I honestly think that with some people, it’s a mental block concerning taking advice, coupled with a lack of intelligence. Not knowledge, but intelligence: If you don’t know what a storm surge is, that’s one thing. If you’re told that the water in your area is likely to rise nine feet and you can’t put that together with the fact your house is two or three feet above the water in a normal day, that’s being stupid.
So couple that with an utterly unshakable desire to not do what someone tells you, regardless of what that is. Maybe it’s Dunning-Kruger, where they have a completely unfounded belief in their own intelligence, or maybe it’s a notion that “Cool People Never Listen” or something else which boosts their ego and blocks higher mental functions… whatever it is, they’ll never be able to elucidate it, because being able to discuss things is a sign of… wait for it… intelligence, which they lack in spades.
The company I was working for had a subsidiary in Homestead - and I helped with cleanup - trying to rescue hard drives from PCs that had tax data on them. Yeah…
The choice we’re discussing isn’t between dying of cancer and dying in a flood. The choice we’re looking at here is between dying in a flood and not dying in a flood.
See Oppositional Defiant Disorder. That might explain some of what you’re talking about. These are the kind of people who can escalate a low-cost traffic stop into an arrest for disorderly conduct (or even felony assault on an officer).
Beyond that, and I think this has been sort of implied but not stated, hurricanes aren’t always a one-and-done thing once a year. There can be multiple hurricanes that threaten your area in a single season, especially if you live on the Gulf Coast or Florida.
So people are judicious- few people, even non-poor ones, can afford to evacuate multiple times a year “just in case”. They may not have the cash, or the vacation time, or even just enough time to schedule vacation time.
I’d say that if they specifically tell you to evacuate, then you’re an idiot for not heeding that advice. But if you’re not told to evacuate, or it’s a voluntary evacuation, then there are perfectly valid reasons to stay that don’t include poor risk assessment or macho stuff.
On the opposite I saw some people who take their evacuations very seriously. First, they have the house designed to take a storm and are ready with all the heavy shutters over the windows and such. No carpet. If things get wet no problem. Second, they have nothing of value they cant easily haul away. And third, they already have a plan where to go and have a trailer ready to haul anything they need.
A lot of this. I was in Houston for both Rita and Harvey. And Katrina before that. We saw what Katrina did to New Orleans, and it scared the shit out of us. When we heard that Rita was just as big (the stories of what it did to Gulf oil production platforms is just apocalyptic) and coming here, people freaked. I freaked. I told my boss at the time that he needed to get the hell out. I was broke, had nowhere else to go, so I stayed at the hotel I was working at, and helped provide shelter for all of the news crews that came in expecting a story.
Of course, nothing happened in Houston from Rita (unlike Beaumont), and the evac ended up killing more people than the storm. So, -1 point for believing NWS predictions. For those of you wondering about Ike, that was more of a Galveston problem than Houston, albeit the eye did go over downtown Houston, and sucked out a bunch of glass. And we lost power for about a week.
Then came Harvey. It was as bump wrote. We all thought, “Jeez, sucks to be in Corpus,” and sat and watched the cloud show. I’ve never seen clouds move so fast across the sky. Well, other than Rita. No one thought of running from here, including me. I mean, why would we? So it’s a bit of rain. We were thinking 10-15 inches, which is a ton, and the bayous will fill up, but it’s nothing we hadn’t seen before. Take a sick day. We weren’t thinking that it’d be 45+ inches.
Then I was sitting at the computer, after dinner, looking at storm gauges, and saw the predicted stream elevation graph for the stream gauge near our house go vertical, gleefully blasting through the previous all-time elevation records. “Honey, how high up are we? I dunno either.” Rush to find a topo map, see that the stream is predicting 2 feet of water at our elevation. Figure that’s enough to lose our car, and we threw a bag or two of clothes in the car and ran. Made it out of Houston in the dark, about an hour or two before all of the roads closed around ~3AM. Scary drive, and lots of water was already on the road. If we’d waited until the morning, we’d have been trapped.
As it was, we didn’t flood, unlike so many in Houston. The stream elevation predictions turned out to be wrong by about 5-7 feet. Which was still really close. Knowing that, we shouldn’t have left and ended up spending what was a week or so in Dallas. But I’m relaying this set of stories to you to show that the NWS isn’t perfect, people may have been burned by their dire predictions before, and that they may feel they can keep a better eye on their stuff and save their money if they simply hunker down. Especially if they’re broke or have everything tied up in their house and possessions.
I think it’s dumb. Surge kills. Albeit Florence is weakening as I type when it really should be strengthening. I don’t think it’s going to kill the hundreds of people I thought it might around Tuesday. But I can see why a lot of people are choosing to ride it out, rather than run and return to a lot of uncertainty.
I also can see that a bunch of those people that stay, historically end up calling 911 for help that can’t come.
Good point - I remember hearing about that. The idea of being stuck in heavy traffic - in the heat - and having your car eventually run out of gas - is definitely not a situation I want to ever be in. I’ll take my chances with the storm. If everyone else wants to go out on the roads & end up being in a worse situation than they would be if they stayed home, so be it.
That’s a false dichotomy How many more would have died if 1,000,000 didn’t evacuate?
I was thinking more that they’d have them but they’d be maxed out. Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to, really.
Also, it’s not just the outlay for gas, hotel, & food; there’s also the loss of income from not being at work IF you can go to work. Double whammy.
To add to my last post (couldn’t edit this in time), you have to understand that there are some people out there - myself included - who have all of their savings & money tied up in their home. And, many don’t have flood insurance - I’m including myself here too.
So, if I lose my home - I’m screwed. So, I would much rather stick it out at home & take my chances. If I “go down with the ship” (to make an analogy) so be it. As I said, there are worse deaths than drowning.
However - as I said earlier, I’m extremely fortunate because I live in an area that has never had a voluntary or mandatory evacuation. Though, I have seen extreme rainfall/storms, which has caused street flooding. I’ve also known people who have had their houses flooded because of storms.
Evacuation is unpleasant. Even with money. I have lived in a couple hurricane-prone areas, and have both stayed and evacuated. I stay for ones and twos, and also threes unless it’s almost a 4 and forecasted to hit me head-on. I leave for 4s, and if it’s a five I leave if it is forecasted to hit anywhere within 200 miles of me - I saw the aftermath of Andrew.
My relatives down in Beaumont stayed put for Rita because they weren’t able to evacuate. The lot of 'em own several cars but the evacuation routes were too congested to get anywhere.
Bro-in-Law used his collection of tools to help with the cleanup and the rest used the considerable amount of food left behind by neighbors, with neighbors’ permission, to feed cleanup workers.
And the stupid amount of rain it’s supposed to drop as it meanders over southern NC, northern SC, and along the Appalachians. Which goes along with you mentioning flooding.
I don’t think it’ll hit Harvey’s rainfall totals, but it may still break precip records in North and South Carolina.
A colleague’s son is under evacuation order for Florence; yesterday he went out to gas up his truck and get some supplies. While he was gone his home was robbed – most of the neighbors were already gone and the thieves boldy chucked a rock through his front window and helped themselves to thousands of dollars of stuff.
I was inland for Sandy and we got a good walloping. There were lots of downed trees/trees through roofs/flooding and we were powerless for eight days. This was my first hurricane, it was truly awesome – in both senses of the word – to witness.
My insights about reluctance to evacuate are based on my experiences during the 2003 San Diego Cedar fire. We were two people, four dogs, and four cats; while I had made a reservation at a Mission Valley pet-friendly motel, we were truly skeptical that the fire would reach us (magical thinking) and the thought of loading up the essentials and spending time all crammed into a hotel room was pretty awful. We were at home until the fire crested over the hill next to us, a utilities guy came through and turned off gas to the 'hood, the cops rolled through and ordered us out and the DAMN FIRE STARTED UP OUR HILL.
Yup, five days in one room with antsy pets is pretty miserable. But we didn’t lose our home, the folks just below us did
They stayed in New Orleans because the idiot of a Mayor invited them to the Superdome. He forgot to mention that the food was in the shelters and not the stadium.
This was made worse because he didn’t release the PSA he participated in telling them to leave because they would get cut off from relief. He knew this was going to happen because he was part of a mock hurricane exercise held prior to Katrina.
Past media hype is a reason that runs across a lot of situations, and even in various countries.
Otherwise in US people being literally too poor to evacuate and the local/state govt not doing anything about that is a pretty varying function of the kind of area and the competency of those particular govts. I wouldn’t rule that out, but I think some people take ‘you don’t what it’s like to be poor’ to extremes sometimes.
The other thing is that some people actually have some awareness of exactly how far above normal sea level their place is compared to the likely surge, and how strong compared to the likely wind. Not that always make it a good risk to take, because you can never be sure how high the water will get, how hard the wind will blow and how strong your place will turn out to be. Your height above SL is the only really known fact if you do know, which some people also don’t. I’m just saying, some people are oblivious to this and taking a blind, stupid risk. Others have some knowledge, though might still be unwise to take the risk.
For Rita, probably not that many. It was sort of a tempest in a gulf teapot for the Boston area. In general, though, I agree. I think this is some people’s subconscious reasoning. The far off overreacting influences their reasoning. Never said it was a good idea.
I watched the weather channel’s surge simulation video and told myself I could never live that close to an ocean. But I am also the person who wrangles the pets into the basement and then the family eventually joins me for 10 minutes during a tornado warning.
