How does a Cat 4 Hurricane only kill three people?

[Anonymous]

3M people without power

It will take a while to find the bodies.

Hurricane Ian killed about 100 people in the evacuation zone, mostly old and disabled folks.

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand how someone could be so blissfully ignorant, hasn’t even been 24 hours past landfall. Rescue teams do not go out until it is safe for them to do so. There will be thousands dead from this. So many videos on Twitter of people trapped in their homes, idiots running generators With water on the floor, etc.

[Anonymous]

It hit the nature, coast and big Bend, no one lives there

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It hit the nature, coast and big Bend, no one lives there

To be clear, I am from there, but really it is so empty you just don’t understand

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It hit the nature, coast and big Bend, no one lives there

that’s beside the point …The eye made landfall there. It has been affecting millions of people all over Florida, Georgia, Georgia, Alabama, and will move up into Tennessee and Kentucky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doorbell camera video (so chest high at least) an hour BEFORE landfall, Cedar Key location:


https://www.nbcnews.com/video/hurricane-helene-s-storm-surge-in-cedar-key-captured-on-doorbell-camera-220277829738

Cedar Key is an island city off the northwest coast of Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s known for Cedar Key National Wildlife Refuge, a group of small islands with trails and rich birdlife.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeh news hyped this storm up so much and nothing. Thu claim a 20 foot storm surge, I think I saw maybe 1 foot

Look at the gage data, not random videos. Even then there aren't gages everywhere, so the 10 foot surge recorded at Cedar Key may or may not have been the highest, we just don't know.

The day Tampa gets a direct hit from a storm like this will be bad indeed, the surge from this storm was apparently record setting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand how someone could be so blissfully ignorant, hasn’t even been 24 hours past landfall. Rescue teams do not go out until it is safe for them to do so. There will be thousands dead from this. So many videos on Twitter of people trapped in their homes, idiots running generators With water on the floor, etc.

While I'm sure the count will rise, I highly doubt it will be anything approaching thousands. For comparison, the death toll from Ian, which hit a much more populous area head on, was 161.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s the area it hit. Look at a map of Florida and the specific area where the top winds were. There’s nothing there but swamp.

They broader more populated areas were evacuated. Even Tampa had mandatory evacuations and they just got a brushing of the outside winds.

But do they evacuate? We have friends who live in Key West and they don't evacuate for hurricanes, they claim the vast majority of residents there don't either.

It's harder to evacuate from Key West than from Tampa. A Tampa evacuation means just driving a few miles to slightly higher ground. Key West means you have to drive to the mainland.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It hit the nature, coast and big Bend, no one lives there

that’s beside the point …The eye made landfall there. It has been affecting millions of people all over Florida, Georgia, Georgia, Alabama, and will move up into Tennessee and Kentucky.

Yeah I think there will be significant flooding in TN and KY as well.

[Anonymous]

We are really blessed to live in a country where most people live in pretty well built homes and we have places like Lowe’s and Home Depot that sell plywood to cover windows and cities give out sand bags.

If it hit like this in someplace like Haiti, death toll would be much higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand how someone could be so blissfully ignorant, hasn’t even been 24 hours past landfall. Rescue teams do not go out until it is safe for them to do so. There will be thousands dead from this. So many videos on Twitter of people trapped in their homes, idiots running generators With water on the floor, etc.

+1 just in Pinellas County where my in laws are has five dead already.
https://www.wfla.com/news/pinellas-county/5-found-dead-in-pinellas-county-after-hurricane-helene-officials/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are really blessed to live in a country where most people live in pretty well built homes and we have places like Lowe’s and Home Depot that sell plywood to cover windows and cities give out sand bags.

If it hit like this in someplace like Haiti, death toll would be much higher.

True, but not because of Home Depot or even building codes. If you are at home and there's 8 feet of storm surge in your house, you are in trouble regardless of what you nail to your windows. But because of the US government you have weather predictions, opportunity to evacuate, shelters to evacuate to, emergency services to fly you off a roof if possible, and public health to provide clean water so you don't die of disease while utilities are messed up. You may also have government backed flood insurance. These are services provided by tax dollars and the government workers everybody likes to dump on. And no, it still doesn't save everybody, but those services are the difference between here, and places with huge disaster death tolls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are really blessed to live in a country where most people live in pretty well built homes and we have places like Lowe’s and Home Depot that sell plywood to cover windows and cities give out sand bags.

If it hit like this in someplace like Haiti, death toll would be much higher.

True, but not because of Home Depot or even building codes. If you are at home and there's 8 feet of storm surge in your house, you are in trouble regardless of what you nail to your windows. But because of the US government you have weather predictions, opportunity to evacuate, shelters to evacuate to, emergency services to fly you off a roof if possible, and public health to provide clean water so you don't die of disease while utilities are messed up. You may also have government backed flood insurance. These are services provided by tax dollars and the government workers everybody likes to dump on. And no, it still doesn't save everybody, but those services are the difference between here, and places with huge disaster death tolls.

Nobody complains about the Weather Service, and they are just a tiny drop in the budget. See who gets up in arms if you start talking about giving just 1% of HHS's budget to the NWS or even NPS.