The Houston Fire Department today is bragging about some old army trucks it’s acquired since Hurricane Harvey to help with evacuations if needed during Hurricane Laura. They’re very tall and can go through high water.
However, the trucks, which will hold 30 rescuees, will only take 15 people at a time because of social distancing rules.
Let me tell you something. My family and I escaped Hurricane Harvey thanks to what was loosely called the Cajun Navy. My family and another family, including several children and half a dozen pets, were piled with what few bags we could carry into an airboat, then taken in a county passenger van to a shelter. My house had over a foot of water when we were taken out. It ended up with four feet of water for a week and it had less water than almost every other house in a four-mile radius, approximately 1500 homes. No one died–which was a miracle–but for a few people it was close, not being rescued until the water was neck-deep while standing on their kitchen counters.
With “social distancing rules,” those people would have drowned.
My former neighborhood is again at risk from a hurricane, much closer than I am now. But the good news–aside from this being a very different storm from Harvey, not likely to cause the same kind of flooding–is that the people doing most of the rescuing won’t be members of a government-run entity in the course of their duties who are required to follow a bunch of stupid rules. They will be individuals out there in their own dang boats hauling people out of the water as fast as physically possible.
(My understanding is that my own rescuer was a Texas Fish & Game Warden, and that the boat he was using might have belonged to Texas. But he and his fellow wardens were out there as private individuals, as volunteers.)
6 replies on “Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”
As with the adage that there are no athiests in foxholes, I am going to guess that if they are needed, there won’t be any covid virus on those trucks either.
One would certainly hope that to be the case but … With leftists who destroy lives for reasons of mere appearance one can never be absolutely certain.
I wouldn’t put it past the kind of leftists who would halve the capacity of rescue vehicles putting 50% of the potential lives to be saved in mortal peril, to feel they were doing the right thing in letting half the potential victims die.
After all, isn’t that exactly what Andy Cuomo did with the nursing homes in New York State?
Cuomo had a pre-announced and continuously enforced legal action. If a truck pulls up outside your house and it is half full, are you getting on or saying “Nah I will wait for the next one, don’t wanna get sick?”
That’s why I think that whatever silly pronouncements the leftists might make, just as when you’re in the hole and the shells are exploding overhead, you’re gonna take whatever physical, or meta-physical, rope that shows up.
You’re right, and if there’s water in my house and the truck comes down the street half full, and I want to get in the truck, the problem is that it isn’t going to be my choice. It’s going to be up to the governmental employees driving and/or managing the truck whether they’ll let me get aboard in defiance of their orders.
In fairness to the firemen of HFD, I think most of them would defy the orders. But it’s asinine to force them to make that choice.
It was a thing of beauty to watch that effort during Harvey. We are 90 miles west of Houston. We were having renovation work done and my contractor didn’t show up. I called and he was in Houston with his bass boat rescuing folks like you. He was there for days. He is my hero. Thank you Eric for being the guy!
He’s my hero too!!
I was in the other direction–I grew up two blocks from Galveston Bay but at that time we had lived in Hardin County near Beaumont for 20 years. The bayou which was eight miles wide for a week after Harvey was the county line between Hardin and Jefferson Counties. We had thought when we moved there that because the elevation of our house had doubled, that we were safe. Our old house by the bay didn’t flood, but I guarantee you that unless you live on top of a mountain, 62″ of rain over three days is going to cause a flood! (That would be over my head BTW.)
I’m now back in a suburb of Houston and although it’s home and I grew up here, I hate two things about it: the population density and the Democrats in charge of Harris County. Don’t get me started!!!!