“Better safe than sorry,” they’re saying this morning after all the anticipated high winds (gusts up to 60 miles per hour) they predicted for Honolulu yesterday didn’t materialize.
They closed the public schools. They talked the private schools into closing. They excused the city workers from work. They excused the state workers from work. They closed the parks. They put the buses on holiday schedule. They had emergency crews on alert. They told us to stock up on batteries.
As a result, thousands of people took advantage of their unplanned day off and flocked to Costco where the wife was trying to get prescriptions filled. The kids flooded the theater matinees.
And the winds didn’t arrive. It was pretty breezy, I’d have to say. But 60 mph winds? Hardly. The only thing that blew away was taxpayers’ money, which they used to pay the teachers and government workers who were unproductive yesterday.
Governments tend to be over-cautious these days, which I suppose is good. However, when these miscalculations occur, they erode the public’s faith in our leaders and “experts.” And it’s another kick in the butt for our weather people.
Weather predicting is fairly accurate but subject to the whims of Mother Nature.
Nice try, people, but this time you blew it. “Better safe than sorry” doesn’t cut it when it costs us taxpayers money we can better use elsewhere in this struggling economy.
1 comment:
This happened all of the time when we lived in Tennesse except it involved snow. "We're going to have a foot of snow," they would warn. "Close the schools!" The only flakes were the weathermen and the school district. Then other times it would snow a foot with no warning.
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