR has borrowed tons of money, accomplished less with it than they should have, and haven’t been responsible about repaying on the loans.
So, on one hand, they haven’t shown the kind of urgency in behavior that they expect from somewhere else.
On the other hand, people suffered, and still do. Something more should be done.

^^It’s impossible for an area with a direct hit of hurricane 4 and higher not to have a huge amount of damage. Just impossible. It doesn’t matter if it’s expensive Boca Raton, FL or PR, but of course in PR it’s even worse. You don’t even need to fly over, but he should have, I agree with that. People don’t understand the huge difference between being at the eye wall and just being in an area “affected” by a hurricane. This was the wall going over the entire island.

I understand why the average person doesn’t understand the difference, the flipping news draws the entire hurricane as one big blob of red like it’s all the same. It’s not. The news used to not do that, but they figured out if they frighten everyone within 300 miles of an eye wall and frighten their families, they get more people watching the news.

Maybe they do it because so many people were not showing enough respect for what was coming their way?

@Party_Melt No. part of the problem with the last hurricane that came through Florida was people were evacuating to many of the counties way north (near me). My parents were in a panic for me, when I have been through many hurricanes much worse, or more likely to be much worse, but this time, because the red blob on TV covered the entire state they were freaking out. They were sure I should be leaving the state. I live in a much “safer” area than where I have lived previously regarding hurricanes. Ironically, as I said, many people were evacuating to where I lived, or nearby.

Evacuated people are supposed to stay in county. We aren’t ordered by law to stay in county, but that typically the best. People get killed in traffic trying to evacuate. It makes it harder for people who must evacuate to do so, it’s not good these crazy overreactions.

Outside of Florida they hear Broward County has orders for evacuations and people think it’s the entire county. It’s not. It’s people within a certain distance of the shoreline and some other bodies of water. Sometimes states fail to order evacuations when they should. I thought that with the TX hurricane last year. I thought it before the hurricane hit. Everyone excused it saying evacuating a large city is too difficult. Bullshit. Republican Governor and Trump as president and everyone excused him. He was wrong. I didn’t love Jeb Bush when he was my governor, but he never would have made that same mistake. It’s not the “whole” city. It’s the areas most vulnerable. The verbiage worked though. Most of America bought it.

Well. In Trump’s defense (I feel sick) the storm that hit PR, was like a tropical depression, that b turned into a cat 4, in about 48 hrs. That’s not a lot of time to evacuate. Especially the elderly, and handicapped. Most of my problem with the administration, is their reaction to the damage. This is a US territory, not a foreign country…

^^Was it only 48 hours? I don’t remember it that way. I just remember thinking for a long time leading up to that hurricane that it will likely be a direct hit, and that I wished people would leave the country. Even 48 hours you can get thousands of people out.

A lot of the deaths are probably after the hurricane (I’m guessing) and we certainly could have done more to prevent that if that’s the case.

Some people won’t leave the island or relocate even if they have the opportunity, that’s another thing, but those wanting to leave and needing medical attention had to wait longer than they should have in my opinion.

^I’ve heard stories of some people dying from infections, and having unrefrigerated insulin. Indeed. Preventable.

We don’t have the whole story. Without details the stats just really aren’t enough. The number is so high that it is impossible to ignore, it’s important for us to know this new number they are putting out, but it should be broken down.

Well. We’ll never know exactly how everyone died. But the area should obviously be more prepared for such storms.

It’s an island. Some things just can’t be prepared for, but definitely there could be a better system in place for this sort of natural disaster. Just having more buried powerlines and more solar energy or generators on individual housing would help. The solar panels need to stay in working condition through the storm though.

Anyone who needs electricity for health needs should have been in hospitals before the storm hit. We do that in Florida. People sleep in the aisles of hospitals literally when the storm is on us. Pregnant women in their 9th month or high risk also are sleeping in the hospitals.

I just saw Justice Sotomayor on The View and her cousin’s uncle died several days after the storm needing oxygen. He’s one of the people in the new count. He was already dependent on oxygen before the storm.

They should have a few massive structures, to withstand the storms. Not really any excuse for the power grid situation….

^^They do. It’s not like every building fell down. Bunches of hotels and other buildings in San Juan made it through reasonably well. My guess is many houses stood up to the storm fairly well also. Over 2,000 died related to the storm, but remember there is well over $3 million living on the island.

I have been to PR. I am aware that there are big buildings there.

I meant structures designed specifically for the storms, and the aftermath…

^^I’m sure they could do more and do better. There are a lot of poor people in many areas though. In Florida usually schools are used for shelters during the storm for people who live in mobile homes or live by the shore. BUT when a storm comes near our Keys for instance, or our barrier island, there is a mandatory evacuation for the entire island. For the Keys it’s all the islands, they evacuate up to Miami. There is nowhere to go on the islands that is considered safe. The Keys are much smaller than PR, but like Trump said, “it’s an island.” I know people hated him for that, but it’s true that islands are much more vulnerable.

They definitely need better disaster planning for before and after storms like this though. PR needs better plans, and so does FEMA. PR isn’t our only island. I will tell you though, it’s awful when you evacuate and can’t get back to your house quickly. This is part of why some people don’t evacuate, but that storm was no question a reason to evacuate. I knew it when Katrina was going to NOLA also. In contrast I completely understood why my friend who lives in an evacuation zone near Jacksonville, FL didn’t want to evacuate last year during the hurricane. At the last minute she did evacuate, and then she regretted it. Same situation again I don’t think she would evacuate.

Here where I live my friends in a mobile home didn’t evacuate. We offered our house or they could have gone to the school/shelter. There is always lots of people who don’t evacuate.

Oh yeah. We have had dozens of traffic cluster fucks, caused by evacuation. Nothing like being stuck in traffic for 18 hours, just to have the storm change course. Or worse. Being stuck on the interstate, when the storm hits.

I rarely hear about people being stuck on the highway here when a storm hits, except when they don’t evacuate and then as the storm starts to hit hard they freak out and leave their house. Ugh. I’ve heard people call radio stations while parked under and overpass! Scared! With the radio guy telling them no one is going to come get them, but he’ll keep them on the line so they aren’t alone.

We have had multiple fiascoes in which people were stuck on I-26 trying to leave town. It seems to happen every year. They started reversing the east bound lanes, and that helped some, but everyone leaves at the same time. The last minute…

We reverse lanes also in FL, but I think this last time they didn’t do it. I remember thinking when are they going to do it. The traffic was pretty bad this last time, people were way more frightened than usual, and leaving their home for three and four counties north, and more towards the center of the state of course, or even more up into Georgia. Luckily, Orlando was out of high peak season, and there was a lot of availability. I blame the news. It was really reported in a way that was, in my opinion, awful.

The governor did turn off the tolls for the evacuation, so the traffic didn’t have to stop to pay, or worry about the money. People started evacuating days before. It was bad traffic from south Florida to Orlando-ish area for 4 days solid, and coming from the coasts in the middle (like Cocoa and Clearwater) into central Florida too.

There’s another storm headed toward Hawaii now, but it may turn out to be just a lot of rain. They still don’t need more rain when they’re trying to recover from the last storm.

Is there anybody here who lives in Hawaii?

I thought it was headed for Guam? I must have my US Pacific islands mixed up. What’s the name of the hurricane headed for HI?

Uuugh… Got Florence to worry about now. Great…

When I looked at Florence yesterday it didn’t look like it would get anywhere near the US coastline, but I was just looking at a photo. I guess I need to actually look at the hurricane update. I almost never tune into the weather, I’m usually pretty clueless until the hurricane is less than a week away

They are saying tonight that Olivia may well drop down to tropical storm status before hitting Hawaii. That could possibly be worse than a full blown hurricane because it might stall over the big island bringing more flooding to the already rain soaked island. The typhoon over Guam is kicking butt but nobody seems particularly concerned at this point. We won’t know until possibly late Wednesday or early Thursday where Florence will hit or how hard she will hit. They are now adding parts of Georgia to the affected area!!! My niece attends the College of Charleston & she & some of her sorority sisters have decided it will be fun to ride out the storm. I just hope they will be OK. They are all too young to remember Hugo & are finding this to be entertaining. NONE of the parents are finding it funny & yet NONE of the parents are insisting on their child leaving the area.They are ALL too old to be told what to do while also being too young to make a rational decision!!!

@LadyMarissa I just watched the predicted tracks, and right now it looks like Florence is most likely to hit north of Charleston. If the dorm is in an evacuation area obviously they should evacuate, but if not, if the kids/students plan on staying put, then the parents need to emphasize what they need to do to get through the storm and aftermath safely and not just be freaking out. Sometimes the parents are being completely irrational. I saw it with my parents with the hurricane last year. I’ve been through way way worse hurricanes, but last year for some reason my parents, especially my father, was in a total panic, and I live where people evacuate to, to be safer.

Anyway, it sounds to me like maybe the parents live in SC, so they probably know the list of things to do.

-Drinking water
-Plug up bathtubs
-Cash
-fill up gas tanks
-flashlights and battery candles (no real candles for them!)
-Foods that don’t need refrigeration.
-interior hallways will be safer
-mattress over you if the windows or roof blows out
-battery operated radio is nice to have.

I think Hugo was a direct hit on Charleston cat 4 wasn’t it? There is a big difference between cat 4 eye wall coming through the city, and cat 2 winds if the eye wall is 50 miles north. I honestly have not seen the predictions for how far out cat 3 and cat 2 winds extend out from the eye on Florence, I made up the 50. That’s what matters though, and that’s what weather reporting seems to avoid talking about in the last few years; it’s terrible. They purposely try to terrify people, and I don’t mean so they take it seriously, it’s for ratings.

Yeah. Hugo’s eye came right into Charleston’s harbor. That was the first time I experienced an eye. Catastrophic wind for hours. Then dead calm. We walked around in the eye to try to assess damage, and get ready for the other side of the storm.
One of the worst parts about a direct hit, is the changes in wind direction. The wind blows one way for a long time, then it blows the opposite direction after the eye passes.

I’ve not personally witnessed such devastation before or since Hugo.

We’ve had a lot of rain, and today we’re getting dumped on. Our rivers are already high. There are multiple scenarios where this area could be badly damaged. My new place is much higher than my old place, but I’m also about 400 yards from the Ashley river. If we get a bad storm surge, I guess I’ll just lose everything. Again…. I’m not pleased with the prospect…

I don’t remember all the particulars about Hugo. I just remember that I was visiting a friend in Charlotte NC & we were around 250–300 miles away from where it hit. The winds & rain were horrendous as it approached & when we awoke the next morning the roof of a local business 3 blocks away was laying in the parking lot next to my car. The pictures of Charleston on the local news made it look like a war zone.

My niece sent me a text today. The school is closing & the Governor of SC has declared a mandatory evacuation now that Florence has reached a Cat 4. She’s upset that the sorority had to call off their hurricane party but I think that deep down inside that she’s glad to have an excuse to go home!!!

^^That takes care of that. I figured if she was near the shore she would be evacuated.

Do her parents live in SC?

I stayed for Hugo, and I regretted it. I obviously survived, but it was really scary. I was only like 10 years old. My family and I started out hunkered in a closet when it got bad. As trees and debris hit the house, we moved around to different closets and hallways.

The power of the storm was hard to articulate. It was like a freight train doing laps around the house. The walls, and ceiling shook, and the ground occasionally rocked from things being blown around. It was dark. You could hear trees splitting, and tearing apart outside. It was terrifying. In the end we had about a dozen large trees laying on our house. I literally think that the trees held the roof on.

We fell asleep from exhaustion around 4 AM, as the storm eased up a bit.

The next day, we couldn’t recognize our neighborhood. Parts of Charleston closer to the water were completely destroyed. There were boats everywhere. There were entire houses scattered throughout the area. I knew a person who came back to their home, and the entire house was gone. They found it completely intact, a block away. They said their dishes were still stacked in the cabinets, and really there was no damage inside. It just uprooted, and floated away.

Most forcasts are showing Florence hitting far enough away from me that I hope not to see much more than rain… Hope. Sometimes, that’s all we got…

@MrGrimm888 I was thinking about your well being earlier today…wondering IF you were planning on jumping in the parking lot on 26 or hunkering down to ride it out. I’m not scared of much; but, Mother Nature scares the crap out of me!!! There seems to be NO rhyme or reason as to why she does the things she does & NOBODY is safe…maybe lucky…but NOT safe!!!

I should be safe as I’m around 300 miles inland yet the local weather felt the need to point out that IF any of the cone of uncertainty heads toward Atlanta that we could easily be inundated with tornadoes. I’m more fearful of tornadoes than hurricanes!!! I’ll be glad when this crap is all over & done with!!!

Stay safe one & ALL!!! Hope to see everyone on the other side!!!

^I am.very poor. I cannot evacuate.

I’ve ridden out countless storms, and I am fairly innovative. I have little doubt that I will physically survive whatever nature throws at me. But, I am growing sick of losing all my possessions, and being homeless for months at a time.

It’s a real shame, because Charleston is so great. This could be the 4th year in a row that I get flooding, even though I have moved twice….

I am not crying over spilled milk, but I would love a year without losing everything…....