You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Hurricane Dorian.
This meandering monster mega-squall is loitering like a panhandler off Florida’s coast.
Its radiating arms are reaching out, ready to pick the pocket of insurance companies and property owners.
This menacing sea devil has intentions of sucking souls right out of their living rooms.
Dorian has already parked on top of the Bahamas and unleashed an unmerciful volley of aquatic fury.
The aqua marine, steel drum life of the keys has been thrown into a blast furnace of destruction and decimated.
Palm trees are broken. Roof tops a memory. Romantic beaches dropped in a blender set to Frappe.
5 lives are already lost and the search and recovery teams haven’t even formed yet.
Dorian is that Ex Wife, drinking box wine, staring at her divorce decree and sharpening her claws.
Dorian is an angry bitch with bad intentions who is not in a rush to change her mood.
A drunk sitting on a bar stool, moves faster than this leviathan of water, waves and ferocity.
By Sunday, the storm was a category 5 with winds gusts around 200 mph. And none of this was moving toward land faster than a toddler on a tricycle.
From space, the vortex looks like End of Days.
Red and black and unforgiving bands of purple.
Somewhere Charlton Heston is standing on a fiery ledge, his staff raised to the heavens screaming “Lord, are thou angry?”
The Atlantic is a burning ant hill of activity.
Hurricane Hunter Planes flying through Dorian’s eye record stadium clouds, swirling, undulating, while brilliant blue sky shines into this inner sanctum.
It’s like looking at an exray of the beast, watching what holds it together.
Web Cams show an exodus of cars traveling in only direction away from the danger.
Every business is bolting plywood onto windows.
Every box store has a line, people waiting to buy bottled water.
It’s the same story, the same scene, the same as it always is.
It’s been a week now and the hurricane has yet to reach the U.S. Coast and already the story is growing tired.
News People are asking public officials if it has been hard to keep telling the public to be on guard for so long while nothing has truly happened to the U.S. mainland.
The answer is yes, but we must remain diligent.
Regardless, it’s a News Directors wet dream. A hurricane is a calamity that you can plan for.
There are time coordinates and vectors of approach and European models that predict where the beast will eventually fall upon the sand and vomit its belly full of anger.
When a News Director can plan for calamity, you can be sure that every beach, every bay, every sea wall, every inland water way will be manned by a reporter in a rain slicker.
These carbon copy field reporters, donning goggles and galoshes will dance on the sand, point at the ocean, and tell me that the sea is high or angry or churning or whatever.
It’s the same report whether it’s Coco Beach or Jacksonville or Cape Hatteras.
It doesn’t matter if its CNN, ABC, FOX or the local affiliates.
It doesn’t matter if it’s today, or 10 years ago.
Hurricanes do what they do, what they have done before man stood erect. They spin, churn, and either come ashore or go out to sea. In the end, there are only so many ways that a twisting sea demon can reveal itself. And because of this, there are only so many ways that man can document a category 5 disaster. Despite the technological advancements in electronic news gathering, the inundation of beach front web cams, and Weather Channel Super Heroes like Jim Cantore, in the end, it will just look the same.
Sooner or later, someone shouting into a microphone covered in a sandwich baggie, will be standing in the waves, or hiding behind a parking garage structure, peeking around a pillar at the gail force insanity.
Will the public heed the warning? Will they get the message through the carnival of graphics and screams of pandemonium over salt spray?
It’s really a simple equation. Stay and risk it all. Or go, and wait for the eventual passing of time.
Those who stay will drink rum filled concoctions and howl at the ceiling fan. They will play monopoly by candlelight and wonder when the wireless service will erode. They will stare at the darkness while the deck comes undone one brace at a time. They will tell themselves they’ve stayed the previous 3 hurricanes and nothing bad ever happened. They will ultimately have second thoughts and wonder if the bridges leading to safety are even open.
Those who leave will go to a Motel 6 in Chattanooga or the YMCA shelter 100 miles inland. They will lay on a cot, commiserate with other displaced coastal refugees and swap stories about how they escaped. These folks will be glad they are in this school gymnasium far from the sea, but a part of them will wonder if they should’ve stayed and ridden out the storm.
In the end, if you refuse to leave, then you are on your own in a wild west showdown with the baddest gunslinger on the planet. If you refuse to leave, you may eventually call 911 for help and they will probably tell you to buckle up, grab a snorkel, fins and ride the monster.
If you take the advice of the local mayor, your state’s governor, FEMA, and everyone else, you will live, and then you will come back to a question mark of livability.
But as they say, “you can always rebuild stuff, you can’t rebuild lives.”
So this is where we stand as the monster known as Dorian in the Atlantic becomes a category 2 and wobbles her way toward somewhere.
People will hunker down. People will evacuate. Newsdirectors will cheer on the craziness. Reporters will try and reinvent a disaster that has no concern.
Life’s Crazy™