Storm was cruel to elderly who refused to evacuate

[dipsydoodle]

NEW YORK (AP) -- Even with her Coney Island apartment squarely in the path of Superstorm Sandy, Loraine Gore was staying put. At age 90, she said, she had her reasons.

"I'm tired," she told a friend who urged her to evacuate. "I don't want to go."

After floodwaters subsided, Gore's body was found face-down in her home - one of nearly a dozen New Yorkers over the age of 65 who perished in the storm.

While Sandy claimed victims as young as toddlers, it was crueler to the city's elderly.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPERSTORM_DROWNED_AT_HOME?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-11-03-03-26-08

[Downwinder]

1. Don't expect that there will be any charges

of "Assisted Suicide" filed against Sandy.

[HooptieWagon]

2. Suicide by Sandy.

[southernyankeebelle]

8. How sad to live so long and give up like that. I understand it but its hard.

My mother-in-law was 89 yrs old. All a friends her age and her husband all died. She just gave up wanting to live after she broke her hip and was in a nursing home. Am 65 I hope I never give up that will. I pray everyday I live to see my granddaughter graduate from college. She is only in the 1st grade. Life is hell sometimes.

[magical thyme]

3. and how was the storm more cruel to the elderly than to the toddlers?

Excuse me? They lived long lives; they pretty much chose to stay put. At their age, I might well make the same choice. You get tired, you want to get it over with so you take chances you wouldn't have taken at a younger age.

Whereas the toddlers and children that died didn't have a choice and didn't get to live out their lives.

I'm glad Shorty the bulldog survived. I hope he finds a good home to live out his remaining years.

[proverbialwisdom]

4. Tragic and senseless consequences of a momentary lapse in understanding or judgement.

Evacuation orders notwithstanding -

IMO, the media warning erred by repeatedly using a single ill-defined word, surge, instead of a graphic description, eg. devastating inescapable wall of deep incoming water which may put residents at risk of drowning in their own homes.

[HooptieWagon]

5. A simple solution.

When police and fire go through the neighborhood telling people to evacuate, carry a fat tip indelible marker. Write SSN on arm of people who refuse to evacuate, telling them its to make identifying the body easier.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Police in some areas down here

have residents fill out a form, including next of kin names and numbers, and sign it, stating they refuse to evacuate.
The form also clearly warns that 911 cannot respond during a raging hurricane.
The form changes some minds.

I have heard over and over and over.....people who rode out a storm say they would not do it again and
"I did not think it was going to be as bad as it was".
well, experience IS a teacher, I guess.

[countryjake]

7. A good solution...

to these and other such tragedies, is for neighborhoods to organize around being prepared for disasters, get the needed training, and then actively mobilize when storms like Sandy are approaching. My local CERT has both very old and surprisingly young, able-bodied members who have learned how to convince our stubborn neighbors that any evacuation must be taken seriously. In Ms. Gore's case, we'd have sent our 87 yr. old local curmudgeon woolly woman (also very independent) to hammer home the real danger to her and I haven't a doubt that they'd both probably have left poor Loraine's apartment, laden with keepsakes and memories (and laughing), well before the floods arrived.

I am so totally spent this week by weeping over the sadness of stories like these, deaths that needn't have happened, if only neighbors, tight local communities, would organize, prepare and act.