Hurricane Rita

You know it makes me wonder why so many people choose to live in the path of a hurricane, tornado, or in an earthquake zone; but when you really think about it these events don't happen very often and if you plan adequately for them they really shouldn't affect you very much. The gulf coast states are again threatened by a hurricane that could potentially become quite strong and damanging. Hurricane Rita (though I think it might still be a tropical storm) is set to smack into the Florida Keys in the next day or so and then proceed into the gulf and strengthen some more.

I have no pitty for people who decide to stay in these areas and then suffer. This is a massive force of nature that we by our mistreatment of the planet are making stronger, if it's coming: prepare or get out of the way of the storm. There is no reason that anyone should die as a result of a storm that gives you days of notice. Granted getting out of the way of a storm like this could be time consuming and potentially costly; but seriously people you choose to live in these areas. If you don't want to deal with it there are a great many nice cities and towns in nice quite places where you don't often get bad weather. I myself live in an area where we get snow storms that can on occasion distrupt life; I don't complain about it I prepare for those events when they're happening.

As to the poor response in the wake of Katrina well that's truly an issue that the US administration needs to deal with and ensure doesn't happen again. We live in a technologically advanced region of the world, there is time to evacuate people and mitigate loss there should never have been the turmoil and problems that Katrina caused.