The Chicken Little Emergency Management System puts more people at danger than those who decide to "ride it out" | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

It's not the "stupid people" its the lack of information based on solid data

    Let's cut the hype about this business of rescuers risking their lives to help folks who chose to stay with their home and ride out a storm.

    We normally like Chris Christie but he is out in left field in calling people stupid for staying home for a storm. And the local mullet wrapper falls into that elitism also. They presume they are in a better position than we in telling us to "go."

    Let's just cut to the chase here.

    Nobody expects a first responder to risk their life to save them when they chose to stay home. We don't know of anyone who does not weigh such decisions carefully and it is a calculated risk. As with all calculated risks, you win some and you lose some.

    The simple fact of the matter here is that it is sufficient for the government to announce the suspension of emergency services during the height of a storm. Fine. If a 911 call comes in, tell the caller that help will be sent first chance it is available. Don't get all excited about it.

    Truth be told, most of us don't expect a response from 911 during a storm. That is a part of the equation when you decide whether to go or stay. Heck, in Beaufort County thousands of people don't even expect a response when the weather is fine. They've learned that our Sheriff's Department picks and chooses which calls it will respond to, and sends letters out explaining that they are not going to do their job. You can't count on them. Get on with your life.
The waters rolling in in the onset of what became the Hurricane Irene saga here in Beaufort County: Above.     photo by Stan Deatherage
    What you can count on is that criminals will take advantage of storms. Both during a storm and afterwards. It's common. Heck, they were using Twitter in New Jersey to plan their rampages during Sandy.

    So where do you go to escape the thugs? And how do you calculate the risk of whether there is more potential for losing your property to the storm or to the thugs if you leave?

    Again, those who stay really don't expect 911 to send help in a bad storm. It's foolish to think they do. People know better than that. And first responders always are at risk every time they respond to a call. Some study we read once upon a time showed that more are injured in auto accidents while responding than from performing their duties at the scene. In fact, well trained first responders know how to judge the risks and they act accordingly. The stereotypes of firemen rushing foolishly into a burning house is not realistic. They know when to go and how, and when not to.

    Gov. Christie announced that "we're not going to come for you..." That's melodramatic. A more rational statement would have been: "understand, our responders may not be able to help you."

    But it is the responders who should decide what they can or cannot do without taking undue risks themselves. That is what they are trained to do and that is what the ones who make such decisions have experience making. It's not an "either or" proposition.

    Many of us who have lived in dangerous areas all our lives have a pretty good idea about how much risk there is in "staying." While nothing like this is a sure thing, it is not "stupid" to decide to stay when you have stayed dozens of times in the past. And when you know there are also risks in leaving.

    What "the government" would do well to do here is provide more accurate information to citizens that they can use to make their decisions.

    The Beaufort County Emergency Management people don't even have an adequate media notification system, much less a competent public information function. But even if they did have their act together in terms of public dissemination of information it would not be accurate to the extent it is needed.

    One example: We have an archaic system of predicting storm surge in specific locations. And Obama just cut the FEMA budget that would have gone to a data collection system upon which more accurate surge predictions could be made in the future. Irene proved that the "category and track" system is insufficient.

    The simple fact is that the most risky aspect of an individual family deciding whether to stay or go in our area is knowing how high the water is going to get and for how long. Those of us who have lived by the water for years know that the predictions are seldom accurate. They use the WAG method and that does not get it.

    For example, in a given location a storm surge of 3 feet is not a rational reason to leave. The risk of getting out and back is greater than staying. But if the surge turns out to be 11 feet that will be fatal if you stay. But those are the easy cases. What if the prediction is 6 feet. The difference in some places between 4 feet and 8 feet is all the difference in the world. And where we live, if the surge is six feet, plus or minus, the important variable is the direction and duration of the wind. So the warning's got to be accurate to within 2 feet at that place. It never is. Never. We've recorded it in recent years and the prediction has always been higher than it turned out and almost always worse than 2 feet. It was for Sandy. And Irene. So the predictions are useless and meaningless. And that is what makes them dangerous.

    Thus, the most critical thing we need to know to decide whether to stay or go is to know fairly accurately how high the water's going to get and for how long. But we never get that information.

    What we do get is the Chicken Little prognostication from Emergency Management. "We will always err on the side of caution..." they say. That's bunk. Develop a system that is not error prone. It will take years of data collection, specific to given locations. But one hour before the surge hits they should be able to tell us what the probability will be, expressed in inches. Then, once we see that the predictions are accurate a few times we'll make better decisions in the future.

    That's the problem with evacuation orders. They are not based on valid data. So they are useless at best but at worse they cause people to lose confidence in their credibility. That is why so many people ignore evacuation orders. It is not, Governor Christie, that we are stupid. We know they are not realistic.

    But what we do know is that the chances are very good that if everyone evacuates an area that the criminals will not. So from whence comes the greater risk?

    At the core of Christie's case is an assumption that we, the public, are idiots and that he knows what's best for us. And demonstrably that is not usually true. People are smarter than these officials give them credit for being. They are smart enough to know that the officials don't know what they talking about most of the time. And therein is the greatest danger of all. The Chicken Little Emergency Management System puts more people at greater risk than those who decide to ride it out.