Well, it seems like time to pay attention to the weather. Not that Mother Nature is giving us much of a break from the recent and future body-blows. There are reasons for it, but they might be better summed up as we did the winds of Maui that pushed fire through a lovely and historic town in the Hawaiian Islands.

This time “She is here” is the best way to sum up Nature and her fury. There is more to it, as well. We have a newly-born child in the path of Nature’s fury, and we hope for some mercy on her new little family in Point Loma. This one is fairly unusual, since it looks to sweep into America’s left Coast rather than the inhabited and happy islands of the Caribbean. The “Season” of hurricanes is in full effect in this week with nine weeks to go until the formal end of the six month severe storm warning.

There has been a lot of information to process about weather of this season of storm activity. The storm on Maui is still under discussion, since we have Hilary’s landfall yet to come. The wreckage in Lahaina-town looked catastrophic. The last confirmed death toll in the lovely islands was 111 citizens, but that is not the bad news. The number is more than a hundred, but not all of them have been identified. Another thousand residents of the historic town are missing, and many will likely join the tally of the perished. It is the most savage scouring of an American city by flame in modern times.

Authorities in Maui now fear that the death toll will only rise in the days and weeks to come, intensifying the pain of islanders already scarred by this catastrophe. Officials are still on the hunt for those who are still among the unaccounted. The process is arduous, with the additional challenge of confirming the identities of those whose remains will be uncovered in the ashes.

There is more strange stuff about this recently-passed storm, and we should keep it in mind as the next storm comes rolling in. There is more uncertainty about this latest storm and it starts with the simple act of naming it. There is reportedly a commitment to use only one letter “L” in the storm’s name to avoid complications with political and meteorological candidates and forecasts.

Maui’s Police Chief is a man named John Pelletier, and is familiar with sudden and tragic events. five years ago he was incident commander in Las Vegas, Nevada, when a shooter opened up on a large country music crod. 58 died in that attack, though we still don’t know what the motive might have been. But for this Law Enforcement officer the chance of being responsible for tallying up the dead in both natural and man-made disasters is highly improbable. He termed it an “unprecedented” event, and apparently has cancelled any potential travel to California until this latest storm blows north through the southern part of the state. Hilary looks to have the possibility of shooting north through the rich agricultural central valley.

This one-two punch from Nature is useful to remind us about preparations to take when the storms come our way. Maui’s emergency response was flawed, not that Chief Pelletier had much to do with whether sirens were activated or stocks of fresh water were released to fight the fires.

We have lived in both Hawaii and California. We will see how SoCAL handles this newest named member of the storm season and will shout prayers skyward in hopes those in our family make it through unscathed. We will be following it with you as the winds rise and the trouble- and weather- blows through. All we can do from this distance of the Right Coast is pray and hope. But that has been our approach to severe weather for most of our lives.

There is an old phrase from our days in the military about our approach to this storm. A fellow named Gordon Sullivan wrote a book with Michael Harper about “what business leaders can learn from America’s Army.” Apparently there was a time the Army had to knuckle down and make change to move forward in the days after the Soviet Union collapsed. “Hope Is Not a Method” is what they said about things back then.

The phrase has been incorporated into crisis response on all sorts of things. We are going to go ahead and hope Hilary shows some mercy when she comes ashore, and that sirens and water will be available for use as the winds pass. We are praying for that, too- the “mercy part.” And we hope it will happen. We will give some prayers until we know the results. And hope for the best.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com