Saturday, October 04, 2008

Inaccurate Ike headlines

The Associated Press has an article today that talks about people who died due to Ike. While I am more than glad to read and grieve with the families over this loss of life - I hate the headline:"Islanders who insisted on staying died in Ike." For one thing, the death count from Ike is still officially very low given the size and unusual strength of this Category 2 storm. On Galveston Island, the count of people who stayed has been put in the wide range of 2000-15,000 people. Most of these people survived. However, I've seen a report that said there were 940 rescues made the morning after the storm. But I do find this headline to be very misleading.

However, there are still a number of people who are missing throughout the most severely damaged areas and many may never be found. This story does an excellent job of telling the story of some of the people who did die because they either did not evacuate soon enough or because they did not evacuate at all. And it is a good warning for people to be more careful the next time a major storm heads ashore.

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