Anthony Westbury: School kids safer in school than out on soaked highways

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but aggrieved parents on the Treasure Coast must run a close second.

As I write this, 165 of them have commented on our website,, about school administrators' decision to hold school Monday even though the remnants of Tropical Storm Isaac were still kicking around.

And, of course, even though the weather was gloomy but relatively benign when kids left for school early Monday, that changed dramatically by late morning. By Monday afternoon, dozens of streets across St. Lucie County were flooded and impassable. Sections of U.S. 1 in Port St. Lucie resembled parking lots because so many small cars had "drowned" in the deluge.

So, are all the parent prognosticators who slammed school officials justified? I think they're acting like Monday morning quarterbacks whose hindsight is always 20/20.

In St. Lucie at least, the decision was made Sunday, with the best information officials had at that time. At the county Emergency Operations Center, school officials were told the storm was moving away from the area and that the weekend soggy conditions would improve on Monday. We even had a headline in Monday's paper that the worst was over.

So, are we idiots, too? No, don't answer that one.

As Isaac churned slowly northwestward, almost 300 miles away, the decision to go ahead with school seemed a reasonable one.

It wasn't until a slender "rogue" rain band detached itself from the main storm and stalled over four counties that conditions took a real turn for the worse. Now many parents are calling school administrators idiots.

Yet, if the parents were so clairvoyant, why didn't they insist on their kids staying home? If authorities had canceled school, wouldn't we have heard plenty of squawking from those who had to work and wouldn't have had time to find baby-sitters?

Those in charge of schools are damned if they do, damned if they don't. I really don't envy them.

Several commenters bemoaned the fact that kids were forced to wade through deep water to get to cars waiting to pick them up. As a parent and grandparent myself, I remember when it was almost impossible to keep my son out of standing water in cases like this. Come to think of it, he's not that much different at age 35.

I noticed plenty of teenage boys out on the streets in PSL on Monday evening, soaking wet from head to foot and loving every second of it. I wonder where their protective parents were at that time?

On Monday morning at about 10:30 a.m., I was driving around PSL checking out how the city's expensive new stormwater storage system (the EWIP) was doing. Even though the rain was falling steadily, the new reservoirs seemed to be keeping water off roads and driveways.

Then I drove to Floresta Drive for an interview and emerged about an hour later to find the street flooded from unrelenting torrential rain. Battling the mud-brown river that Floresta had become, I was struck by how many idiots in big trucks were flying along creating enormous rooster tails of water that flew right over my (midsize) truck.

I also noted that my northward progress was a stately 18 mph — the same forward speed Tropical Storm Isaac was making in the Gulf.

As the rain continued to fall, I couldn't help noticing how many small cars were flooded out by the side of the road. Even though floodwaters were rarely deeper than 6 inches, modern subcompacts aren't built for river work. They may save gas fine; they don't swim well.

That didn't seem to stop an awful lot of people in low-slung vehicles from driving like crazy. Maybe they were parents hurrying to rescue schoolkids? I don't know, but I would suggest extra training for new Florida drivers to handle flooding. It'd only take one line in the drivers handbook: SLOW DOWN AND USE SOME COMMON SENSE.

So, if there's blame to go around about Monday's debacle, I'd lay it at the wheels of numbskull motorists rather than beleaguered school administrators.

Don't worry, there'll be plenty of opportunities to blame them for something else in the future.

Anthony Westbury is a columnist for Scripps TreasureCoast Newspapers. This column reflects his opinion. Contact him at (772) 409-1320 or