The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

    Keep calm and ignore the harmless rain

    As someone who grew up living farther south than New Orleans, I know a thing or two about preparing for hurricanes. Although I’ve personally never had to deal with major flooding, the reality of an oncoming storm is nevertheless terrifying for some people.
    However with Tropical Storm Karen, I was completely calm and not worried in the slightest. I went back down to Houma on the Wednesday night of Fall Break and checked in on the status of the storm throughout Thursday and Friday, but never once was I worried it might come straight for my home like Hurricane Isaac did last year.
    This is because Karen was a tropical storm, not a hurricane. Her winds were not as high and her bands were not as compacted as most storms, so what was all the fuss?
    The opening of a USA Today article on Thursday, Oct. 3, author Doyle Rice claimed that Tropical Storm Karen looked like it was taking the same path as Hurricane Katrina did in 2005.
    That’s where I think the Karen ordeal escalated. Throw “Hurricane” and “Katrina” together in the same sentence and you can make just about anyone in the south cringe. Comparing Tropical Storm Karen to that storm made the public even more worried than they needed to be.
    Of course, I believe it’s good to be prepared in case of emergencies. I think everyone along the Gulf Coast should be ready for a hurricane to strike from June 1 through November 1. Anyone who lives in the south should be stocked up on water bottles, non-perishable food items, flashlights, generators and all that jazz. Anyone who does not have those things should be freaking out at the mere mention of a storm.
    Last fall I went home when Hurricane Isaac was heading straight toward Louisiana, and the eye of the storm proceeded to sit over my house for a whole day. Over those few days with no electricity, we heard the winds and heavy rains at their worst, but also sat through the shocking silence of the eye of the storm. We were prepared, though, which is why I did not mind being home with my family.
    For Tropical Storm Karen, however, everyone was freaking out, and I never once saw a weather report that told us to. Each time I heard a suggestion, inclination or recommendation to pack up and cancel everything I immediately turned on the news to find the same prediction. The weathermen said Karen would come right at us and take a sharp turn right, making land around the Georgia/Florida line. Tropical Storm Karen even tried to warn us all that she was no big deal. According to a Friday, Oct. 4 article by Kathy Finn on the Reuters website, the storm weakened from 65 mph winds to 50 mph over Thursday night, and yet, areas of southeast Plaquemines Parish, Lafourche Parish and Grand Isle issued mandatory evacuations.
    To go as far as evacuating entire cities in Louisiana was just plain extreme. An Associated Press story posted on Sunday Oct. 6 stated that most of the Gulf Coast was going back to normal as Karen dissipated into a tropical depression. Otherwise known as a thunderstorm.
    The same Associated Press article by Janet McConnaughey and Stacey Plaisance also stated that evacuation orders had been lifted and a shelter in Plaquemines that was the refuge of 80 people on Saturday shut down on Sunday, sending everyone home. What a waste of a perfectly good weekend. People missed work. Events were canceled. People left their homes behind and evacuated. And for what? A little rain.
    Let me just remind everyone that we live in south Louisiana. We should all be used to the rain, and wind, and the occasional tropical storm or hurricane, but if we are prepared for them properly, there really is no need for a small storm like Karen to throw off everything. The news and some people watching the news went a little too far and scared a lot of people for no reason over Tropical Storm Karen, so next time maybe everyone should take a deep breath, keep calm and go about their lives until it’s clear whether or not the storm will actually affect us.
     

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