Bashing the people who keep us safe

Now that a tenth person has died after the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, a Florida nursing home that lost electrical power, and then, of course, air conditioning, following Hurricane Irma, can we just say one thing to those who think governmental regulations are just horrid?

And that one thing would be, please think again. 

Think of the explosion in the fertilizer factory in the town of West, Texas, which just about destroyed the town a few years ago. Texans, in their anti-government zeal, decided to trust the people who operate businesses of this sort to police themselves, making sure that the factory wouldn't blow up, and look how that turned out.

Following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Florida noticed that recovery efforts were significantly hampered by the inability of gas stations to pump gas to fuel vehicles and generators. They had gas in the tanks below the stations, but with electricity out, no power to pump it out. Laws were passed to make sure that gas stations had generators from then on.

Wouldn't you think that someone would have required hospitals and nursing homes to be similarly equipped?

Let's hope that no one really counted on the pennypackers who make a fortune in the health care business to spend some of their profits on generators. That didn't happen, and now the governor of Florida (a man who does not allow the use of the term "climate change" to be used by state employees) is breaking his neck to right this wrong and make it a law.

I'm not without bias, or experience, in this debate. Having worked for three decades for local government, I can tell you lots of stories about just why we have laws and regulations and inspections.

Ask me about the people who have 45 cats inside their house, and more in the detached garage out back. Better yet, ask me about how their neighbors liked living in proximity to such conditions. Where would they be if there were no regulating of such repugnant conditions?

Ask me about the people who will give you verse and chapter on why government is no doggone good, and then call the government to find out when the government mosquito sprayers will be in their neighborhood.

Ask anyone whose neighbor all of a sudden decides to turn his front yard into Honest Charlie's Used Cars, right in the middle of a residential area.

Ask anyone who still has their life because of laws that make them use helmets on motorcycles or seatbelts in cars.

Ask the people whose house is still standing because the Fire Inspector made them have the house safer.  Or the people who saved a life because they learned CPR at the local firehouse. 

Or ask anyone who is still alive because they finally got the point about speeding around on the highways being, you know, sort of unsafe.

I'll step off the soapbox now with deep sorrow for the ten aged people in Florida who might still be with us, had the operators of their nursing home been required to foresee the chance of a power outage in a very hot state where they see a lot of storms.