All eyes watching Dean’s path: Bush declares early disaster in Texas as storm races to Jamaica
Hurricane Dean streaked toward Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula on Saturday, and President Bush issued a disaster declaration for Texas days ahead of its final landfall, most recently projected for northern Mexico. At 10 p.m. Saturday, Dean’s winds were measured at 145 mph ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ just short of a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The storm was 360 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, heading west-northwest at 17 mph. Dean’s eye was expected to hit Jamaica today and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula late Monday or early Tuesday. After that, National Hurricane Center forecasters said it could land anywhere from Corpus Christi to Veracruz, Mexico, late Wednesday or early Thursday.
There’s something odd and yet terrifying in the run-up to learning exactly where a hurrican will make landfall. For the past few days, most of us here along the Texas Gulf Coast have been watching the progress of Hurricane Dean, wondering if we’re going to be the ones to take a hit. At this point, it’s becoming easier for those of us in the Houston-Galveston area to exhale, because it’s beginning to look as if it’s more like than not that we’ll escape a direct hit. Of course, it’s far too early to rule anything out, and a lot can still happen, but seeing the forecast storm track is certainly better news than we’d been expecting. I imagine we may still get a crapload of rain out of Dean, but things could be a whole lot worse…and they will be for someone, somewhere.
There’s a fair amount of denial that goes into dealing with the possibility of being hit by a hurricane. For one thing, it’s very difficult for a normal human brain to wrap itself around the awesome destructive possibilities resident in a hurricane. Sure, we see the pictures, and we watch the reporters do their stand-ups as the lean into the wind to keep from being blown over. Nonetheless, it’s a very difficult thing to imagine that a natural force can marshal such overwhemlmingly malevolent, destructive power. I imagine this would help account for the impressive sense of denial that accompanies the approach of a major hurricane. Indeed, how can one adequately grasp the possibility of losing everything one own’s to a force of nature? How else can something like that be anticipated with anything BUT denial?
At this point, it’s looking increasingly likely that the Houston-Galveston corridor will dodge this bullet, which is a good thing. No one wants to see 4 million people trying to evacuate as they did during the approach of Hurricane Rita. While we may well end up letting out a collective sigh of relief, someone somewhere is going to lose a trailer…and probably a whole lot more.
Next time, it just might be our turn. I certainly hope not….
