Life’s a risky business, so protect yourself by properly assessing danger

THE mayor of New York had a specific audience in mind. That audience was made up of Jimmy Buffet’s “tourists covered with oil”: holiday-makers on the beaches.

Catching the rays. Dancing in and out of the cool seawater with their children. Building sand-castles. Eating sandwiches with the distinctive crunch provided by invasive grains of sand. Gathering shells. Capturing happiness in photographs. Doing all the sweet, timeless, idyllic things families have always done in late summer warmth.

The only exceptional factor was that a hurricane was lashing up the eastern coastline of the United States of America, and this was no secret. This tropical storm had been around for a while, building through the categories from mild to lethal out at sea. They’d even given it a name: Irene.