The Holdouts

Less than two weeks after Hurricane Gustav barreled across Louisiana, Hurricane Ike is now bearing down on the Texas coast. The storm traced a lethal path through the Caribbean, resulting in about 70 deaths in Haiti and seven in Cuba. On Friday afternoon, Ike was a Category 2 tempest, with winds of 105 miles per hour and a massive diameter that stretched across most of the Gulf of Mexico. It's expected to make landfall near Galveston, Texas, in the early hours of Saturday, potentially as a Category 3 storm with winds between 111 and 130mph. With reports of a coastal storm surge that could exceed 20 feet in some places, state and local authorities ordered a mandatory evacuation of Galveston and other low-lying areas. Yet, as always, some people vowed to stay put. To learn more about the psychology of holdouts and how officials are adapting their response to them, NEWSWEEK's Catharine Skipp spoke to Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and associate dean for public-health advocacy and disaster preparedness at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: With the approach of Hurricane Ike and similarly with Hurricane Gustav, we are hearing officials using the phrase "certain death." Why haven't we heard the widespread use of this phrase in the past in connection with dangerous storms?
Irwin Redlener: What we are dealing with now is a greater awareness of the legal potential of natural disasters. Post-9/11, the level of sensitivity about our vulnerability to natural and man-made disasters has been ratcheted up significantly, particularly following [Hurricane] Katrina. I think there is a level of awareness around the potential danger of large-scale coastal storms and hurricanes and it has been a wake-up call, and more so after the flagrantly inadequate response to Katrina in 2005. It lit a fire under disaster-preparedness officials. The rhetoric, which we even heard from Mayor [Ray] Nagin when he was strongly urging people to leave New Orleans before [Hurricane] Gustav, is continuing as officials are putting out public messages to residents of the vulnerable coast of Texas. What's behind this is the realization that many, many people electively choose not to comply with official orders of mandatory evacuation and intend to stay in place no matter what the warnings are. Many of these people are putting themselves at an extreme level of risk depending on the trajectory of the hurricane.

Are we hearing stronger language by federal, state and local officials in an attempt to scare people into evacuating?
Absolutely. What we've found is that being hesitant about the communication messages or using softer language doesn't work. It is not that the risk is different, it's the message is being forcefully delivered in an attempt to absolutely minimize the number of people that stay behind. There are a couple of considerations when a public official determines that the hardest possible language is going to be used. He or she is hoping that strongest message will get the most people to safety. On the other hand, there is the "crying wolf" phenomenon. They are taking a chance that if the conditions are not as dire as anticipated, that the next time there will be a great reluctance to heed those warnings. The other issue is that officials were so badly burned by the Katrina debacle that the other part is the pendulum swing to much more planning and aggressive public messages.

Can mandatory evacuation orders be legally enforced?
Theoretically, they could physically remove someone, especially if their remaining would endanger anyone else's safety and especially [that of] first responders. But the strategy that officials may use, rather than arresting the recalcitrant citizen, is to make it very clear—absolutely clear—that rescue and response services may not be available. In essence, if you don't comply with evacuation orders, you are in effect waiving your right to get rescue and response if you need it. I think we will see much more of that strategy being deployed than officials removing people that don't want to go.

Can you talk a little about the evolution of evacuations?
We have very little experience in the U.S. with mass migrations, particularly those that are officially ordered. In the 1930s, there was a large self-evacuation during the Dust Bowl experience. That was an enormous migration of people, but not in an organized way. The scale of evacuations, such as the ones we are currently seeing, is unprecedented in modern American history. The fact that nearly 2 million people were evacuated as Gustav was bearing down was an extraordinary and unusual event.

When we are talking about preparedness and helping people survive a natural disaster, a well-executed evacuation is step one. What we are still not clear about is what happens after the evacuation. Under circumstances where 1.9 million people are dislocated from their homes and communities, some will be able to return and some won't. For example, although there was not much flooding by Gustav in Louisiana, thousands of homes were severely damaged. There are questions as to how and where to shelter people, how long they will be there and when can they return to some normal state. These are all unanswered questions at this point. As it is, right before Gustav hit, we were still dealing with tens of thousands of children still displaced post-Katrina, and I am very concerned about the status of those children and families in relationship to the lasting trauma of a second event and a second displacement.