Charging for an evacuation?

While the US Embassy in Lebanon still hasn’t figured how to get US Citizens out of the chaos that country has become, they have made clear one thing: if you’re not part of the US Embassy, you will have to pay for your ride to Cyprus, and once there, you’ll be on your own.

So unlike most other countries, who are giving free trips back to their homeland, inclusive of a taxi back to your house in some cases, US Nationals will be maxing out credit cards for a now-scarce Cyprus-USA flight.

Why might we in DC care? Beside the impact it might have on our work – my company has an office there – what happens if we have a massive evacuation in Washington DC?

Would we be like Katrina’s victims, sent packing with a wave and a shove & blamed if we’re car-free DC? Would we be like Americans in Lebanon, forced to sign promissory notes before we’re allowed on helicopter or ship out? Or are we so smug in our new McMansions that we don’t care?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Married, mortgaged, and soon to be a father, Wayan Vota is in the fast lane to mid-life respectability – until the day his brood finds his intimate journal of global traveling and curses him with the ever-eternal reply “I’m gonna be just like you, Dad!”

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