Legal Commentary

Beldar unpanicked by Ike

By Beldar

An enormous amount of news broadcasting about hurricanes is unserious and irresponsible. Even print media's coverage can be pretty hysterical. I've seen quite a few big storms, starting with Tropical Storm Claudette when I was a summer law clerk here in 1979 and Hurricane Allen on the same weekend that I first moved to Houston full-time in August 1980, so I take the current hype with a grain of salt.

This article, and especially the embedded map of surge zones, is genuinely useful for those in the Houston area who are concerned about the approach of Hurricane Ike. To begin with, every Houstonian ought to know what a surge zone is, and whether he or she lives in a surge zone, and if so, which one. It makes a big difference, and one ought not wait to figure it out until the day of a surge zone evacuation order.

I don't. That doesn't make me, or those like me, immune from nasty consequences like wind damage, localized flooding, and power outages. But I'm unlikely to be evacuating inland on this one. And as long as I have power and internet access, I'll probably still be playing whack-a-mole with smears against Sarah Palin.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on September 10, 2008 (boomark / email).