I do not have all the facts and I am no expert. But I am wondering what we expect the people at the National Weather Service to do. The first complaints I saw were that Trump's cuts had impaired their ability to respond. Then it quickly came out that no, they had extra people, and working extra hours. Their warnings were questioned. No, they had major warnings twelve hours before and three hours before. Now the complaint is that they cry wolf so many times that people ignore them. So we want them to know a few days before that this is going to be the one where the river rises with unbelievable speed, and don't tell us about the others.
People in Florida ignore evacuation orders, or defy them, and even tell others "Oh, they always say that. I'm sick of evacuations. Did you know that sometimes people put themselves in more danger..." Up here, people make trips during blizzard warnings. I've done it myself. Heck, I'm resourceful (not really). I can size things up in the moment pretty well. (Maybe average.) Tornadoes. High seas. So some people are always going to resist acting. Others are going to panic and evacuate too easily. Some are going to get sick of the warnings, some are going to insist they were never properly warned. Different people respond to different warning signals. What is the warning schedule when the range of results is wide and people hear the same message differently?
What on earth do we expect them to do?
8 comments:
And when the "get out of Dodge" warning is at 4am?
I heard the story of one elderly man who refused to leave his home near Spirit Lake, even though it was darn clear that Mt. St. Helens was showing signs it was ready to erupt. He was of course killed in the pyroclastic surge.
Different time-scales, and he had lots of warnings. The camp people would surely have rousted the kids and run if they'd known.
I have been sad to see the "God curse them!" posts from people I know. It augurs badly.
I have been sad to see the "God curse them!" posts from people I know. It augurs badly.
james, maybe. Going from my summers as a camp counselor it is almost certain sufficient transportation for all would be a significant issue unless the camps have buses or trucks on hand, and even then it might not be enough. Unless you were assured of being able to get everyone out of the flood area entirely it would probably be a better idea to shelter in place, especially compared to being caught in the open on foot.
"What on earth do we expect them to do?"
Take responsibility for their decisions and their actions. That's what makes a lot of people squirm and look to assign blame. NOAA puts out weather advisories on a county-by-county basis. Originally designed for a radio network, they are also picked up by TV and cell phone providers now. But cell phone coverage in the hill country is spotty, and people over-rely on their phones. The radios still work (it's called Special Area Message Encoding, S.A.M.E.), but even then, we'll have to wait to find out whether that system was capable of delivering evacuation warnings in sufficient time (I suspect not).
The sentiment about over-warning is a valid one I think - I get those obnoxious S.A.M.E. tones blaring out of my phone, only to be held captive to a Silver Alert (missing wandering senior) or Amber Alert (child abduction), or maybe the occasional Severe Weather Warning. The latter is about 1 in 10, so yeah - hijacking an Emergency Notification System to notify on an array of problems means that that over-utilization dilutes the attention span of the audience, and degrades the purpose and value of the system. It should be preserved for notifying populations of widespread approaching danger, and nothing else - unless an individual opts in for other notifications.
I once taught a long friday-afternoon-only university class, which was bad enough for consistent attendance, but that spring I lost nearly half my sessions to tornado warnings.
Campus policy was that a tornado warning touching anywhere in the county triggered evacuation to sheltered areas, but we could all see the storm tracks that skirted one edge or the other of the county meant that we were unlikely to be affected. It got to the point after several such occasions that within seconds of the alert there was a mad rush to the parking-lot, as students and faculty alike preferred the risk of driving home to the cramped, smelly, hot windowless corridors we would be corralled into. Having the benefit of a basement-level windowless office, I got lots of unexpected free time to ponder action-thresholds in risk management plans.
One will never please everyone.
I've worked for a few organizations that have had deaths at events/campus property attributable to acts of god (bear attack, falling tree, lightning) and invariably there's an overreaction in response to prevent the possibility of the exact same thing happening again in the same way. (RIP mature trees, customers don't take kindly to being imprisoned). But I've also seen a general trend, probably encouraged by insurers, to do comprehensive risk analysis and contingency planning.
So had this camp been part of a larger camping organization such as any variety of scouting, or sought ACA accreditation, I'm sure they would have had a plan in place for situations such as flash-flood threats (e.g.: those normally housed in close-to-the-water cabins sleep on the floor in dining hall up the hill overnight) or hurricane (contingency contracts with private school-bus firms, contingency arrangements with a few churches within a few hours in different directions so that one not-in-the-path can be the temporary sleep-on-the-floor and designated parental-pick-up-point.)
The deaths in 1987 at a different camp near to this one were actually in an evacuation caravan that was swept away when crossing a road that flooded, so one needs to be comprehensive enough in planning to chose routes that will not themselves be a greater hazard. Doing such planning can lead to facility changes to accomodate more of the "what ifs".
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