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Troopers assigned to protect a very long stretch of Interstate 10.  The only thing they could tell people was to return to the interstate and call 9-1-1 if they had credible reason to believe an emergency was taking place. They just looked at him in shock and disgust.  Max had never felt so ashamed in his life.
     
    Max recalled how agitated he and others had been at the high price of gasoline back then. With gas being close to fifteen dollars a gallon in 2027, evacuating in the face of this latest storm threat would cost a small fortune, money that few people had during the Second Great Depression.  Max wondered how residents of the Florida coastline could afford to evacuate last month during Hurricane Luther.  He figured that the state of Florida must have evacuated citizens by the busload to get them safely out. Luther made Andrew look like a stiff breeze. Luther went down on record as the deadliest hurricane in the history of the world; that bastard went straight up the coastline like a wrecking ball.  Luther would come ashore like Godzilla and destroy everything he saw, go back out to the ocean like he was taking a cigarette break, then travel back up the coast and start all over again.  A month had passed, and most of Florida still didn’t have power. Max vaguely remembered something about a quarantine zone but couldn’t recall the details. For some reason, there seemed to be very little media coverage of the aftermath, so details were sketchy. However, even if they had electricity, there wasn’t much of anything still standing that could even do anything with the juice. Max was able to contact his father in South Miami.  Luther wasn’t very strong when he came to visit him, only a Category 2.   “I don’t evacuate for anything less than a 5!,” Max’s dad proudly told him when he called, most Floridians paying little attention to a hurricane until it made Category 4.   Hurricane Luther left Miami and graduated up the ranks very quickly to a Category 5.  Luther left all the experts puzzled.  They had predicted that he would come ashore, do his damage and go back out to sea to slowly fade away.  Luther did no such thing.  He came back ashore a total of five times, either maintaining strength or getting a little stronger each time.  After his third trip ashore, the public cursed the experts for fools and treated Luther like he was a mythical monster that had developed intelligence.
     
    Max’s wife and children had evacuated to Oklahoma well ahead of Hurricane Ike to stay with relatives, not really because the hurricane would hit them, but rather because the electricity would probably be out and Max would be working double shifts. 
     
    Once the evacuation order had been lifted, Max wasn’t surprised that his wife decided to stay in Oklahoma for a few more weeks. The water company had shut off the water in Max’s subdivision since the bacteria counts were at toxic levels, they wouldn’t be able to wash their clothes, take showers, or flush the toilets.  The water company advised residents to shut off all faucets and bathtubs so when the water did come back on, it wouldn’t cause damage. Max completely forgot to turn off the water when he left the house the morning when water service was restored. He had spent the previous evening cleaning out the freezer into the kitchen sink. The upstairs shower was also clogged and Max had left it on when he attempted to take a shower. When the water came back on, the kitchen sink and the upstairs shower quickly filled and spilled out onto the floor for the better part of forty eight hours before Max came back home.
     
    Max’s wife returned to find her home destroyed, which confused her since the rest of the neighborhood was just as it was when she left.  Max had tried to dream up some elaborate lie, but just didn’t give a damn and told her the truth.  To make things worse, the insurance agent would later laugh out loud in front of Mr. and Mrs.