Two men from a Miami houseboat colony who chose to ride out Katrina aboard their vessels perished in the storm. Others barely survived. Still others are missing, including one idiot who got his dogs killed:
Also missing and feared dead: John ''Go John'' Nye, 61.
He told his friend Fred Grothe that he thought the storm would be ''a piece of cake'' and that he wouldn't even need to take down the sunshade on his deck.
But when dawn broke on Friday, Nye's two-story house boat had broken away from its anchor, drifted to the other side of the island and flipped upside down, Grothe said.
There was no sign of Nye or the three dogs that lived on the boat with him.
Early on Friday, Grothe said a search diver told him that he'd viewed the outside of Nye's boat from beneath the surface, and that it didn't look like there were any air pockets inside the mangled cabin.
One of the people here in Broward who went out for a car ride and perished, also took his dog along with him to the Great Beyond:
In Broward County, the storm killed four people and critically injured a fifth. Falling trees killed a man in his 20s in Fort Lauderdale, a 54-year-old man in Plantation, and a woman in Davie, officials said. A 79-year-old Cooper City man, James Paolillo, and his dog were killed when his car struck a tree.
Some fools from Lee County decided to put their three children on a boat and outrun the storm. Their boat ran out of gas. Luck was with the Larsens, though. They managed to beach their boat in a clump of mangroves until the Coast Guard came to fetch them after a dangerous search in the storm. A rescue swimmer came down from a helicopter and sent each one of them back up in a basket. I do hope Mr. Larsen is presented with the bill for all this.
Katrina is now a Category 3 hurricane. If a Cat 1 can kill at least seven people here, then I hope the people on whose doorstep she'll next show up have enough sense to get to a safe place and then stay inside until she's long gone. If they choose to roll the dice, I hope the children and animals that depend on them don't have to pay the price for their folly.
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Previous postings:
Katrina Coming In For Another Landing
Katrina Aftermath
Softly, Softly Came Katrina Calling
Katrina
Some people are just so plain foolish and unfortunately they get to drag others who have no say in the matter along with them.
I think unfortunately a lot of people misunderstood that a hurricane is a hurricane and listen up! So, it wasn't a HUGE system...little systems pack a bunch of power too! A cat 3 now?
Holy smokes!
"Maybe we can get rid of the phrase minimal hurricane," state meteorologist Ben Nelson said Friday. "There is no such thing as a minimal hurricane." Now there's a good idea. :)
Posted by: beautymrgn at August 27, 2005 10:43 AMHonestly, why don't people just get inside a building and stay there? These folks didn't have to die.
Posted by: Donnah at August 27, 2005 10:53 AMGee, Donnah, maybe they wanted to emulate those neat people on the Weather Channel.
You know the ones who stand out side for hours at a time and give us verbal commentary (like we were not seeing anything not nailed down flying through the air behind them)
"I'm standing out in the hurricane and it is very windy."
DUH!
I didn't turn the TV on not one time for this hurricane. Last year gave me enough television weather reporting to last a lifetime.
I checked websites for this one. That's it.