The thing that occurs to me Pan is....
How many people in the Sandy-afflicted areas are going to sit down and conduct a soul-searching postmortem on their recent adventures? How many will look at what went wrong and how they individually reacted to it? What worked for them? What do they need to do differently/more/better to defend and protect themselves and their families?
My honest guess is.....not very GD many.
That's where the bulk of my indifference to their plight comes from. Why should I bust my azz to help someone who won't help himself?
I'd say your guess is right on target; not very GD many.
I've recounted on another thread here somewhere the conversation I had with the friend with only one flashlight who went searching for another just two days before the storm, to no avail; the same friend with whom I've been pleading to stock up/get prepared, and a year later, she's still got but one emergency light for two people and three flours of house.
I repeat this to confess my sense of despair over my failure to move people to act on their own behalf -- and that includes my parents to some extent, and to my brother and his wife.
In fact, my brother learned exactly the wrong lesson. The day after the storm, because the Shop Rite (grocery store) was open despite no power, he scored a Pyrex stove-top percolator coffee pot, something he
should have had on hand already. Now, his otherwise false presumptions have been validated.
Should their difficulties have become worse or lasted longer, it would be extremely difficult to go get them, what with roads and bridges impassable or gone.
I love them all, but it's clear I need to write them off in this regard.