Early lessons learned from Hurricane Harvey's assault on Houston.

It's not too early to do a "lessons learned" about Hurricane Harvey's assault on Houston.

1.  Don't trust authorities to determine your course of action.  Make the assessment yourself!

This one will rub many readers the wrong way but listen before you slam me. The local govt called for people in essence to "shelter in place".  This was based on past experience of trying to evacuate the city.  Long traffic jams, people running out of gas etc.  Well look at the situation today.  High water rescues and cars abandoned in the streets.  The expense of just clearing cars off the street will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  That's before you actually add water damage to buildings etc..Decide when you and your family should leave and act on that instinct!

2.  Prepping counts.

Some will say that prepping couldn't have helped in this mega storm.  They're wrong!  If a decision is made to leave and its done at the last minute you can grab your essentials and be out the door.  If its done in a timely manner then you can save many of the irreplaceables in your home.  Family heirlooms and such. Being prepared for emergencies means that when they strike you're better prepared to deal with them.

3.  Emergency funds count!

The news media is already descending on evacuation centers in Dallas.  The tales of woe are being told and the stories are similar.  We're looking at people without a dollar to their name being evacuated and now being herded like cattle in a mass refugee center.  Better to have a fund set aside to spare your family that drama and then contact your insurance company so that you can recover what was lost in a timely manner.  A hotel stay, stay with relatives etc is better than a center any day of the week.

Conclusion.

Prepping works.  Independent thinking works.  Emergency funds works!  Plan for emergency and you will deal with it much more successfully than will a person that has a normalcy bias and believes that since it hasn't happened it never will!

Note.  What I can't figure is how do you care for the sick and elderly in these type situations.  Once again we've seen people in a nursing home left to their own devices.  This is a wall punching constant and we've got to do better.

My first thought is WHERE ARE THEIR RELATIVES!  My second thought is why would authorities respond so slowly?  This should be a priority rescue.  I need to chew on this one before I can come up with a reasonable solution...what I do know is that it's not being handled properly today.