OPINION: The know-it-alls are feeling ‘overwarned’

Sept. 09--One of the toughest things public officials have to do around here is decide how much to alarm residents when a Gulf storm approaches.

Terrebonne and Lafourche officials had the chance to put their plans to work as Tropical Storm Gordon threatened for a few days last week. For a couple of days, forecasters said it could dump as much as 6-8 inches of rain atop an already saturated Louisiana coast. That, coupled with south winds pushing water in from the Gulf of Mexico, posed a serious flood threat to low-lying areas like ours.

Fortunately, Gordon jogged east from the track forecasters had projected and made landfall late Tuesday night near the Mississippi-Alabama border, with winds just under hurricane strength. The storm quickly dumped more than 10 inches of rain on parts of the Florida Panhandle, causing what officials described as moderate flooding. Winds knocked an oak onto a trailer in Pensacola, killing a 2-year-old inside. More than 48,000 homes lost power at some point as the storm washed ashore.

Gordon may not have wrought the catastrophic damage of Katrina or Harvey, but it was serious nonetheless. And it's highly likely the results would have been worse had the storm hit Terrebonne and Lafourche. Coastal erosion and sinking land have increased the threat of flooding from weather most other areas could easily tolerate, such as a heavy summer rain or stronger-than-usual south winds.

Local officials' response to Gordon was calculated, well-informed and measured. Parish governments delivered free sandbags for a couple of days, pumped down water levels, closed floodgates and encouraged residents to stay aware. Monday, as Gordon tracked farther east, Terrebonne officials decided schools would operate as normal Tuesday. Students in Lafourche's public schools, as well as those in Catholic schools in both parishes, already had a day off Tuesday, which had long been scheduled for teacher training. All schools were open Wednesday as it became more certain that Gordon was no longer a local threat.

The area, and Louisiana overall, got lucky, escaping with little disruption.

Who could complain about that?

Well, apparently, some Louisiana residents felt they were "overwarned" about the storm's threat to the state, a story by The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge says. Scientists and government officials said such false alarms are the cost of a "robust emergency response system," according to the story, published in Friday's Courier and Daily Comet. And some expressed concern that residents could become desensitized to future alerts.

Wow, I thought. I imagine the armchair quarterbacks who think this way felt especially emboldened after the fact -- after Gordon jogged east. How can anybody legitimately complain about being "overwarned" about a tropical storm that nearly strengthened into a hurricane?

The question befuddled me at first, but my head cleared quickly and I realized that the know-it-alls have thrived before, during and after every storm I can remember. One of the easiest ways to identify them is to listen for cliches like, "Oh, it's just a tropical storm" or "Nothing to worry about; it's never flooded here before." The know-it-alls don't buy flood insurance because they believe, wrongly, that they don't need it. They know more than any meteorologist about where a storm is going and how dangerous it will be when it gets there.

Here's my advice. Avoid the know-it-alls. Listen to the pros -- local emergency preparedness officials and the National Hurricane Center are good places to start.

Feel overwarned? I don't advise it, but you can always change the channel and forget about storm forecasts, since you know better anyway. See how that works for ya.

-- Executive Editor Keith Magill can be reached at 857-2201 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @CourierEditor.

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