Home Safety Zone - 2005 Hurricanes

2005 Hurricanes

The 2005 hurricanes were the first to finally break the record for the most named storms. Never before had we been forced to start using the Greek alphabet because we had exhausted all the letters of our own. There had been many predictions about the 2005 hurricanes going back to last year. Many of the experts had stated that the next decade or so would be marked by some of the most powerful storms that this part of the world had seen in recorded history. They were right as we have now seen with the likes of hurricane Katrina, then hurricane Rita, and finally hurricane Wilma.

Feeling the Effects of the 2005 Hurricanes

Many of the people effected by these storms are still struggling through the aftermath. As we well know, the worst of the 2005 hurricanes left millions of people with no home to return to and as we speak people are trying to start new lives in other states. In Florida, a full two weeks after Hurricane Wilma there were still hundreds of thousands without power and a lot of cleaning up left to do, including getting many of the traffic lights up and running.

The most devastating part of any natural disaster is when we realize that a lot of the problems could have been avoided or prevented. We cannot simply sit back and wait for these things to happen. Authorities on the local, state and national level need to invest the time and money needed to protect their citizens from disasters like hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. There were far too many people that were quite literally forgotten about in the aftermath, people that were left with nothing and no one to help see them through. It was heartbreaking for the rest of the nation to see that people had to stay on the roofs of their homes for days before there was any chance of rescue. In a nation as rich and progressive as ours, these things looked like they were shot from a developing nation. Few of us could understand how the government could have been so unprepared and unorganized.

The best that we can hope for and fight for now, is that all of the lessons will actually be learned and that responses to all future hurricanes will be planned much better. We all have to heed hurricane safety on both an individual basis as well as a collective one. Study up on weather safety and know better for the next time. Hopefully we all learned the importance of hurricane shutters after last season - fallen trees caused a lot of damage that could have been avoided with them!

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