Should you stay or should you go....

My mother and I fled Galveston at 9 a.m. Friday and are now evacuees, living in a hotel in San Antonio. We go from being calm and feeling resilient to bewildered and overwhelmed in a moment’s notice. We are concerned about our friends who stayed. We are wondering what we will face when we come home. We wonder when will life seem normal again. And from what I can tell from conversations with other refugees here, and along the travels here, we are not alone.

Life as an evacuee is not simply a matter of feeling relieved that we are safe. That’s not to say we don’t. We all feel a tremendous level of gratitude that we made it out, are safe and out harm’s way. But at the same time, being an evacuee comes with a great feeling of helplessness.

Our friends who remained might need help and we cannot be there. Our homes could be flood-soaked wrecks and we’re not there to clean them and begin picking up the pieces. We thrive on information. Those of us who have Internet access are glued to our computers hoping for emails from other evacuees we know, scattered across the state, hoping to hear anything at all from our connections back home. We sit and wait for any word from the island. We watch television coverages, paying attention to see if we see our homes or someone we know to have a little peace of mind that it is all safe. We want any amount of accurate and reliable information to know what to expect when we are finally allowed to come home. And most importantly, we all sit and wonder when will we be allowed home.

We also sit and watch as elected officials and emergency officials chastise and ridicule those who decided to stay, and as someone who was prepared to stay, and as someone who knows people who did stay behind, I am offended by their lack of compassion. The decision to evacuate is not simply a matter of heading a mandatory order. People who stay behind are not simply stubborn free-willed people who think of themselves as bullet-proof as our governor called them. How many of these people on blogs and on the news who question that decision and call it foolhearty or stupid have ever had to face that decision?

People fail to realize that the call to evacuate doesn’t simply mean get in your car and go. You have to secure your property before you leave. You have to gather what you need for life on the road for an indefinite amount of time. You have to sedate your animals to make it easier on them. You have to say good bye to a life that you’re not sure will be there when you return. You have to have a place to go.

It’s not just going. There is an emotional price paid for evacuating. It is an unsettling feeling to be hundreds of miles from home and not knowing whether I have a home, or whether my home has been inundated with water, to borrow the catch-phrase from this storm.

I feel fortunate because I am safe, I am in a position that I do not have to worry how long I can live in a hotel. I do not have to worry as another woman I met here does. She wondered how long do we have to stay away and what do we do if the money runs out. I know there are a lot of people wondering that same thing. What do you do when your resources run dry? I suppose there will be enough shelters for everyone, but we are still left to wonder.

People are still scarred from their Rita evacuation. And we are still not confident our elected officials have it right. We wonder do they even communicate with each other before issuing evacuation orders? We wonder do they take into consideration people might be hesitant to leave on the day the storm is coming in?

Houston Mayor Bill White said Friday morning I believe that those who did not head the warnings and waited until the last minute would have an unpleasant experience evacuating. Does he think there is a pleasant experience in this no matter when you leave?

I don’t like to be one to blame the media, but at times, I question their judgment, or lack thereof. Scare tactics and repeating again and again the phrase “20 foot wall of water” does absolutely nothing to help those of us trying to decide what to do. The decision to evacuate isn’t just about following a mandatory order – it is about trying to decide what is best for you personally based on the information you have a the time. It’s about weighing all of the options – the known versus the unknown, the probable against the possible. If you do not have calm, rational information, without the hype, scare tactics, or conflicting reports, you cannot possibly make a rational decision in enough time.

I am glad to know that most of the people I know who stayed behind are safe. We are still waiting on word from some of them. And I know these people are not the stubborn or foolish individuals they are being portrayed as. These are tough people who rode out a nasty storm because for them, the decision to stay seemed the best alternative for them based on the information they had. Everyone is different and everyone’s choices are not the same.

What is more important now is to focus on what we do next. It is important for Galvestonians to muster the spirit of those who came before us and find the resilience and optimism to clean up the mess, rebuild what we can and move on better and stronger than before. A storm named Ike cannot destroy what makes Galveston the town we choose to call home. It is the people, people like those who stayed behind and those of us who will return to help clean up. It is a place that rebuilt after this country’s deadliest natural disaster and it is a place that will get through this, as well.