Going Where Too Many Have Gone Before

I was watching a piece of video today which was captured in South Carolina this week.

It may help to understand there is a major hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas, and South Carolina is experiencing its worst flooding in a thousand years. And as I have previously implied, it’s difficult to be sure how anyone would know, since “The New World” was only inhabited by Indians ten centuries ago; (and to my knowledge they didn’t have an Al Roker on staff).

At any rate, in the film clip we see an obviously expensive pickup truck rolling past a barricade, and into what the driver apparently thought was a foot or two of water. And the poor fool doesn’t even slow down. Now it’s one foot. And now it’s two. And then it’s three. And now it’s four. And now it would be easy to confuse the truck for a boat since its drifting downstream; (where a stream has never been before).

As the recent adage goes,

“Please excuse me for staring, but I’ve never seen stupid of this magnitude before.”

But sadly enough, this storm has brought out a magnitude of stupid which causes even the foregoing example to pale before it.

For you see, while “Hurricane Joaquin” was still a tropical storm, but predicted to strengthen, “El Faro,” a 700 plus foot freighter, “set sail” from Jacksonville with a port o’ call of Puerto Rico. And even as the storm continued to do what it was forecasted to do, El Faro, and her crew plowed straight into the hurricane,

lost power

began to list

and

sank beneath the angry waves

When a former crew member was asked about the rationale for the decision of the captain to place his crew in certain jeopardy, he responded,

“It was all about the almighty dollar and pride. That’s all it was.”

And though, after five days, not a “hide nor hair” of the massive ship has been located, but rather, a small remnant of a lifeboat, and a badly mangled body, the shipping company continues to defend their decision to send the ship into the eye of the storm.

Massive Ineptness

Amazing Stupidity

I think it’s safe to say that neither the owner of the pickup truck, (which doubled as a boat,) nor the owner of the ship, (which doubled as a rock) will receive the first cent from their insurance carriers.

 

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 10