Another disaster pic.....

[charleston_hugo_veteran]

To me there is no difference in what this man in R.I. did and walking out in front of a mack truck!!

[Lindaloo]

There is a very big difference CHV!

[themusk]

To me there is no difference in what this man in R.I. did and walking out in front of a mack truck!!

This is true only if you understand that both the surf and the Mack truck will kill you. There's no evidence that this man understood this. In fact, given his age, and knowing the cognitive problems that arise as persons grow older, I'll bet he hadn't a clue.

[Lindaloo]

Don't worry about it musk. You can't explain things to people who believe someone deserved death.

[charleston_hugo_veteran]

I do NOT wish death on anyone. People that put themself in senseless situations to cause harm to themself should be instituationalized! It doesn't take very much COMMON sense to know that STORMS AND WATER don't mix! Even people with the most limited mental capacity can understand that!

[janswizard]

Apparently not, CHV. Just talked to my cousin in Lakeville, Ma. She said they are getting a bit of rain, not any significant winds. She said the coasts are experiencing large swells, and people being people, climb the rocks to watch, get dragged into the surf, and die. -

[themusk]

It doesn't take very much COMMON sense to know that STORMS AND WATER don't mix! Even people with the most limited mental capacity can understand that!

Recall that this man would not have seen anything looking like a storm. Isabel was many hundreds of miles away. You and I know that storms you can't see can have a powerful effect on the surf. Not everyone understands that. "Common sense" ("If you don't see it, it isn't there") kills as often as it protects.

One of the biggest challenges in emergency management is getting people to react to threats that they can't see any evidence of. Flash floods, especially, kill plenty of people who look up at the sky, see sun and blue skies, and conclude that the watches and warnings are false alarms. I don't know the specifics of this case. But just statistically, I'll bet this guy either a) didn't know the storm was out there or b) looked at the skies and decided the storm had nothing to do with him, and c) had spent many hours at those rocks before, and had come to believe they were always safe.

Yes, these were all fatal assumptions and errors. And it's not incorrect to say this man died from his mistakes. In fact, this could be said about most deaths. Odds are both of us will die of one too many bacon double cheeseburgers, or too much time around smokers, or not enough time in the gym, or of our love of automobiles, or some other mistake we've made along the line.

It's just not a very useful perspective to take. A more useful perspective is to forget about blaming the dead-- they can't learn anything anymore from the consequences of their actions. But we can learn from the consequences of what they did. And we need to understand why it is that these apparently non-suicidal people put themselves in harms way, and then find ways to educate other persons who want to be alive and safe so that they don't make the same mistakes this man did.

[GalvestonDuck]

Wow, Musk...excellent post. Did you major in diplomacy?

[themusk]

Wow, Musk...excellent post. Did you major in diplomacy?

Nahhh. I just paused, thought about whether I wanted to argue or I wanted to discuss, and decided I wanted to discuss.

[GalvestonDuck]

Excellent...and welcome to the board!

[ColdFront77]

That's true, the barrier islands shouldn't have houses build on them.

I know exactly where Uxbridge, Massachusetts is. One of my cousins (all my cousin's but two are older than myself) lives in the town... it is just north of the Rhode Island border.

[Deenac813]

WOW.. that is terrible