Briefly

MIAMI

Hurricane officials afraid of apathy

Despite last year’s devastation, not enough people respect the awesome power of hurricanes — or are prepared to survive them, government officials said Monday.

According to a Mason-Dixon poll: 56 percent of residents in hurricane zones, from Texas to Maine, feel little or no vulnerability to the monster storms, 47 percent have no hurricane plan and 32 percent wouldn’t secure their homes until a hurricane warning.

Florida residents, on the other hand, are wiser: About 70 percent of those who live within 10 miles of the coast have a plan.

Because last summer’s four hurricanes caused more than $45 billion in damage and killed 152 people, the poll’s findings alarmed government officials.

The poll of 1,100 adults late last month indicates too much ignorance and apathy, even among people who have experienced tropical storms, officials said.

Virginia

Coast Guard rescues sailor off coast

One of two sailors who washed overboard in rough seas hundreds of miles off the Virginia coast was found alive Monday and pulled to safety on a merchant ship, the Coast Guard said. The other sailor was found dead.

Lochlin Reidy, 58, from Woodbridge, Conn., was spotted about 4 a.m. after a Coast Guard plane saw a strobe light in the ocean about 400 miles east of Virginia Beach, said Officer Krys Hannum, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

He was found wearing a life jacket with the light and taken aboard the merchant vessel Sakura Express, a Panamanian-flagged tanker that was helping with the search. His condition was not immediately available.

Later Monday, Thomas Tighe, 65, from Patterson, N.Y., the boat’s captain, was found dead in the water.

The Sakura Express, with Reidy and the body of Tighe on board, was scheduled to sail into Boston Harbor this morning.

Three other sailors on the men’s 45-foot sailboat told authorities that Tighe and Reidy were preparing a life raft to evacuate the crew after the boat began taking on water from 16- to 20-foot waves when they washed overboard.