On August 28th, 2005, late in the afternoon in Waveland, Mississippi, I became THE Hurricane Man, a title confered on me by a six-year-old boy who I overheard say to his mother, "What did THE Hurricane Man say?"

I suppose I am that, but I never set out to be that, or a storm chaser, or hurricane researcher. I have always been a violent weather nut. In the event of a hurricane, I go directly to the point of projected landfall, then remain out in the storm, eventually in the storm surge, because it is the storm surge I came seeking. I want in at the epicenter, because the forward edge of the surge at the epicenter is where the most action is and will be the site of greatest destruction, unless there is nothing there to destroy. The objective of this site is to make it that way from Brownsville to Bangor and help FEMA become a historical curiosity instead of a contemporary curiosity.

American hero or just another loudmouth Texas asshole, you decide, but understand this: The professionals you trust to manage your disasters and plan for emergencies are themselves planned and managed by special interests who like their emergencies to be disasters and their disasters to be catastrophies. They will continue letting you down and leaving you and your family vulnerable while giving you bigger and bigger emergency management bills. Your dependent people and pets will still look to you as their emergency manager. They don't want to see another dumb look or hear you pass along the latest dumb excuse you heard. They just want to know what your plan is for their survival in a world that grows increasingly more difficult and dangerous to do that in. The catchy new term for that is "Global Warming." I like the old one, CYA or "Cover Your Ass."

If you have nothing and no one to blame except you, then you will need a good plan, an alternate, and a back-up. You will need to plan ahead and prepare for all three or you are just a one-person FEMA, or what lies at the tail end of a long, fat, fork-tongued snake of state and county EMAs, the individual asshole who gets all the shit and gets stuck with the bill. If you are tired of feeling like a snake's asshole, you just may like it out here among the nuts.

If you don't learn from your mistakes, there is no sense in making them, but look into career opportunities offered by your state, local, or federal Emergency Management Agency where a long history of mistakes and a common sense impairment won't keep you out or hold you back, and people who have actual disaster experience managing an actual emergency won't be getting in your way or making you look stoopid. The top position isn't called scapegoat. It just is.

I AM,

Sonny Hoffman

I am THE Hurricane Man, and this is MY non-profit website. I didn't want it to be non-profit. It just is.

Articles by Sonny:

• Commentary on the Sorry State of Emergency Management
• Hurricane Survival Tips
• Building Smart and Building Dumb
• EPS, ICF, and Tilt-up homes --Fancy Bunkers, a return to the home that really IS a castle.
• Wind or Water--What Damaged my Castle? Any lawyer can tell you, the answer is not as simple as a hurricane did. If it were that simple, we wouldn't need one tenth as many lawyers, and homeowner's insurance wouldn't cost half as much to do twice as much in one tenth the time, a fact not lost on our lawmakers who are mostly lawyers with temp jobs. In this thought-numbing, sphincter-scrunching article, Sonny says, "...this tired-assed idiotic question will go unresolved until there is a conflict of interest law banning lawyers from making laws and serving as judges. That won't ever happen while the majority of voters routinely and roboticly cast votes for slick, sharp, silver-tongued, well-financed, establishment-entrenched, lobby owned and operated incumbent lawyers." This one is sure to ruffle robes on Capital Hill like a floor call for the pages Britany, Amber, Ashley, Heather, and Travis.
• Stand Your Ground or Wun Wike a Wabbit? A Biblical storm approacheth; whatcha gonna do or not do. (A serious subject treated with humor that ends in poetry.)
• Smart Roads and Bridges also piers, docks, and mega parking lots.
• Pets --A dispassionaate look at the problem, which is a hard look at the people, which is always the problem with pets.
• Evacuation: The Pros, the Cons, the Problems, the Alternatives
• Tips on retrofitting the stick-built death trap.  Home self-defense.

Coming soon:

• Community Self Defense--martial arts for the hood or what emergency managers should be doing.
• How To Keep Your Stuff Dry--preparing a home and its contents to ride out the storm or flood.
• Independence from the Utility Infra-Structure--the neighborhood co-op; or, take these wires and shove it!

Got a hurricane topic you want more info on? Email Sonny

Hurricane Katrina

Introduction to In the Eye of the Storm Sonny Hoffman's recent Waveland Mississippi group survival saga.

In the Eye of the Storm--this is a book in process, a true story of group survival in the record storm surge that devoured all of Waveland Mississippi and much of Hancock county. Amid all of that death and near total destruction, Sonny's twelve people, six dogs, and all of the buildings in his charge survived in remarkably good shape. The story would make a good comedy, but is also instructive.

Sonny's other writing:

• Vietnam Essays
• Commando Grammar Guide
• Student's Guide to the Internet (very dated material but amusing for that reason)

Sonny's Art:

• Sculpture
• Painting
• Pottery
• Poetry

Hurricane Smart Links:

• The Geodesic Dome smart habitat for coastal living
• Domeofahome.com for a glimpse at the future of coastal living. Read some of the smartest and finest writing on the subject of monolithic concrete domes and hurricanes from people with actual real world experience, vets of Ivan, Dennis, and Katrina.
• Comfortfoam.com closed cell spray foam insulation
• Eco-Block ICF homes (Insulated Concrete Forms)
• Zeropowerhouse.com super energy effecient homes
• Tclear.com Extruded Styrofoam core concrete panels and roofing systems
• Invisiblestructures.com Porous paving
• icpi.org Segented concrete block paving

Waveland

Mississippi Coast

Email  George "Sonny" Hoffman