Underestimating Storm’s Severity Leads Some to Ignore Evacuation Notices, Wall Street Journal, 10/7/2016

In case you don't have a subscription, this paragraph is all you need to know:

Yeah, I suppose 'normalcy bias' gets a lot of people. I imagine most adults down there have seen hurricanes before and maybe even rode them out. But climate change is making the bad storms worse, stronger and stronger as ocean temps rise. Hundred year storms will be appearing every three or four seasons. By the time folks realize just how bad it really is it's too late to evacuate.

Made worse by the 10 year or so lack of Hurricanes in the area.

Complacency. After you've gone through a few hurricanes and maybe evacuated only to return home to no damage, you start second-guessing why you left at all. Next time you don't leave and no harm is done. That's why people don't evacuate.

It seems like the people in charge always err on the side of over-reaction and then when it really is bad, no one believes.

yep, not always for dumb reasons:

while not the majority by any means, some folks refuse to leave pets and livestock (which may be impossible to transport, or having no place to take them)

people willing to risk their lives to save those they care about

I've never been through a hurricane or faced any kind of evacuation order. But I know my mind would be going over the pluses and minuses of evacuation. At the top of the list is the governments bend towards over-protecting us and putting their fingers of control into just everything. It makes you distrust them, and that spills over into warnings and evacuation orders. Especially when you know the looters will be having a merry old time at your place while you're gone.

Safety is paramount, but many of us survived falls on the playground without the new government mandated special rubber mats to save us from ourselves. There's a point where government undermines themselves and we tend to laugh at them based on their silly over-reactions to things. Do we still believe them when they say "this one will be a monster"?

I would probably evacuate. But the above thoughts would be going through my mind.

Part of our decision making process includes the knowledge that a hurricane will drop 1 category from when it hits the beach to when it arrives at our home.

We determine whether to stay or evac 72hrs prior to predicted landfall per our Hurricane Condition Checklist.

I think it is a bit more complicated than just government-over reaction. Leaving the politics out of the discussion, consider this:

Hurricane forecasts for both track and intensity are in the form of probabilities. So far, Hurricane Matthew seems to have fallen well within the predicted range. If the track had been just slightly west of its actual track (well within the probability distribution), many of those people in Florida who refused to evacuate would be in serious trouble. I suppose part of the problem is the public's general lack understanding of simple probability.

Emergency managers (i.e. "government") have to go with the best available info, which are those probability distributions. If government had not ordered an evacuation, and the track had been even slightly to the west, I suspect there would be many here on ETS and elsewhere bitc..... oops, I mean complaining about the "incompetent government who had the data but didn't warn us". Recall how much criticism there was of the Bush administration for their response, or rather lack thereof to Katrina.

Certainly there are valid reasons why people don't want to evacuate. Any disruption of normal daily life is a pain in the rear. People have concerns about looting, though in most cases the authorities seem to do a pretty good job of keeping that to a minimum. People worry about pets, though nowadays most shelters have provisions for pets. Livestock is a big issue, and I don't know if there is a good solution to that. And, the fact that in some cases the storm isn't as bad as predicted lulls people into a false sense of security ("...we didn't evacuate last time and everything turned out fine..."). But the bottom line is that Matthew was a very dangerous storm which killed more than 800 people in Haiti, and government has a moral obligation to take it seriously. Also note that it ain't over yet.

In another thread there was a link to a bio of FEMA head Craig Fugate. I like this quote:

EDIT: More on the current damage of Matthew: Hurricane Matthew batters South Carolina coast; storm-surge flooding feared Some of the photos accompanying this article of people playing in the surf, are good demonstrations of what Fugate was talking about. For example see photos #15, 34, and 46.

AKSAR's assessment is correct. Put yourself in the decision maker's shoes. If you soft pedal the hazard and people get into trouble or die, you will be criticized. If you go to the other limit and describe the worst case situation, you will be criticized, but people will be alive. Which situation is preferable?

Authoritative advise is inherently conservative - "Never hike alone" - "Always carry the 10 essentials." These pronouncements are disregarded all the time and folks survive (although the rate may be somewhat lower), probably even by regular members of this forum (like me!). It is still good advice, like the advice to evacuate, and you up the risk if you disregard....

Good post, AKSAR! Thanks for providing some balance and perspective.

If we prepare for things that might happen, surely we must recognize that these things also might NOT happen, and no one can predict them with absolute certainty.

This guy is the reason I would not evacuate:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=315026018854123&id=100010401811137

Would Shep Smith use hyperbole?
"Extravagant exaggeration (as “mile-high ice-cream cones”)".
"Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally".

Over-the-top exaggerations are kinda his thing.

Individual TV "meteorologists" don't issue evacuation orders. Besides, I don't think they're actual scientists. They just read from the prompt.

Shep Smith isn't a meteorologist, he's just a news anchor who sometimes gets carried away with "emotion" as natural and man-made events unfold -- "oh the humanity" as the Hindenburg crashes and burns. The hyperbole in this video is just Shep being himself; there is a problem with a "news" anchor who isn't to be taken seriously.

From your post in the other thread, Russ, it sounds like you'd be ahead of the evac order! Does the highway slow down to a crawl far worse than regular traffic during evacuations?

Evacuation orders turn a 70mph freeway into a 5-10mph freeway. I once lived near the intersection of I-10 & I-12. By the time I got home, after the evacuation orders had been given, & gotten packed up, both Interstates were slow moving parking lots.

We looked at the interstate traffic flow and the hurricane forecast and decided to sit tight until 0500 the next morning. When we left at 0500, the Interstates were wide open. We made 70mph to our BOL and only met a handfull of other vehicles. Sometimes it is best to sit tight until the panicked herd has cleared...

Hmmm, this is California, traffic slows to a crawl when one dufus runs out of gas. Fortunately, a wildfire evacuation is fairly localized, so traffic issues related to the evacuation are also localized.

If there were a wide-area emergency, there is no "bugging-out" for me unless I'm hours ahead of the first wave of traffic. I've got a very high density urban area to the north, a lot of desert to the east, Mexico to the south and west it is all water. I'm working on assets to go west We're set to bug in.

My thinking is fairly parallel to Russ's - evacuate if a local wildfire threatens - I have been ready to do this twice in the 25+ years I have lived here (we are ripe for a third occurrence) and stay in place if the ground shakes really bad.

With an EQ, you have essentially no advance warning and the freeways will be disrupted/clogged immediately. Might was well hunker down and use my preps plus what I can salvage from the rubble. I am a CERT volunteer and I like their priorities - take care of yourself first, then your immediate family, then neighbors. Once that is done, link up with other CERTs and assist the larger community. Just wish CERT had more comprehensive and regular training.

This is much the same where I live. We are boxed in with Pacific Ocean to the west, mountains to the north (with only a 2 lane highway once out of the immediate metro area) South is the Canada/USA border. The only real escape is east but there is only one major freeway with 2 lanes eastbound and another 2 lane eastbound highway that meanders through a stretched out but very populated area.

It would take a very significant and long-term (6 months+) societal ending disaster for us to even consider evacuating and it would probably be by boat, bicycle or on foot. Mind you we are safe from hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and so on. The only natural disaster for us would be a major earthquake that could happen in the next 500 to 1000 years. Thankfully, there are also no potential man made disasters awaiting to happen in our area to worry about.

I'm below sea level. When a sudden dyke fails, the plan is part evacuation by road/public transport and vertical evacuation. Vertical in the sence of high buildings. They calculated the road/transport capacity and that was simply not enough to move everybody. On the other hand we do have very good water defences. ..

How can you live below sea level and consider yourself safe from tsunamis? I am 200 feet above sea level and I am safe from most, but not all, T's......

You must be sheltered behind a really massive dike.

We do have a 1/100.000 failure norm on our water defences, which I think is the highest standard in the world. Dykes are also setup in rings (due to the fact that our rivers are also higher than our groundlevel), so one failure will only compromise a ring.

I did choose a apartment on the 3rd and 4th floor just in case.

Related.

MIAMI — Maureen Miller was among the 2 million people ordered to evacuate coastal areas in the Southeast ahead of Hurricane Matthew. Her family and their dog spent two nights in a hotel and struggled through police roadblocks to return.

When they finally got back, their Brunswick, Georgia-area home was unscathed. Now they wish they had never left.

“I will never evacuate again,” Miller said. “If we stayed, we’d be fine. I’m sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way.”

Weather experts and government officials worry that people who quickly packed up and left but whose homes sustained little or no damage might be reluctant to evacuate next time, leading to deadly consequences.

I will never evacuate again

Oh the horror! Two nights in a hotel....If you don't care for the dire predictions of an overprotective government, consider living in Haiti. I don't believe those good folks are burdened with such conditions.

I am faced with a probable/possible evacuation scenario with wildfires near my urban neighborhood. I start preparing to leave as soon as I smell smoke and if an evacuation is recommended, much less mandated, I will be on the road right away (unless my own appraisal suggests leaving earlier). Preservation of life is all important and the dwelling is just stuff and can be replaced (I do have insurance). Leaving the area frees personnel to concentrate on stopping the fire, unburdened by the need to save the clueless.

In sum, many Americans refuse evacuation orders because they don't like being less comfortable for a couple of days. They prefer to take the risk of putting their lives in jeopardy.

IMO it's not about comfort. Many folks in the zones know there is a risk, but they've been through hurricanes with minimal to zero damage and feel they have good enough information to make a decision on their own.

The over-cautious nature of government causes the mind-set of taking what emergency-bureaucrats say as simply one of many inputs. Straight up, the evacuation of south Florida due to over-warning in preps for Hurricane Matthew will cause more people to disregard warnings for the next big hurricane to threaten south Florida.

Politicians & bureaucrats are pummeled for not making those over-cautious warnings ahead of serious storms, so they lean toward being over-cautious -- the only risk is a false alarm and they can live with that. However, the only warning some people will listen to is the last hurricane. After Katrina people took those warnings a little more seriously and then we had a few false alarms and people forgot Katrina. Matthew is another false alarm for south Florida and next time more people will disregard the warnings -- until the next major blow hits Miami and nice boats get piled up on each other in the marinas.

It's a cycle of over-warn/regard/disregard/get wiped out/start listening to the warnings again. For some people the cycle is vicious.

And after the storm puts them in life threatening trouble, those same people who refused to evacuate because the government was being "over cautious" will no doubt whine, snivel, and complain that the "inefficient" government took too long to rescue them.

Yep, the only way the emergency-bureaucrats come out looking good is if they issue an evacuation order and that area is directly hit. If they don't issue the warning and the area is hit, they didn't do their job. If they issue the warning and the area doesn't get hit, they were overly cautious and people are critical because they evacuated for no reason.

In my country the politics get involved. The end decision is made by the mayor(s). I have seen lots of the overly cautious decisions, but also:
- Gamble things will be fine (extreme weather, in this case he was lucky)
- Wait until the very last minute to order evacuation (the longer you wait, the more certainty), making it practically impossible to do correctly.

Normalcy bias, if it is not real to them, it has not happened in a way that was close to them personally, then it is unlikely and they prefer to stay in as normal a routine and situation as possible.

Just look what happened to Amity Island when the government didn't issue an appropriate warning and shut things down!

At least in this area, NOAA operates on the Chicken Little rule. They issue warnings for winter weather advisories when they call for an inch or two of snow in the winter. We used to get six inches plus several times a winter.

I've seen too many episodes of weather forecast says snow. Temps over the last week say IF it snows it won't lay (ground is too warm). Eventually you get to where you look at their map, apply 47 years of local experience, and forecast it yourself.

Could it be that some who choose not to evacuate could be concerned that their "stuff" would be stolen. Stuff over life - weird.

That judgement on your part would only if be valid their lives were really in danger.

Individuals are still allowed to apply their own knowledge and experience in making the decision if their life is really in danger. Just because the government says it's so, does not necessarily make it so. You have to use your own brain to draw a final conclusion. Occasionally you might be wrong, and end up dead because of it, but most of the time you'll be right trusting your own judgement.

You should definitely take government warnings into account when making your final decision. But I feel sorry for those who can't make any decision for themselves and instead require the government to do it for them and totally control every aspect of their lives, without question or personal consideration. Not the way I'd want to live.

haertig, you are right about using personal judgement in conjunction with what the officials are saying/recommending. I do think that many people do not leave because they really do not want their homes looted. Their reasoning could be clouded by such concerns. I know that I am not sure how I would react in such times of distress. I am fortunate that I do not live in an area where I have to make those considerations due to weather events. I am in the middle of, and in close proximity (<1 mile), to major interstates/toll roads and a rail line, though. I would have considerably less time to react if a really nasty chemical event happened. I would leave.

The issue at hand is people who think for themselves and refuse to follow evacuation orders. They sometimes get themselves in trouble, risk the lives of rescuer, and the money of taxpayers. Is there a problem with people who follow evacuation orders "too closely"? Since this is ETS, emergency situations are our context. Are there situations where the authorities issued a really bad order in an emergency, and people followed the order even and perished as a result? (Note that this is not quite what haertig is talking about. I'm seriously having a hard time imagining an emergency evac situation this applies to.)

I'm not aware of people who can't make decision for themselves and want the government to make it for them. I do know people who don't think others make good decisions, and they get the government to set rules for everybody. As a consequence, you cannot marry your sister or buy soda above a certain size, unlike the good old days. How crazy is that?

Ethical question...Your neighbor's house is well stocked. Your house is not. Your neighbor evacuates. You don't, but you could have. Is it OK to raid your neighbor's house to get what you need to survive? Is it OK to raid your neighbor's house in prep of possibly being in life danger in the near future?

The only person who can risk the life of a rescuer is the rescuer themselves. I used to be one, I guess you'd call it - a paramedic on an ambulance. Never once did I put my life in danger to save someone. And I never knew anybody else who did either. Not paramedic, not firefighter, not police. We might risk non-fatal injury at times, but not death. Sure, there are heroes out there who will put their lives at risk for a stranger. They have big hearts, if not big brains. Realize though, that most of these heroes are granted their hero status posthumously. There's a reason for that.

My comments here do not apply to the military. That's a totally different situation. Our soldiers deserve the greatest respect and honor for how they sacrifice for each other and for all of us.

I'm talking about the situations like where Mr. Idiot Druggie decides to overdose and pass out while his pet cobra is sitting in his lap. Not a whole lot of rescuers are going to jump in there to save him without taking precautions to protect themselves first. Idiots who drive their cars into flooded rivers and get stranded (you see them on TV all the time!) are kind of like that druggie/cobra guy. If a rescuers life ends up being in danger, it's because the rescuer decided that's what they wanted to do. Good for them. But it's their choice. The stranded idiot didn't force them to do anything.

What precisely is "risk"? I was, in my younger days, a member of a mountain rescue unit and we frequently did technical, high angle stuff which appeared to be "risky," but if you had your act together, was fairly safe. None of us felt we were at risk - we were trained and we adopted procedures which protected us and the victim(s).

Oddly enough, one of our members did perish prematurely- from Valley fever, most likely contracted while driving many miles over dusty dirt roads in southern Arizona during a particularly intricate practice session.

After all, life is risky.

I agree that people should evacuate in order that first responders can concentrate on combating the hazard rather than assisting people who should not have been there. That is an easy determination after the fact but difficult to predict in advance. I suppose there is a "macho" factor is standing one's ground, but it can be better to take an impromptu vacation with a friend or relative.

How are these examples of people not being able to decide for themselves and wanting the government to decide everything for me? I continue to be unable to figure this one out. It really seems like these are examples of people making decisions against common sense or maybe even warnings from the authorities.

That's a much better way of describing what I was intending. I spoke inaccurately, and did not correctly put my thoughts into words. I should have said having the government make decisions "for others". There are many many people like that, who try to force their ideas on everyone else, and use the government to enforce that. But there ARE people who will sit back and let the government tell them what to do, because they think the government is always right, simply because they are "the government". While I did have this smaller group of "tell me what to do" people in the back of my mind, that's not what I really intended to comment on, but I guess my brain got confused and that's the tangent I went off on.


These last examples weren't intended to be an example of that. The thread has moved on a bit, and the current discussion has more to do with people not being smart and putting themselves and rescuers in danger by their actions. These were intended to be examples of this later direction of the thread, not where the thread was many posts back. Sorry if I created confusion about that. It was clear in my mind what I meant (which isn't saying much, since my mind is probably defective!)