You talking to me? Lol! I'm one of those living on the fringe who choose to stay. I really do not frighten easily and the constant advice/imploring to evacuate is a tricky decision. Where to go? A hotel? They charge money that I've spent on generator and fuel so as to make staying home more comfortable. Even a hotel can/will lose power. Plus I'd rather spend the time in the comfort and relative security of my home than stuck with a bunch of strangers. My condition is relatively safe, excepting the potential tornado, other than a tree limb coming down on the house. I have well water so as long as I have power I have water to the house. Computer, t.v. (with or without cable), air conditioning, food in the freezer - for as long as the fuel supply holds out and/or I can get more. I'd be interested in hearing how others who were or are in the line of fire is doing.
Being a native Floridian the thought of any natural catastrophe other than weather related (considering most strongly the recent passing of Hurricane Matthew) did not enter my mind. A volcano is much more unpredictable, therefore I do believe I would heed warnings were I to find myself in such a situation. Having successfully survived any number of storms, hurricanes, warnings and watches for so long the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" factor set in long ago for many of us. A false sense of security perhaps but thus far I've had no problems. Unless a real threat is eminent I shall remain in place. Maybe that's the difference between a threat that can be seen and measured versus the relative unknown such as potential earthquake or volcanic eruption.
Different strokes RR. I'd get out. Fortunately I have never had to evacuate but I wouldn't want to chance it. I'm a penny ante gambler. The stakes of life or death are more than I can afford to pay. Thank you for your thoughtful reply and Happy Sunday. I hope you continue to stay lucky, I really do! :)
So far so good Rosie. Another hurricane under me belt and I'm still here, still standing. I did stay glued to media and radar reports and quite probably would have sought more solid shelter had the path changed for the worse.
What worries me RR is would you have had time to do that? Where would the more solid shelter be? How far from your home and how long would it take to get there and how much notice would you have? I guess I'm not a positive thinker as you seem to be. Anyway so far so good seems good to me. So far! :)
That is not at all the case. Most people do care indeed about dying and have no wish to sit still while their doom comes down upon them. No, most of those who stayed were prepared to the extent possible and took well-known precautions gleaned from many years of weathering the storms, as it were. Obviously it all boils down to where one lives and the type of structure they inhabit as well as how extensive and thorough their preparations were. As stated my situation was not critical: I do not live near water that may flood, my home is fairly well constructed (even though a manufactured structure), and the trees near my home are for the most part far enough away that should they fall my house will be spared the brunt of the fall. I have a generator, well water, private septic system, and food in my freezer/refrigerator to last for days. Simply put, I am self-sufficient for all but a direct hit. And should I see that may occur I have but an eight mile drive to a cousin's brick home. It's all a matter of perspective and experience.
Or they do care about being killed but don't believe they will be.
Looking at the various answers and having heard the news accounts from Haiti and Florida, but thinking of wider contexts, perhaps most of those who stay in the path of natural dangers share RondoRedux' views and ability to survive.
We don't suffer from hurricanes, volcanic eruptions or large earthquakes* in the British Isles but have a somewhat parallel situation in which house developers have been allowed to build extensive housing-estates in flood-prone areas, then the buyers wonder why their homes flood or the insurance is costly. It's as if a feeling of invincibility takes over, perhaps re-inforced in some places and situations by a notion that "they" (usually Government agencies) will do something about it and if not why not? Yet their ancestors who established the towns centuries ago usually knew the hazards so built up on the higher ground.
Elsewhere in the world we see people crowding into hazardous areas where what natural protection or amelioration exists is destroyed in the name of "economic development", such as large tourist hotels practically on beaches carrying real tsunami risks sometimes worsened by removal of natural swamps that were very effective wave-absorbers. Is here, the feeling of invincibility brought by the scale and modernity of the developments?
I think in many cases, people opt to try to stay put and tough it out because they cannot see the alternative or the refuge being necessarily any better, but the choice will obviously have to depend on the individual's experience and local knowledge, and on the nature of the hazard.
*Earthquakes etc. in the British Isles. We see other countries suffer from natural disasters and often contribute to either official or charitable aid to the victims; but are lucky to escape Nature's most powerful efforts. Surprisingly though, although not subject to hurricanes as we are not in tropical latitudes, Britain is among the most cyclone-rich countries in the world, but most such events here are very low-powered and short-lived, causing little or no damage. We have powerful storms which do cause wind or water damage, but they are not hurricanes. We also have many earthquakes, but again usually minor and harmless, and often detected only on seismographs. A typical reaction by those who do feel the shock is to think it vibration from an unusually heavy lorry or some other man-made cause.
Government agencies involved in permitting and allowing development in flood-prone areas are doing so solely for the money from big-pocket developers and investors, having no concern for the possibilities the homeowners in such areas will inevitably face should they stay in their home for a length of time. That is then the problem for the homeowner and their insurance carrier if one is available. Why the state would allow construction in an area known to be problematic is, to me, a disservice to the community that would live there. After an event the state then offers only token assistance at best, relying on the feds to bail them out. That's is one reason I despise our state governor Rick Scott. He refused to accept federal dollars for health care for the citizens of this state yet even before Hurricane Matthew even touched land he was requesting federal funds and declaring the state a disaster area. Right. Use federal dollars to clean up, spruce up the state to keep those tourist dollars coming while the poor, the sick, the uninsured, citizens of this state continue to muddle by as if the government did not even exist. And for us, relatively speaking, it does not.
That does highlight the very different ways in which our respective countries are governed, hence the ways in which official bodies respond to natural disasters. Although the UK has different regional and county-level approaches the basic policies and help are from central Civil Service agencies far harder to bend to short-term commercial interests.
Geography plays it part too, of course: North America extends from Arctic to Sub-tropical latitudes so experiences very varied and often extreme weather, while a single weather-system, especially an anticyclone typically 700 miles in diameter, can cover most of the British Isles in one go.
However I was trying to read the problem world-wide, not just in the USA and UK. And the bad combination of commerce and politics similar to the way you describe does appear in too many cases.
Co-incidentally, this morning's BBC Radio 4 news programme carried an interview with the Chief Executive of the UK's Environment Agency prior to it embarking on a major exercise to test its responses to floods, which in the UK are mainly from rivers. He wouldn't be drawn on whether their measures would protect against a 2-metre deep flood, but every flood will be different anyway. They didn't discuss the problem of homes built on flood-plains, but I think there is now much more reluctance by the planning authorities to allow such developments. He was though, asked if there was a lot the householder can do in self-protection, and he said yes, and the EA publishes guide-lines on this. The main point though was to find out first if your intended home might be at risk of being flooded: the EA has published floor-risk maps. (I have heard though these do not always account for topography and can give the same risk for houses high in steep valley sides as those on the river-bank, simply by horizontal distance.)
Faced with an impending natural disaster most people will flee if told to do so, but they need to be reasonably certain that their refuge will be safe and secure. Those who feel they would be better off staying at home, are perhaps to try to protect their homes, or because previous experience has shown they are likely to survive whatever is coming their way.
The most dangerous events are geological, because although they sometimes give some advance signs, they cannot be forecast with any certainty, in timing and severity. These are volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunami, and major landslides; and it does seem strange that many countries prone to these are as populous as they are even in the most hazardous areas.
Perhaps the problem we face is that we have (as a society) lived for a century and more with a too-cosy idea of "taming" or "controlling" Nature artificially by science and engineering, while being rather surprised when things go wrong for us, especially when the disasters are not at all Man's fault. We blame ourselves when things go wrong - but all too often apportion the blame wrongly and unfairly among ourselves. As the EA manager said in describing flood defences, the responsibility lies with everyone involved. We can't "control" Nature. However much we exploit or affect it, we still have recognise that in the end Nature controls us. We can only work with it, and recognise that the most we can do is protect ourselves from what are really only natural effects of the way the planet and its seas and atmosphere work.
It's an uncomfortably humbling thought, but what we experience as "natural disasters" are so by the death, destruction and suffering they bring to human communities. They are not disasters in Nature, but events will never stop them however good we may become at predicting them and saving ourselves from their effects. And that saving includes thinking what to build, how and where.
The disasters we can at least try to avert are the man-made ones, usually caused by through mistakes or a lack of previous experience meaning the causing hazard could not have been recognised.
Fifty years ago this month - in October 1966- a landslide overwhelmed the primary school in the Welsh village of Aberfan. Over 100 were killed, most of them the schoolchildren, in a torrent of rocks and mud. This was not a natural hillside collapse, but the failure of an over-steepened colliery waste-tip lubricated by rain-water. Obviously no-one had thought such a the tip might collapse, but since then other tips have been lowered and re-graded to prevent more such disasters.
Dam failures have collectively caused far more deaths than any other failures of man-made structures. Most were due to mistakes in designing, operating or maintaining the dam, but some resulted from natural events. The world's worst dam collapse (Wikipedia source) was in China in 1975, after flooding by a typhoon: 171 000 killed, 11 000 000 made homeless. In Italy in 1963, water from Vajoc Dam's reservoir destroyed several villages, killing 2000 people. The dam was not damaged, but a huge slab of mountain-side had slid abruptly into the lake, displacing it as a wave over the dam: the geological assessment had not spotted the hazard obvious only when the disaster was investigated.
In man-made disasters, we learn by our mistakes, which often come from genuine inability to forecast something that has not previously occurred. For example, the early railways were soon regarded as very dangerous but only because they were new and relatively un-tested, and once the causes of the accidents had been established it was comparatively easy to make them as safe as practicable.
Only "practicable". Nothing man-made can ever be 100% reliable and safe, especially when all new. Nature is very unsafe and highly capricious, though only in human terms- but we have many centuries of accumulated, world-wide experience to tell us so, and to tell what to do - and not do!
Benedict Arnold 