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Earth Government The Internet

Why Hurricane Ian Killed So Many People (cnn.com) 174

It was Florida's deadliest hurricane in 87 years, tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane to make landfall in the continental U.S. and killing more than 100 people after veering south into unexpected areas.

But a Rutgers University health psychologist suggests other factors might've made Hurricane Ian more deadly: Ian also underwent rapid intensification, perhaps influenced by climate change, which meant that its wind speeds increased dramatically as it passed over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before landfall.

Emergency managers typically need at least 48 hours to successfully evacuate areas of southwest Florida. However, voluntary evacuation orders for Lee County were issued less than 48 hours prior to landfall, and for some areas were made mandatory just 24 hours before the storm came ashore. This was less than the amount of time outlined in Lee County's own emergency management plan.

While the lack of sufficient time to evacuate was cited by some as a reason why they stayed behind, there are other factors that may also have suppressed evacuations in some of the hardest hit areas. In order to correctly follow evacuation orders, people need to first know their evacuation zone. Research from other areas of the country indicates that many people don't. That's why the evacuation zone locator websites in the affected counties were crucial. However, so many people were checking their zones that some of these websites crashed in the days before the storm.

The article asks whether the early voluntary evacuation order "lulled some residents into being less concerned" and ultimately compounded problems. "In areas where evacuation orders were issued later, people who weren't expecting to evacuate needed to find and understand this evacuation zone information quickly...."

"People need to know that they are in an area being asked to evacuate — and waiting until the storm is on its way to find out their zone may be too late. Emergency managers need to educate people in advance of imminent storms while also developing more robust websites to handle the queries in the days before the storm."
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Why Hurricane Ian Killed So Many People

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  • Trumpers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08, 2022 @09:43AM (#62949093)

    Florida is full of Trumpers, they don't believe anything the government says unless the orange dipshit says it. Biden was involved here, of course Trumpers are not going to listen. This is a Darwin moment more than anything. You can blame communication and the timing of communication but people have to first believe those communications. Besides many of these folks has ridden out storms before and do not believe in climate change. Florida Man does not believe you.

    • My brother is a die-hard trump supporter. He booked flights out of Florida but they were cancelled on him. He is safe but spent a week without electricity.
       

    • Its not about Trump. Remember when Trump told them to get vaxxed and they still didn't? This is a bigger problem than Orange Man.

    • Good thing you didn't completely politicize it, you know, like those Trumper's do!

  • Don't Look Up. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hypewise ( 1249710 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @10:12AM (#62949131)
    Politics plain and simple: This was the first polarized hurricane. Trump-leaning in-laws refused to evacuate until authorities compelled them, although they have in the past, because left leaning relatives were begging them to. Their second-floor unit got blown-out/flooded. Irrationality now infects everything.
  • Because (Score:2, Insightful)

    by groobly ( 6155920 )

    It killed so many people because Florida has a lot of old people, and it's really hard for old people to get packed and outta there on short notice.

    In addition, previous hurricanes have killed way more people, so the "so many" is fake news.

    • Re:Because (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @10:57AM (#62949221)
      Was it or was it not Florida's deadliest hurricane in 87 years?

      If yes, how is it fake news? If no, then it is fake news.
      • > Was it or was it not Florida's deadliest hurricane in 87 years?

        So 87 years ago the population of Florida was about 1.7M people. Today it's about 20M people, the curve between the bulbs is roughly linear with a spike since 2020.

        Do you think it should be called the deadliest hurricane? Is absolute scalar the right measurement?

        • by tsqr ( 808554 )

          That's not as great a point as you might think. Answer this one: what would you consider deadlier; the crash of a small private aircraft that kills everyone on board, or the crash of a large airliner, killing only half of the 300 passengers?

          • That's not as great a point as you might think. Answer this one: what would you consider deadlier; the crash of a small private aircraft that kills everyone on board, or the crash of a large airliner, killing only half of the 300 passengers?

            Obviously, the dilemma is clear: how do you kill everyone on both planes? :-)

            [ Thinking of Michael's solution [youtube.com] to The Trolley Problem on The Good Place [wikipedia.org]... ]

        • Think about the advancements in building techniques and forecasting.
  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @10:39AM (#62949197)

    Fort Myers is just the latest of a number of places to be wiped out soon after I visit them.

    The big one was the Soviet Union, but I have also destroyed New Orleans, Notre Dame, and Christchurch. Let's just say that I have the greatest set of "Before" pictures of all time.

  • by bobbutts ( 927504 ) <bobbutts@gmail.com> on Saturday October 08, 2022 @10:59AM (#62949225)
    The NHC cone of uncertainty works great. However emergency managers follow just the center line (which the NHC warns against doing). So when a storm doesn't follow the center line this kind of thing happens. The solution is to listen to the NHC but the drawback is that the evacuation zone will be much larger. It's painful to see this same story over and over again. The storm did not veer south into unexpected areas. It was well within the cone.
    • by clovis ( 4684 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @11:05AM (#62949233)

      Exactly what bobbutts said.

      I lived over 40 years on an Atlantic coastal Island a few hundred yards from the sound and at 10 feet above sea level.

      We were constantly inundated with local news that tells us if a hurricane comes our way to leave or risk death. We fled a couple of the big ones and stayed for some small ones, which was still a bad idea but we did it for the thrill.
      The only reason to ride out a hurricane is for fun, and for small ones it kind of is fun.

        There's no reason to stay to protect your property because there is nothing, nothing you can do while it's happening. Try this experiment: have a friend drive his pickup at somewhat over 100mph while you stand in the bed holding up a piece of plywood and drive a nail through it. Add a plastic tarp for extra points.
      Just keep in mind the "fun" might go on for 8 hours.

      Secondly, hurricanes spawn tornadoes in the rain bands well away from the eye, and there is zero warning for those.

      One thing that every one I knew was well aware is that NOBODY can predict a hurricane's path even a few hours into the future. Have you ever seen a predicted path go in a circle? Real hurricanes have done that.
        I used to say it requires willful ignorance to not know hurricane paths and strength can change rapidly, but the news and government seem to believe people will get angry if you don't speak in absolutes. We saw a lot of that over-certainty in the covid pandemic. It's a problem.

      I know my rant went on too long, but I'm in the waiting room at the doctor's office with nothing better to do.

      • Another problem nobody in "the media" have picked up on: for the past ~25 years, evacuating FROM anywhere in Florida (besides Monroe County) TO Dade or Broward has been officially taboo, with officials never shutting up about it until literally ~20-30 hours before Ian's landfall (when authorities finally, FINALLY, said, "ok, go to Dade/Broward if you must").

        48 hours before Ian, people in Collier (Naples) and Lee (Fort Myers/Cape Coral/Sanibel/Bonita Springs) knew 3 things:

        1. Evacuation to Dade/Broward was O

        • As for why so many people evacuated from Miami Beach TO south Dade for Andrew, blame 1992-Miami's "language lines".

          Back in 1992, if you lived in South Beach & spoke English, you just knew that if you evacuated "straight west", you'd have been among the very, very few English-speaking people AT the shelter. The Spanish-English boundary line was blurry, but mostly was somewhere between Kendall Drive (SW 88th st) & Sunset Drive (SW 72nd st). Andrew's eye wall's northern extent was approximately SW 80th

          • by clovis ( 4684 )

            Interesting history in those two posts, thanks for the info.
            It seems that all too often The Authorities have some hidden agenda so that we never know when they're lying or just being dumb.

    • by fermion ( 181285 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @12:02PM (#62949357) Homepage Journal
      We had an historic evacuation because of the cone. It was the disaster as the hurricane never came. People are not tolerant of false positives and it why risk assessment is so hard. People hate inconvenience when the threat never comes.

      There is also the issue of how much risk there is. 120 years ago we learned if you are on a barrier island you will die. So part of the reason people die is over the past decade Lee Country has grown 25% and a hurricane hit this elevated population. Simple math.

      It is personal risk assessment for the 21st century. If you live near a forest, it might catch fire, you might escape, but you probably at some point will see all you stuff burn up. If you are on an island, if you do not leave for a few days every time a hurricane is approaching, you will die.

  • by DERoss ( 1919496 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @11:36AM (#62949295)

    Late evacuation orders and a failure to identify where to evacuate are common in local and state governments. They are just not prepared for emergencies.

    In 2018, the Woolsey Fire burned through southern California from the Santa Susana Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The Woolsey Fire scorched over 98,000 acres in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties. Between those two counties, over 295,000 persons were displaced by evacuation orders. At least three people died, and about 1,500 homes and businesses were destroyed, including 17 homes in our small community.

    My wife and I had to evacuate, during which several problems arose. The Ventura County Emergency Services sent us to an evacuation center that was closed because it was much too close to the fire. The Ventura County Sheriff deputies who ordered us out of that location did not know where a valid evacuation center was located. The Red Cross was not communicating with the Salvation Army; thus a full evacuation center staffed by the Red Cross did not know another center staffed by the Salvation Army had available space for us.

    Details are at http://www.rossde.com/fire.htm... [rossde.com].

    • The red cross is a bag of chucklefucks today, which is sad because they always show up. They shut down functioning volunteer relief distribution in Lake County after the big fires there and never started it up again. When the red cross appears, run.

  • by irchans ( 527097 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @11:47AM (#62949315)

    I just wanted to say that I was impressed at how accurate the NWS forecast for Ian was. At 10 PM on Sunday, the NWS predicted that Ian would hit Cuba, weaken, regain strength, and then make landfall on the western side of Florida as a strong Hurricane. Ian made landfall as predicted on Wednesday at 2 PM. I worked for the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Guam in the 1980's and back then our forecasts were not that accurate. I imagine that more people would have died if the forecast had been less accurate.

    https://i1.wp.com/www.caymanco... [wp.com]

  • Government issues a warning that people should evacuate. You have two ways how to interpret this:
    1) Those people do this kind of thing for their daily work, they most likely understand these things better than I do and they know that giving false alerts would be a bad thing, so this must be something serious, so I should get into a safe place.
    2) I've lived here for 20 years and never died in a hurricane. I think I know better than those lazy bums how hurricanes work.

    You can pick which ever you like. It is i

  • by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Saturday October 08, 2022 @04:36PM (#62949807)

    ... and it's an opinion piece. I bailed.

  • If people were put in jail for manslaughter then they might be more careful about what they advise.

  • They have been against government for last x years, not a surprise that DeSantis will not risk mandatory evacuation before mid-terms. So "free" people stayed.
    • So DeSantis (not local officials) should have declared an emergency and enforced an evacuation of whom and to where?

      Should everyone in FL just drive up onto Georgia and 'hang out'?

      Should everyone along the projected path head north OR south to avoid the hurricane?

      Please, add a little detail to your instructions, I'm sure FEMA will take note and consider your valuable insights.

    • They have been against government for last x years, not a surprise that DeSantis will not risk mandatory evacuation before mid-terms. So "free" people stayed.

      So there *are* consequences when a certain political party constantly screams about how bad government is and that you shouldn't trust it.

      Why anyone trusts what a politician says anymore is beyond me. If bad weather is coming, I listen to the meteorologists.

  • I am shocked that they didn't try to blame Trump!

    Seriously, Florida is much more populated than it was for previous 'killer' (named) hurricanes, mightn't that be a factor in the increased # of deaths?

    From my sofa, the issues are, in no particular order:

    - increased population
    - the extended period of time since last one (people forget and try and ride it out)
    - the nature of the hurricane (it moved slowly over land, dumping record rainfall)
    - the increased number of 'blue staters' that flocked to Florida to esc

  • I find three ties to politics. Does anyone remember when not every news item had to do with politics?

    Why was the storm deadly? Probably because people are or feel very poor right now and evacuating is expensive. Getting out of south Florida is not easy. Most of the people who died were poor.

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Hate me because I'm beautiful, smart and rich." -- Calvin Keegan

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