The Coalition of the Swilling

I expect that we'll see a fair number of Darwin Awards from IKE. And deservedly so.

Someone who didn't evacuate when they were told to, is waiting in line for food and water, and basically owes her continued safety to some National Guard dude or sheriff's deputy or Salvation Army person complains about ants in her shoes? It would be all I could do not to bitch-slap her into the Gulf.

Anyone heard what became of the group of guys who claimed they were gonna "drink through" Ike in what looked like a beachfront bar?

I hope those dudes didn't have families. I can't imagine how I'd feel if some relative or friend of mine went missing because he thought he'd party his way through a hurricane.

I think that's the thing that really gets me about the "I'm not gonna evacuate" folks - if they have families or friends who aren't as stupid as they are, those families or friends are gonna go through hell until they find out what became of their loved one. If I were in a situation where a significant other was unwilling to evacuate, I swear I'd probably drug the guy and carry him out of the house when I evacuated...

I wonder how many idiots would stay if they got billed for their own rescue?

Retread, I like the cut of your jib.

I've been to Galveston. It's a sand bar. Anybody who builds a house there is crazy, let alone a hotel.

As an Ike survivor -- one who lives WAAAY inland, where it was relatively safe to "hunker down" -- I agree that the Galvestonites who stayed are a burger short of a Happy Meal. And worse is the PRESS who keeps lauding their "heroic" stories of what they went through (i.e. one family who had to WALK across the causeway two days after Ike. Hello -- if you'd left 3 days earlier, there were BUSSES!)
The breaking point for me was two consecutive stories on a newscast Monday: the first showing the mayor's press conference that no one was allowed to come to or stay on Galveston; the next was the announcement that FEMA opened a distribution center on Galveston. Why would you need a distribution center on an island that no one can live on?? Eleven distribution centers for millions of people and they waste one on a spit of land that was a mandatory evacuation zone.
And, by the way, where are our credit cards and gas cards like the Katrina survivors got? What are we, chopped liver?
Sigh.

Anyway, I posted an update in a comment on Ken's Ike post, if you want to take a peek. Thank you sooo much for the prayers and good wishes. It is getting me through a very trying time.

Julie