Preparations
Prior to Ethel's arrival, adequate warning allowed roughly 12,000 residents along the Mississippi coastline to evacuate to shelters, set up at churches and schools. Along a 200 miles (320 km) stretch of the Gulf Coastline, all fishing villages fully evacuated to safer places. In Louisiana, at least 2,000 people had been evacuated from Grand Isle. Other towns were placed under emergency evacuations where Coast Guard boats were used to move residents to safer areas. Military aircraft were also moved from Keesler Air Force Base to other airfields across the country. Numerous schools and businesses were closed on September 15 in fears of a worst-case scenario, a storm with 160 mph (260 km/h) winds passing directly over Mobile, Alabama, a city of roughly 150,000 people. In Florida, the National Weather Bureau stated that preparations were not being undertaken fast enough nor as extensive as warranted. According to the Red Cross, 48,000 people in the threatened region sought refuge in shelters; however, civil defense stated that 65,000 residents moved to shelters.
Read more about this topic: Hurricane Ethel (1960)
Famous quotes containing the word preparations:
“In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete; being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry. The rest might wait. The preparations of new carriages and furniture might wait for London and the spring, when her own taste could have fairer play.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Whatever may be the reason, whether it was that Hitler thought he might get away with what he had got without fighting for it, or whether it was that after all the preparations were not sufficiently complete—however, one thing is certain: he missed the bus.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)