Word: coasts
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...Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Today, when a major storm approaches Miami, the buses are out and the shutters are up-I put mine up twice last summer for hurricanes I knew probably weren't even going to strike. I saw little evidence of that preparedness along the Gulf coast; few houses had strongly-shuttered windows, and evacuation busses, according to residents, were in short supply. "It's just the New Orleans mentality," one Orleanian, who had evacuated, told me this week as he returned into the deserted city to survey its annihilation, "to think they can ride out anything...
...leave. His legs were paralyzed since childhood, but it meant the world to James, 52, to strut his independence: he insisted on living by himself in a small, green cinderblock house in the working-class section of Biloxi, Miss., called Point Cadet. And whenever hurricanes approached the Gulf Coast, James adamantly refused suggestions that, given his wheelchair-bound vulnerability, he should evacuate. Says his brother Robert, "He had a big, brave heart...
...beachfront hotels and casinos, James had neither a car nor much access to bus transportation to leave the weekend Katrina hit. What he did have is what's known in this part of the country as catastrophe cowboy syndrome: a cavalier attitude shared among so many on the Gulf Coast that they can stand up to, and ride out, threats like major hurricanes. So when Katrina's 25-foot storm surge slammed into Point Cadet's rising flood waters on the morning of August 29, it swept James' body to the north-"twisted and folded up like some raggedy doll...
...This catastrophe cowboy mentality has afflicted many government officials in the Gulf Coast as well, from local mayors to federal bureaucrats, who too often seem to produce the kind of less than effective evacuation plans we saw before Katrina. Granted, both residents and officials were working under a tight schedule before Katrina gained Category 4 strength and made landfall between Biloxi and New Orleans. And there is only so much people can do to prepare for a storm of Katrina's millennial magnitude. But there's a growing concern that as our hurricanes increase in ferocity, as scientists are warning...
Bush did begin to admit that the response was "unacceptable." But even when it came to enacting the role of Consoler in Chief, he sometimes sounded more like a quartermaster, running through long lists of things the government was sending to the Gulf Coast, rather than empathizing with people. That may be why the White House wheeled out his pitch-perfect wife Laura on Friday, to lend some genuine compassion to the moment...