The last hurricane to hit the US was Ike, in 2008. The NWS warned that anyone who didn’t evacuate faced “certain death.”
“All neighborhoods … and possibly entire coastal communities … will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide,” the advisory said. “Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single-family one- or two-story homes will face certain death.”
Bill Read, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, estimated there were about 140,000 people in the smaller, “certain death” zone. About 70 percent of those residents evacuated. That left nearly 40,000 people to contend with the worst of the storm surge.
Ike bought me a new roof (Thankyou). I had always wanted a custom metal roof, and Ike obliged by destroying a thirty year architectural shingle roof that was only six years old. Truth be told it was the culmination of six seasons of hailstorms and Ike’s massive rains illustrated the lack of integrity remaining in my wimpy shingled roof. I now roundly mock hailstones!
40,000 people ignored Big Brother and lived to tell about it.