Opinion: How to make people safer during the next deadly hurricane

Editor’s note: Cara Cuite is a Health Psychologist and Assistant Counselor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. Rebecca Morss is Senior Scientist and Associate Director of the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The views expressed here are their own. Read more opinion on CNN.

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More than 100 people died when Hurricane Ian hit Florida. Why was this storm so deadly? As researchers studying how people make evacuation decisions from coastal storms, we believe it’s critical to understand the characteristics of this storm — and the communications about it — that contributed to its lethality.

Meteorologists’ predictions of Ian’s likely track changed as the storm neared landfall, as is usual with forecasts. In this case, the storm turned south, and areas like Lee County, which 72 hours in advance were thought to have less chance of a direct impact, ultimately found themselves directly on Ian’s path.

Ian also experienced rapid intensification, possibly influenced by climate change, meaning its wind speeds increased dramatically as it passed over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall.

It typically takes emergency managers at least 48 hours to successfully evacuate areas of Southwest Florida. However, voluntary evacuation orders for Lee County were issued less than 48 hours before landfall, and for some areas they became mandatory just 24 hours before the storm made landfall. This was less than the time specified in Lee County’s own emergency management plan.

While lack of sufficient time for evacuation has been cited by some as a reason for staying behind, there are other factors that may have also stymied evacuations in some of the hardest-hit areas.

In order to correctly follow evacuation orders, people must first know their evacuation zone. Research from other regions of the country shows that many people don’t. For this reason, the websites for locating the evacuation zones in the affected districts were crucial. However, so many people have checked their zones Some of these websites have crashed in the days before the storm.

Our own research (and that of others) shows that mandatory evacuation orders can result in higher evacuation rates than voluntary ones. It’s possible that first hearing that their area was under a voluntary evacuation order made some residents less concerned and less likely to take action once evacuation became mandatory. It may also have caused confusion about what people should be doing in the crucial days and hours before the storm makes landfall.

In areas where evacuation orders were later issued, people not expecting an evacuation needed to quickly find and understand this evacuation zone information. Additionally, it takes time to communicate evacuation orders in a community and for people to decide what to do, pack their belongings, find a place to go and arrange how to get there, often amidst heavy traffic and other complications and obstacles.

Also important to Ian was how past personal experiences with hurricanes influence people’s decisions. Some areas devastated by Ian have seen multiple hurricanes in the recent past, including Hurricanes Charley and Irma. Although these storms affected many of the same communities, they did not have the same impact as Ian, which may have created a false sense of security for some residents.

As Fort Myers City Councilman Liston Bochette III said: “Obviously, it happens about 1 in 10 times when they warn you. Well, that’s the one time. And people didn’t evacuate like they should have. And I think we’ve lulled ourselves into…this is a little corner of paradise and we’ve lulled ourselves into a passive mindset that it’s not going to happen to us.

Aside from a false sense of security from past near misses among some residents, others who have been to areas of Florida hardest hit by Hurricane Ian may not have had personal experience of such powerful storms. This is likely true of the millions of people who have relocated to Florida in recent decades, particularly those who have relocated from areas where hurricanes are rare or non-existent. In Ian, as in some past storms, some people recognized the danger too late.

It’s too early to draw any conclusions about the lessons to be learned from the communications successes and failures leading up to Hurricane Ian, but some things are clear. People need to know they’re in an area that’s being evacuated – and waiting until the storm is on its way to figure out their zone may be too late. Emergency managers need to educate people about upcoming storms while developing more robust websites to handle the requests in the days leading up to the storm.

Officials and media should continue to provide concrete information on where, how and why to evacuate, which can be crucial factors in people’s decision to leave.

Many listings of available shelters included clear notices as to whether they were pet-friendly or could accommodate people with special needs, which was likely helpful to the more than 33,000 people who used the public shelter system. However, among those who did not evacuate, pets and disabilities continue to be cited as reasons, indicating that more outreach and evacuation support are needed specifically in these areas.

Hurricane Ian drew residents’ attention to important elements of storm preparedness, such as: B. their evacuation zones. It will be important for future storms to continue to help people, particularly those most vulnerable, understand how and why to evacuate, often amid rapidly changing forecasts. Hurricane Ian showed that sometimes the worst-case scenario really does happen.