WE AREN’T PREPARED
Unless an emergency affects them directly, Americans slow to respond
Will repeated exposure to vivid scenes of natural disaster — Western wildfires, a global heat wave, Hawaiian volcano eruptions, the 2017 hurricanes’ anniversary and a suddenly active 2018 season — finally turn America into a go-bag nation, prepared for calamity and ready to flee it? Experience counsels skepticism. So does human nature.
The sight of a 30-story-high wave of fire consuming a Colorado subdivision, or a California “fire tornado” as long as three football fields, may rivet a national audience. But it probably won’t change national attitudes about how to prepare for an emergency or when to evacuate.
Experts say people aren’t really motivated by disaster until it comes to, or through, their door. “I don’t know what it’ll take,’’ says Jay Baker, a retired Florida State University geographer who
has studied evacuation behavior, “but disaster scenes are not enough.’’ Take the case of Lauren Sand. When she was a kid her family built a house on the west side of Los Angeles. This was shortly after the Bel Air Fire of 1961, one of worst wildfires in California history.
When she moved into the neighborhood, the hillsides were still charred. On the next ridge, a row of chimneys
marked where houses had stood before the fire.
But in December, when a predawn wildfire came roaring toward the same home where she grew up, Sand was taken by surprise. She learned of the fire only when a friend saw it from the freeway and called to warn her.
Sand grabbed her laptop, purse, phone and some papers and hopped into her car.
When she looked in the mirror, she saw a wall of black smoke rolling down the street. She gunned her Prius like it was a Maserati.
She escaped, but without a coat, toothbrush, cherished family records and photos, and the architectural plans for her house (which, unlike several on the street, was spared). She left the pool uncovered and found it, when she was able to return three days later, filled with ashes.
Grabbit would not be impressed. America is riddled with fault lines and bordered by storm-tossed oceans, with two great north-south mountain ranges but none running east-west to keep Arctic air from flowing south and tropical air from going north.
There are hurricanes in the Southeast and nor’easters in the Northeast; tornadoes on the lower Plains and blizzards on the upper Plains; earthquakes and volcanoes along the Pacific Coast, which also is vulnerable to tsunamis; sinkholes and lightning in Florida; avalanches in the Rockies and flash floods in the Appalachians; hail from Minnesota to Texas and ice storms from Wyoming to Maine; lake-effect snow from the Great Lakes and the Great Salt Lake; and monsoons in Arizona.
Yet, as FEMA administrator Brock Long observed this year, America lacks a “culture of preparedness.’’
A 2015 study by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University found that two-thirds of Americans said they were not prepared to evacuate in an emergency.
But Irwin Redlener, the center’s director, believes the situation is actually worse.
Sometimes, when he’s speaking to groups of emergency preparedness specialists, he’ll ask how many have a personal or family evacuation plan. Only a few hands go up, and most of their plans turn out to be half-baked.
Redlener thinks he knows why: It’s hard.
A plan sounds like a good idea until, say, you face the question of what to do about your kids at school in case of a disaster. Do you go get them? Does your spouse?
Traveling could be risky, so what are the school’s plans in an emergency? And how do you find out?
Now, despite the expert pessimism, Sand thinks attitudes can change. “Everyone feels vulnerable,’’ she says, “not invincible anymore.’’