Watching the Weather Channel reminded me how many of us have lived through hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. They all seem like unreal things that we see on the news until, like a bad dream, they return to us with all their force. As boxers like to say, it all goes according to plan until the first punch is thrown.
The disaster of Hurricane Helene brings that home with tragic force. There are still over 1,000 people who are still unaccounted for. Presumably, most of these fled the disaster and have not yet returned to show up in local disaster reports. We are more and more a nation of people who live alone. So often there is no one around to report someone's disappearance, and there is little incentive to return to a house that isn't there anymore. Nevertheless, the death toll is still rising one week later.
With Hurricane Milton, more scary stuff is coming this hurricane season, which runs until the end of November. Storm surges and 165 MPH winds are nothing to take lightly.
Here are important Florida resources for dealing with Milton.
- Gov. DeSantis's Office
- County Emergency Management
- Evacuation Orders
- State Offering Charter Buses to Help Get Hillsborough Residents to Shelters
- Shelter Status
- X Updates On Disaster
- The 211 National Hotline
- Red Cross Shelters
Over the last year, a lot of people have complained to me about the high insurance premiums in Florida. In one case, insurance premiums went up about 100%. Yikes.
In another, after a million-dollar renovation, the management group told me that they were opting to forgo insurance altogether. I reassured them that this might be a hundred-year storm year, so I would tread carefully on that one. These insurance company meteorologists aren’t dummies. They don't make money underestimating real risk. Actuaries are among the highest-paid professionals in the country for a reason.
We are all praying that there are fewer tragedies in this monster storm. But as a second punch in the face in rapid succession, Milton might end up being a knockout punch to those homes that survived the first storm surge. They are predicting a 12- to 14-foot surge this time. This will not only double Helene but carry in its wake all the uncollected debris and lost possessions of a lifetime still on the street. A flood-force battering ram on houses that are still standing awaits.
Related: The Hurricane Relief-Industrial Complex Is Getting People Killed
Of course, the biggest risk in these storms is to lose your life. So people need to put safety first. As for the federal government making people whole from property loss, let's just say the federal government is better at blowing things up. In the last year, it sent $175 billion to Ukraine and $23 billion to Israel to wage war. How much it will send to wage war for hurricane relief is up for debate.
Hurricanes do change things in public perception. The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane with 20-foot storm surges in the Florida Keys left 408 dead, many of whom were buried in a mass grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in Miami. A quarter were World War I military veterans settled at work camps in the Keys. Ernest Hemingway was so outraged that they received no warning to prepare from the federal government that he became a permanent man of the left and a deep skeptic of Washington.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member