Not sure about the US, but shelters here are generally owned by the local council (mostly school gyms) and there are pre-made agreements for emergencies. That part isn't the issue.

In some countries, the government will just ban people from going to work. This takes the paycheck issue out of the discussion. Unless you are part of the emergency or recovery crews, you are not going to work. This works better in places where most have fulltime employment and the employer will just pay full wages, with or without deduction of vacation days.

My family moved to SW Florida a little over two years ago now, so this is our third hurricane season. One thing I have learned is that along the Gulf coast there is a wide range of social and economic conditions that the residents are in: very wealthy, dirt-poor, and everywhere in between. I am sure that there are some who refused to prepare because of crisis fatigue from the news media, or even those who are plain irresponsible people. But in many cases, people did what they could and it was not enough.

We who follow forums like this also need to remember that we are not the average person. Just having a preparedness mindset makes us atypical, but that is something we can, as a society, work to change. Even for those of limited means a case or two of canned food from a discount grocer and plastic jugs to store water when a storm is coming is achievable; but only when one knows what to do and when to do it.

Spreading the word and helping achieve a culture of preparedness and self-sufficiency in a disaster is a task we should all assume as we can. My particular venue is Scouting; the more youth I can get involved in thinking about preparedness, the more current and future families I can influence.

Scouting is a good way to involve and educate others in preparedness. The Emergency Preparedness merit badge is an Eagle required merit badge and the pamphlet is very good. If all you know is what comes from that pamphlet, you will be well prepared. That merit badge also requires that the family be involved in the preparing. I like to teach it rather than have individual scouts work on it, and I like to have the parents and siblings there if possible. It is difficult in a large troop though.

I also like to do that merit badge in conjunction with the First Aid and Wilderness Survival merit badges. I think of these three as the three legs of a tripod as they are mutually supporting.

One aspect of SAR that I enjoyed was pubic outreach. We presented to quite a few school groups, especially. You can't go too deeply in an hour, but you can cover important basics.

It came to pass that we were called out for a night time search for a young boy. At some point I was told that the young man we were searching for had been in attendance at one of my presentations.

He must have been paying attention, because as night came on, he stopped wandering aimlessly and snuggled down to get some shut eye. In fact, he was sound asleep when the first searchers came by. With the dawn,he arose and was quickly located.

This seemed to be a recurring pattern - often discovery came with dawn or within an hour or so of sunrise.

Prevention isn't as dramatic as responding to an emergency and it may be hard to quantify the results (How many people didn't get lost or injured as a result of your gabbing??) but it undoubtedly is effective.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/...;et_cid=2438366

An article detailing the difficulties involved in predicting the eventual intensity of Michael...