Rewind to Surprise

The day before the evacuation, one of my grants was awarded. My team was planning to celebrate by bringing mimosas and giant breakfast burritos to the next morning's faculty meeting. All of us staff showed up to work the next day, one with burritos. The faculty member was bringing the champage, but he was at home packing his house. This was a surprise, since he never misses work and it was especially out of character for him to skip out when he had obligations to others (yes, champagne at 8:30 a.m. IS an obligation). Then the facutly meeting was cancelled. Hmph.

Then the childcare center called and said to come pick up our kids. The center had been closed since 7 a.m. but nobody had told them until now--8:30 a.m. Around 9 a.m. we finally learned that the whole island had been on mandatory evacuation since 7 a.m. and our administrator was releasing us at 10 a.m. (huh?). Ok, more surprises. Up to then, we had been required to work until Friday at 5 p.m., and then go away for the weekend just in case. We rolled with the changes. But this is seeming strange. Everyone is freaking out a little more than usual...

We'd done all this evacuation stuff just one week before and two weeks before that, and both times were well planned and orderly. This talk of a hurricane was nothing new but the disorder was surprising. Some people got all excited every time a heavy rain was forecast and boarded up their windows and moved all their stuff up to the second story and ran around getting everyone else freaked out. Other people, like us, had flood insurance and packed for a 3-day just-to-be-on-the-safe-side vacation. (Usually we were the smart ones. We got to come home and unpack while other people were busy taking down window boards and rearranging all their furniture.)

After we heard about the mandatory evacuation we got a little worked up because we knew everyone would be freaking out for sure, and we did NOT want to sit in traffic remnicent of Hurricane Rita (which we narrowly avoided). So we packed quickly and got out of town. The national news interviewed me on the way out the door because I was loading kids into a car, and then we left. The traffic was slow but not too bad. P and I shared my breakfast burrito.

My point in all this rambling is to answer all the "Why didn't they just...?" questions. Not only for my family, but for all the people who made even worse decisions than us--like staying on the island or trying to evacuate too late. The only reason they were bad decisions is because this time the storm actually hit us, and after many false alarms. That was the biggest surprise of all.