Hurricane Ike -- new memes in living with storms

After lashing the Turks and Caicos Islands, Hurricane Ike bears down on Great Inagua Island. Early reports estimated 80 percent of the homes on Grand Turk Island were damaged or destroyed.

In New Orleans, the hint in hurricane models that a turn to the west may come in the middle of the hurricane's Gulf entry this week, gave a hope to residents.

Meanwhile new memes popped up in the talk of the storm --

• Faced with the possibility of a second evacuation in two weeks,some floated the idea that internal evacuations maybe should be considered -- it's been talked about before, but it has so many tenacles it just never seems to get anywhere. The idea is to move some people from the low lying areas like New Orleans East to higher areas in the city and shelter them there. Fifty one percent of the city is actually above sea level, according to a recent report.
• Turnaround evacuations. How do you bring your family back to a home without power and rough it out., then just after the power is restored, pack up and evacuate again?
• The two 'cane evacuation. If you haven't returned yet, why not consider staying away until Ike is out of the way?
• Living with 'canes -- the idea introduced by Governor Bobby Jindal, frustrated with the slow progress of getting power back on. If we live in an area where hurricanes will reoccur we have to learn how to build infrastructure that can survive better and/or be restored quicker. What improvements do we need to make? Where has that idea been hiding for 70 years.

I am sure that the language of hurricanes will advance very quickly this hurricane season.

Stay tuned.

--steve buser