Over the years, some people have been injured and some even killed because they decided to hold “hurricane parties” when one of the big storms hit.

Needless to say, holding a party and getting intoxicated in the middle of a hurricane is not a good idea. Dennis Feltgen, public affairs officer for the National Hurricane Center in Miami, says “I think there's always going to be some percentage that is going to stay put, that is going to party like there's no tomorrow.  “All that we can hope is that this is an extremely small number of people that do this. And that luck stays with them.”

For a stretch of time decades ago, there were no catastrophic hurricanes to strike Florida and the U.S. Gulf Coast. Several near-misses built up a sense of immunity. But since then, Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and especially Hurricane Katrina in 2005 may have had a sobering effect.

Jon Birge remembers playing loud music, drinking and eating when hurricanes rolled by New Orleans when he was a student at Tulane University in the 1970s. In those days, he said, there weren't any shelters to go to. Birge manages the band Cowboy Mouth, which wrote a song called “Hurricane Party.”

“Waitin’ for the gale force winds to blow,” the song goes. “Shuffle up the cards and let the liquor flow.” The song was written before Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and its surroundings. Birge said the band doesn’t play it anymore. “Now it’s not a memory people want to have encouraged,” he said. The Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1.

Officials Discourage Hurricane Parties (Insurance Journal 5/14/09)

May 19, 2009