I want to say I’d heard a statistic along the lines of, “In 2014, 66% of all deaths by drowning occurred in a vehicle.” It’s easy for someone in a nice comfy armchair to say, “Oh, they should have done mandatory evacuations, or at least limited mandatory evacuations…” And even up until the previous evening, it was only projected to be a category 1 hurricane, the weakest kind. But you have no clue where the rain bands are going to wander off to, and so often, it’s the water more than the wind that does so much of the worst damage. So imagine putting a million or two motorists on the road, who may or may not have any particular destination in mind apart from “away from here.”
It made me really happy to see all those people working together to do good. It’s a bad situation-- and I have family in the middle of it-- and my old stomping grounds were getting evacuated by the National Guard just a day or two ago. But I have no doubt that despite the damage and the loss of life, there was a whole lot of grace at work throughout… There’s so much aggression and divisiveness these days, it’s nice to see people set it aside and set to work doing something productive, like rescuing endangered people and start tackling the issue of recovery.
