Fleeing From Florence

I now understand why people stay when asked to leave. I’ve seen the other side and I’ve read the judgmental posts. There were people who couldn’t afford to leave or they were disabled. They were afraid. They were old and only had their pets who they didn’t want to leave behind. They were young and single with no other options. They were homeless in a town where all the shelters closed as part of the evacuation order. If you weren’t able to make it to a bus or the red cross never showed up as it happened in some cases, those people just stayed behind.

There are people who stay behind for stupid reasons. They call themselves storm watchers, and they’ll brag about how they made it through this storm and that storm. I don’t think it’s cool to brag that this is your hometown and that it’s never been that bad before or even say that the media always makes it out to be worse than it is. People on the fence about leaving, listen to people like that. This storm was nothing to be on the fence about.

I think our local government did an excellent job of getting us the information to get out when we did. But not everyone could do it. Not everyone listened.

We were blessed to have options that didn’t not include a shelter, or a lengthy hotel stay.

The storm memes were funny. I shared a few to keep the moment light. But when you’re on the other side of the storm and the people who didn’t get the storm as forecasted are complaining about all the hype, and the people who stayed behind are boasting that they are glad they didn’t leave, it’s disappointing for the ones who did right thing and a lack of empathy for the ones who fought for their lives.

What was done to “hype” up the storm was necessary to get people prepared and probably saved thousands of lives. It’s got to be a hard job to make the decisions to close schools almost a week before the storm hits but in the end it’s an excellent panic button to get you to prepare if you hadn’t been listening to the news.

My time is up, I hope my message was clear. 

***

Update for us: We haven’t returned yet but there is no visible damage to the outside of our house. Our power was just restored today. We also found out that the schools will be closed for another week because many of them have taken a bad hit.

So we are going to stay here for a couple more days and enjoy our evacuation orders with side order of mini vacation. We are self employed and our business is at a grand halt right now.

"I won't think about it now, I'll think about it tomorrow, when I can stand it." ~Scarlet O’Hara

This is a Stream of Consciousness Friday post. It's the Week 3, of the old school blogging, prompt for the Finish the Sentence Friday writing community where I'm co-hosting with Kristi Campbell of Finding Ninee. This week we set a timer and write for 5 minutes on the optional prompt "Leave". 

Join us for next week's FTSF prompt where we will share a photo and tell the story behind it.