It started early for me. I always knew when a big storm was headed our way, my father would clean the bathtub and fill it with fresh water. My mother would buy candles and fresh batteries. We would tape the windows and bring the propane stove into the kitchen. We would also feast on any frozen food expecting to be without power for a few days.

Heck, I was born during the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944. The only doctor on Ocracoke told my mother to leave the island, it was no place for a woman about to give birth, but my father stayed to protect our home. The water got so high he had to chop holes in the floors to let water in and keep the house from floating away. That’s my family story, and we still do it the same way.

When Floyd took aim at Tidewater Virginia I stayed in our family home and did the same things my father had done. Two weeks ago with Hurricane Juanita off the coast, my sister took off work, drove to her vacation home on Topsail Island, and fought to protect it. There was some water damage, but she knew what to do, and she didn’t flinch, not for a second, there was no talk of leaving her house to the storm’s fury. She did exactly what we have always done. I couldn’t be more proud of her.

Protecting our homes runs deep in our family, we have long experience doing it, we know how to do it, and we’ll keep right on doing it, thank you very much.

The media have over-hyped this in the extreme here. The result is that tens of thousands of people that don’t *need* to evacuate are on the roads preventing people that are under mandatory evacuation orders (like me) from leaving. I have no doubt that my wife and I are far safer in our newly constructed brick home in a hurricane than stalled on a gridlocked freeway, out of gas in our Jeep Cherokee.

I think folks down here have done an admirable job for the most part. The evacuation plan needs some work though, and elected officials need to have the courage to tell people that don’t need to evacuate to stay put so folks that are most at risk can get out.