Wilma
Wilma has arrived in Florida this morning. I woke up this morning when some heavy rains and winds where bearing against the window of the hotel room. It was not bad but the sound wasn't nice. I turned on the TV and almost all channels had a special as WIlma's eye had just hit South Florida. In addition to the hurricane several tornados touched down a couple of miles South of Orlando. All stations were drawing a totally devastating picture and it seemed all very dangerous.
But when we actually sat in the car to drive downtown I quickly got the feeling that it was not bad at all. The winds were heavy but not extraordinally unusual to someone living in Europe. Wind speeds - at that time - where reported to be between 40 and 60 mph. The drive was a little bit rougher given these conditions but nothing unusual. The rainfall was certainly not dramatic. I personally believe the local Orlando media and city officials clearly over-reacted. But given the Katrina / New Orleans catastrophy they probably did not want to take any risks whatsoever. The hurricane came and went pretty quickly: the sun was already shining at 1 p.m. If the buildings in this area where constructed from stone rather than wood these hurricanes would certainly not pose that much of a threat to such a large number of people.
The evacuees are still in the area and are going to leave tomorrow morning. I have heard of shops selling I survived Wilma t-shirts. Personally, I find it very unethical to make money from a natural disaster which cost the lives of several people. But the United States is a land of unlimited opportunities...