TRIGGER WARNING I can’t believe some people aren’t evacuating in Florida

[Newsenmum]

I really don’t mean to be insensitive. This hurricane Milton is terrifying but I’m really struggling to understand this. I know there are some awful situations where people can’t drive/are disabled or elderly and feel helpless but what I CAN’T understand is people not trying. Like they’re completely putting their head in the sand.

I’m part of a few mum Facebook groups that are mostly American. I kid you not, people are staying in zones with their little babies where there is mandatory evacuation. Some reasons why they aren’t leaving:

• my dog is aggressive and won’t be allowed in the shelter, so I’m staying put with him and going to hope and pray. Why is the dog worth more than a kid?
• i have too many animals which don’t fit in the car, I’m worried about the chickens (!!) again.. wtf? Basically suicide for their kids because they don’t want to leave chickens!
• im from flORIda so I’ll be fine! Hopefully it’s not as bad as they think. I don’t want to disrupt us. wtf??
• my babies have a block safe room and that’s ‘normally fine’

There are other Americans trying to send them money, urging them to go storm shelters or at least a bit more inland!

These are people in areas that have 15ft storm surge, there is so much debris already around that is going to be trashing their houses. If they want a certain death for themselves then fine but can’t get over them not saving their babies 😭😭😭 all because they won’t leave the bloody chickens that are going to drown either way!!

I’ve reported my post to remove the TW as apparently that is an issue!

Anyway. I confess I look back and was probably more judgmental that I ought to be. I still find it very difficult to understand in the examples I gave and I think those people were very lucky it wasn’t cat 5. I still think I’d do absolutely anything to escape with a baby probably over anxious in day to day situations doubt I would be putting my baby in a life jacket and waiting if I had a choice. And what happened to those homes by the coast is absolutely terrifying and there were deaths. Those people mattered. The videos were horrendous.

In some areas, the basement might work. There are very few basements Florida, the water table is far too high. The last place you want to be during flooding (which is one of the major dangers during hurricanes) is in a basement. You want high ground. You stand a better chance of surviving the wind than the water.

And that's slightly better than Louisiana, where the dead are buried above ground due to the water table. The city of New Orleans has an elevation of -7 feet! We have some mighty low ground here in the US.

I don't know if you're aware of it, but "Trump country" often tends to have very different outcomes from the rest of America. Usually worse outcomes. There was just a story of an adult son ranting that his father died by trusting Trump's words about the approaching storm.

I really can believe it. The slightest hint of climate change makes people very aggressive and defensive. But to threaten meteorologists is insane! Part of this cancellation culture too. You can’t just disagree - you have to obliterate the person. Just look at how commentators have fixated on certain aspects of the post and gone really over the top.

Mumsnet won’t delete my trigger warning. Sorry people! Who knows, it might help some people.

I saw an article about how dangerous it was for people who didn’t evacuate certain areas and how unfair it was for the emergency workers. There were lots of calls of help available to get people out apparently.

Trigger warnings ⚠️ for trigger warnings 😜

I think Florida has pretty much one road running through it. If I wasn't one of the first out, I would think twice about getting stuck on the highway.
We've been stuck in traffic for a rocket launch so add in fear of an upcoming disaster and it's going to be chaos.
For me it would boil down to did I feel safer hunkering down at home having made whatever preparations I could or was I going to put myself into a situation where I could be part of a large crowd who were then subject to whether those in authority were making good decisions or not.