With Hurricane Irene causing much less damage than predicted by weather forecasters, many are questioning whether the alarm calls broadcast by government officials at every level were an overreaction. In this podcast, Jai Ranganathan talks with Micah Brachman, a geographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who specializes in mass evacuation planning. Brachman argues that the government response to the hurricane was an overreaction, but a necessary one. As there is an inherent level of uncertainty associated with disasters, especially weather-related events, overpreparation is ... Read More
CSI: Pompeii
September 30, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Ever since 19th-century archaeologists started making plaster casts of the fallen inhabitants of Pompeii, it has been assumed they died from suffocation as a thick layer of ash fell on the town following a massive eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. But a new report from a team of Italian scientists tells a very different tale about what happened to the residents of the Roman town, and it has important implications for the 3 million people who today live around the world's most dangerous volcano. A meticulous study of bones, household objects and other evidence — a little like a ... Read More
How Could They Have Stayed Behind?
August 28, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
In the weeks and months following Hurricane Katrina, many commentators and politicians expressed considerable frustration and puzzlement as to why so many people ignored the warnings and decided to stay in New Orleans. One — then-Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. — even suggested that, "There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving." But how much of a decision was it really? According to new study by a group of psychologists, to think of it as an active decision betrays a particular model of human ... Read More
When Fire Strikes, Americans Grab the Family Album
May 8, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Instead, according to the results of a recent survey asking what one thing people would snatch up and take with them if wildfire was threatening their homes, we're more like a bunch of sentimental old softies. In a forced evacuation, 43 percent of respondents said they would grab a family photo album while only 20 percent would take money and just 2 percent would hang on to their jewelry. Family pets, at 7 percent, easily outscored the family jewels while laptops, at 13 percent, were somewhere in the middle. The phone survey of 1,000 Americans, conducted by Opinion Research Corp. on ... Read More
Mass Evacuation Worked in Rehearsal, But …
September 16, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
When the nation weighed the success of New Orleans’ evacuation for Hurricane Katrina, few looked to the more than 1 million citizens who drove vehicles or booked flights to flee the threat through their own means. The overwhelmingly negative reviews, rather, rested with local and state governments’ inability to assist tens of thousands of residents who either didn’t have transportation to get out or couldn’t afford the gas and lodging they would need on a multiday evacuation. An image of yellow school buses parked in neat rows while submerged in Katrina’s floodwaters epitomized ... Read More
