8 ms·

Science and steely nerves spared Houston from a nightmare hurricane evacuation

49 points by BerislavLopac 6y ago

throw0101a 6y ago
I live in a fairly quiet part of the world, but if I had to move someplace else, I think I’d rather be in an earthquake zone rather than a hurricane (or tornado) zone given the choice. Hurricanes are more frequent, and there’s a lot of drama and dread before their arrival. Earthquakes on the other hand are infrequent, and while they may strike unexpectedly, it’s usually “one-and-done” (plus aftershocks). In both cases it is prudent to be ready (“prepped” as the kids are wont to say): * https://www.ready.gov https://www.ready.gov * https://www.getprepared.gc.ca https://www.getprepared.gc.ca Does anyone have any experience with both? Are there "pros and cons"?
- take_a_breath 6y ago
  Come to the US Midwest, we don’t have earthquakes or hurricanes.
  - cafard 6y ago
    Blizzards and tornadoes, yes, but no hurricanes. There is always the New Madrid fault--about 25 or 30 years ago some seismologist was scaring people about how it was ready to let go again.
    - bitexploder 6y ago
      Colorado here in Denver is nice. No earthquakes or hurricanes. Tornadoes are possible but exceedingly rare in the front range. The last one that touched down was in 1988. We do get snow storms, but they tend to melt quickly. :)
    - kthejoker2 6y ago
      Yep, right after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. I distinctly remember as a third grader in Radcliff, Kentucky doing several science and writing assignments related to earthquakes in the United States because there was all this news and speculation about New Madrid. It's probably just the natural attentuation towards chaos in every American boy, but there was a distinct flavor of "wouldn't it be cool if ...?" to it all. Needless to say, it was an extemely disapponting summer that followed.
  - reincarnate0x14 6y ago
    Yes, but you do have Ohio.
  - RegBarclay 6y ago
    But tornadoes...
  - OldHand2018 6y ago
    Well now apparently you have to worry about derechos.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    I always wondered, why don't they build houses level with the ground in the midwest to protect against tornadoes? What I'm envisioning is a single floor home that has skylights level with the outside ground, which is either level with the surrounding area or slightly build up to prevent flooding. This would prevent needing to worry about your home getting torn up by tornadoes.
    - roywiggins 6y ago
      Seems like you're trading one risk for the certainty that you'll eventually flood your house. Flooding basements isn't uncommon, if you move your living area downstairs then you'll be flooding that instead. Also, most people don't want to live in daylight bunkers to mitigate a risk.
    - dmurray 6y ago
      People like to have windows, rather than everyone living in a basement. And tornadoes aren't that common anywhere in the US midwest.
    - war1025 6y ago
      Because tornadoes are extremely rare. And when they do occur, the area they effect is very small.
      - Groxx 6y ago
        This. The reason we hear so much about them is that they're so flashy - they appear rapidly, can cause pretty major destruction where they hit, and disappear rapidly. You also don't get days of build-up like a hurricane, it's only around 10-15 minutes to go from "a storm that might make tornados (like many are)" to "one is likely to appear at X" to "hopefully you're already sheltered, it's here". Hunkering down has to be done rapidly, which is stressful and memorable, even if nothing happens to you.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > I always wondered, why don't they build houses level with the ground in the midwest to protect against tornadoes? In no particular order: 1. Expense 2. Flooding 3. Radon 4. No one aspires to be a basement dweller.
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    New England too. We get nor'easters (big storms from the Atlantic that create a lot of rain, snow, and wind) but these aren't close to disastrous like a hurricane or an earthquake. Even Hurricane Sandy, that rocked New York and New Jersey, ran out of steam before reaching New England.
  - 7402 6y ago
    Except for this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811–1812_New_Madrid_earthquakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811–1812_New_Madrid_earthquak... "The 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes were a series of intense intraplate earthquakes beginning with an initial earthquake of moment magnitude 7.2–8.2 on December 16, 1811, followed by a moment magnitude 7.4 aftershock on the same day. Two additional earthquakes of similar magnitude followed in January and February 1812. They remain the most powerful earthquakes to hit the contiguous United States east of the Rocky Mountains in recorded history."
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Significant areas of Midwest can have floods though and they tend to be able to affect much larger areas than in less flat areas of the country.
    - take_a_breath 6y ago
      All that fresh water can certainly cause problems.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    > Come to the US Midwest, we don’t have earthquakes or hurricanes. I live by the Great Lakes: we don’t have earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes. Plus I don't have to worry about an aquifer running dry.
- xwdv 6y ago
  Hurricanes are more profitable. When a hurricane is coming all manner of business opportunities open up. You can install shutters on homes for a few hundred bucks each. Scalp essential supplies. Cover your roof in blue tarp and claim "damages" on insurance. Can't do that with earthquakes probably.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  What does this have to do with the article, other than the word 'hurricane' ?
- cowboysauce 6y ago
  I would 100% live in a tornado prone region over an earthquake prone region. Tornadoes, by their nature are small and very localized. An EF5 tornado could pass within a few hundred feet of your house and you'd come out essentially unscathed. Earthquakes can inflict damage in a massive area. During the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, the fracture happened along several hundred miles of the fault and the resultant tsunami devastated large stretches of coastline. Since tornadoes are so localized, recovery happens quicker. Additionally, if your area was struck by a tornado, nearby areas likely weren't, which can provide you a place to buy supplies. I'd rate them from worst to less worse as: * earthquake * hurricane * tornado The warning a hurricane gives is invaluable. You can evacuate, you can gather up important documents, you can get a refill on any medications you take. An earthquake gives no warning. Even tornadoes give a lot of warning when compared with earthquakes. Not to mention the tsunamis that earthquakes can cause.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Tsunami risk is specific to particular fault zones (subduction), a small fraction of all earthquakes. And proximity to water. Effects can be widespread (as with Indian Ocean), though that was a ~50 year event. Awareness, warning, elevation, and robust construction mitigate risk. Earthquakes are generally infrequent (Japan and Chile are notable exceptions). Up to mag 7 or so, most structures can be designed survivable, though with poor construction, even mag 5 (100 times weaker) can cause widespread death & destruction (unreinforced masonry, stone, brick, etc.).
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    Each tornado is much less dangerous than an earthquake, but there vastly more tornadoes than (serious) earthquakes. Having lived in the Bay Area since 1995, I've lost more respect for quakes than is probably healthy.
    - war1025 6y ago
      Wikipedia [1] tells me that most tornadoes are less than 250 feet across, and even the biggest tornadoes are only 2 miles wide. So basically the area of effect they have is similar in size and shape to a roadway. Yes, you don't want a tornado landing on you. But two blocks over it'll be nothing more than a windy day. Perhaps you should lose some more respect for tornadoes as well :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It's not a dichotomy though, most of the world is stable in terms of earth and weather. We get the odd storm once in a while, worst case is some roof tiles and/or fallen trees.
- ufmace 6y ago
  Haven't been around earthquake zones much, but I will say that the pre-hurricane drama is all media hype. They can mostly be ignored, leading you to at least as good of an outcome. IMO, it's well-known that the media will hype up the danger for pretty much a whole state worth of area / coastline. But the really serious damage from a hurricane is mostly limited to a medium size town worth of area. Trouble is, nobody knows exactly what area that will be. Hurricanes can be very large, but most of the area of them doesn't amount to much more than a pretty hard rainstorm. Possibly a few tree limbs down and some power outages. Not likely to be much major damage to houses or cars outside of that small high-intensity zone. Yes it's best to buy and/or check your hurricane supplies around the beginning of the season and avoid the buying panic in the days before a predicted strike. Having supplies for a few days to a week without power, water, or ability to buy food from stores is prudent.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  In Florida, we see hurricanes as some of our only excitement each year. People take their plants and furniture in, stock up on gas and water, and then if it doesn’t hit it or isn’t that bad, mostly it feels like a disappointment. Historically we’ve gotten used to rebuilding things pretty quickly after a bad one. Plus, many buildings are engineered specifically to withstand hurricane force winds. So yeah, I’d rather live in a hurricane prone area in FL with a decent history of rebounding quickly than in California where an earthquake could strike at any moment and people generally just pretend they don’t happen.
bonniemuffin 6y ago
I was in Houston during Hurricane Rita in 2005, and we tried to evacuate. We got on the freeway, sat in the traffic for a while, made it about one exit down the road before we concluded the storm would hit before we actually made it out of town, got off at the next exit and went home to ride it out at home. I don't think Houston is a city that was designed to be evacuated. It's just not feasible. I'm sure an exacerbating factor was 250k extra Katrina-evacuees[1] from New Orleans who had just arrived in Houston a few weeks before (I was one of those people), who had all just seen the TV coverage of people stuck on roofs after Katrina and heard all the victim-blaming that said it was their fault for staying. Previously I wouldn't have evacuated for a storm like Rita, but after living through Katrina a few weeks prior, I thought I'd better at least try to get out of town. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/25/new-orleans-west-houston-hurricane-katrina https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/25/new-orleans-...
- cmurphycode 6y ago
  "I don't think Houston is a city that was designed to be evacuated. It's just not feasible" Such an interesting contrast to this frontpage post yesterday: "The highways themselves were specifically intended to facilitate the reasonable objective of Houstonians not to get annihilated by a nuclear blast...[In] case of atomic attack on our key cities, the road net must permit quick evacuation of target areas" (Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24331698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24331698) So one might ask, if all these highways don't even permit quick transit, what the heck are they doing?
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    Quicker transit than the same roads but half as wide? I guess evacuation is in the aftermath of the nuclear strike to escape radiation for those that were not hurt initially.
  - scottlocklin 6y ago
    Houston's population was 1.7 million in 1970[0], it's 6.4 million now. I'm making the guess that their highway system was approximately done in 1970, but it's basically the same story if you put that number at 1980 (2.4 million) and so on. FWIIW underutilized modern highways are amazingly efficient and pleasant to drive on. As far as I can tell they're limited to recent construction in Europe (Spain for example; it appears to have a 2005 era German highway system designed for 2-3x their population). [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23014/houston/population https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23014/houston/population
reincarnate0x14 6y ago
I was in Houston for Rita and it really demonstrated the gross inadequacy of modern US disaster planning. That the evacuation panic was more deadly than the storm may be a bit of black irony, but there is simply no way to get millions of people out of a major city in a small number of days. (a friend was stuck in traffic for 18 hours after his wife decided they needed to flee -- then they gave up, turned around and drove ~8 minutes back home to weather the storm in a neighborhood that hadn't flooded during the tropical storm a few years prior that famously drowned IH-10 for miles) Of course then Hurricane Harvey came through and illustrated the questionable unbounded development in a swamp, but not for very long. I like Houston. It's a more cultured and vibrant city than its usually given credit, but it's already living on borrowed time. It's not going to take a whole lot of sea level rise to start inundating the east side and down towards Galveston, and it feels like it won't be long before flood insurance abandons the eastern half of Harris county back to its swampy past.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  > * I was in Houston for Rita and it really demonstrated the gross inadequacy of modern US disaster planning* Yeah, I wouldn't have foreseen that effect either, but to the authorities specifically tasked with planning for that eventuality, it should have been obvious. If, that is, there actually is such an authority?
  - reincarnate0x14 6y ago
    I'm not really sure. In theory, it should be the governor of the state working with NOAA and FEMA, but in practice it seems like cities or counties have been mostly left to try and interpret NOAA's information on their own. FEMA is supposed to be the national authority, but has a ... marginal track record a its often headed by political appointees with minimal experience who can coast along just fine for years because nothing major happens -- five near-miss hurricanes mean getting some extra food and water down while the linemen put the power lines back, and it's all easy. Then Katrina or Harvey happens and you find out really quick who has any idea which way is up. The complete impracticality of a large scale evacuation probably precludes any real effort finding its footing. CalFire out in CA is probably one of the better organizations you could look to worldwide in terms of trying to get people out of harms way, it still seems to be mostly on individual communities to figure out how they're going to evacuate once the word comes down. There were some awful stories out of the Camp Fire of people caught by the fire as they were stuck on the limited roads out. And most of those communities are small. I don't think it's possible to evacaute, say, the Bay Area in under a month if you had to do it. Too many people all on the same roads, and while the airports might be able to conceivably move a few hundred thousand passengers a day, you'd still have the problem of getting people TO the airports and coordinating fuel and crew and all that. There probably is a way to get some kind of realistic planning capability in FEMA and the NRCC, but given the near-total failure of the US Congress in the last two decades the likelihood of a major reorganization that put enough real experts in long term positions with goals that weren't tied to immediate events seems like it's about zero. This turned into a bit of rambling digression, but at least from an observer in a vaguely related field of critical infrastructure, it really feels like there has been a serious lack of meaningful leadership outside of the old DOD/NORAD planning for nuclear wars (for which rapid evacuations of populations were basically out of the question from the beginning).
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I think the "race to the bottom" that has befallen homeowner grade generator sets over the past ~20yr deserves some credit here too. Faced with a possible week or more without power a lot fewer people are gonna choose to evacuate these days.
- gruez 6y ago
  I don't get it. are you trying to say that "homeowner grade generator" got cheaper, making it easier to weather out the storm at home, or that "homeowner grade generator" got crappier, making it harder to weather out the storm at home?
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Cheaper meaning more people have them so fewer people not in the flood path feel compelled to evacuate. I was poking fun at people who complain about the "race to the bottom"
rossdavidh 6y ago
Hypothesis: Houston residents were nudged towards sitting tight instead of running for the hills, by Covid-19. They had either lived through, or seen pictures of, the Rita evacuation that turned into a parking lot. The idea of being packed into a crowd, even if you are in your own car, gave a gut-level push in the direction opposite what fear of the hurricane gave. However, I also found myself thinking, if there was really a 25% chance of a hurricane strike, was it really the right thing to not evacuate? Well, given that Houston is probably not able to evacuate anyway, I suppose it was.
- Balgair 6y ago
  You'd have to go off expected values. Throwing numbers out: If you expect 1 death per 1,000 residents with a Cat 4 strike, and the city is 1,000,000 people, you'd get 1,000 deaths. If there is a 25% chance of a strike, then you expect 250 deaths. I know that math is a bit funky, but that's what seems to be done. You compare that to the added deaths due to an evacuation event, and then whatever the math says, you should then do. I agree, it seems strange. But I'm at a loss as to how else you should calculate things.
- tolbish 6y ago
  Could a sliding scale work here? As in, for expected damage up to some threshold, advise only evacuating the most at-risk, such as those in lower elevations and in valleys, or those in older houses.
baq 6y ago
I'd just like to take a moment to underscore the accuracy of the NHC forecast track - the eye of the cyclone had made landfall right at where these guys predicted 3 days prior. Hats off, science and experience have shown their value.
- consumer451 6y ago
  > I'd just like to take a moment to underscore the accuracy of the NHC forecast track I am very curious how detrimental 5G rollout will be to this accuracy. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/forecasters-fear-5g-wireless-technology-will-muck-weather-predictions https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/forecasters-fear-5g-...
spodek 6y ago
Science works so much better than "thoughts and prayers". I hope we learn to apply it everywhere on the environment, especially conservation.
tqi 6y ago
The article is pretty light on actual details, but it's a great example of how media narratives are mostly post hoc nonsense. It seems like forecasters took a calculated risk and turned out to be right. If the storm had followed the predicted path this same article would be painting them as irresponsible villians for not telling people what the models truly predicted.
- ufmace 6y ago
  Very much so. Even with what actually happened, the narrative also could have been that the forecasters and administration were reckless and irresponsible in ignoring the most accurate forecast model and not ordering evacuation they should have. Sure, they got lucky this time thanks to random chance, but do we dare take the risk of having such dangerous science deniers in office? They may not be so lucky next time! Better boot 'em out before it's too late! Okay I got carried away a bit there. Just goes to show you though, you decide on the spin you want to put on it in advance, and the headlines all but write themselves.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Are Technica articles are noticeable for being very opinionated (and often political and non-technical, despite the name). For some reason I find it jarring because I expect more hard tech/news perhaps because of the name and because it's older than Gawker.
ufmace 6y ago
I lived in Houston for a while. It's true that the Rita evacuation was a disaster, for multiple reasons. Even absent the traffic jams getting out of the city, I had also heard from some friends who did evacuate that there was little gas and no hotel rooms to be found for ~400 miles. I decided to stay at home, rather than risk getting stuck in the middle of the road somewhere in a car out of gas when the hurricane actually hit. It worked out pretty well. I think the big lesson of Rita was that you really, really shouldn't evacuate if you don't need to, because too many people in low-risk neighborhoods evacuating will take up all of the highway capacity, gas, and regional hotels for all of the people in flood zones that really do need to evacuate. Like seriously, don't evacuate unless being in an out-of-gas car stuck on a highway somewhere is definitely better than being at home. This was put in place for hurricane Ike, to mostly good results.
PeterStuer 6y ago
It is called confirmation science (aka bad science), gambling and ofc cover your ass politics. yet somehow the author wants to spin this as clever and brave?

49 points by BerislavLopac 6y ago

I live in a fairly quiet part of the world, but if I had to move someplace else, I think I’d rather be in an earthquake zone rather than a hurricane (or tornado) zone given the choice. Hurricanes are more frequent, and there’s a lot of drama and dread before their arrival. Earthquakes on the other hand are infrequent, and while they may strike unexpectedly, it’s usually “one-and-done” (plus aftershocks). In both cases it is prudent to be ready (“prepped” as the kids are wont to say): * https://www.ready.gov https://www.ready.gov * https://www.getprepared.gc.ca https://www.getprepared.gc.ca Does anyone have any experience with both? Are there "pros and cons"?

take_a_breath 6y ago
Come to the US Midwest, we don’t have earthquakes or hurricanes.
- cafard 6y ago
  Blizzards and tornadoes, yes, but no hurricanes. There is always the New Madrid fault--about 25 or 30 years ago some seismologist was scaring people about how it was ready to let go again.
  - bitexploder 6y ago
    Colorado here in Denver is nice. No earthquakes or hurricanes. Tornadoes are possible but exceedingly rare in the front range. The last one that touched down was in 1988. We do get snow storms, but they tend to melt quickly. :)
  - kthejoker2 6y ago
    Yep, right after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. I distinctly remember as a third grader in Radcliff, Kentucky doing several science and writing assignments related to earthquakes in the United States because there was all this news and speculation about New Madrid. It's probably just the natural attentuation towards chaos in every American boy, but there was a distinct flavor of "wouldn't it be cool if ...?" to it all. Needless to say, it was an extemely disapponting summer that followed.
- reincarnate0x14 6y ago
  Yes, but you do have Ohio.
- RegBarclay 6y ago
  But tornadoes...
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  Well now apparently you have to worry about derechos.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hanniabu 6y ago
  I always wondered, why don't they build houses level with the ground in the midwest to protect against tornadoes? What I'm envisioning is a single floor home that has skylights level with the outside ground, which is either level with the surrounding area or slightly build up to prevent flooding. This would prevent needing to worry about your home getting torn up by tornadoes.
  - roywiggins 6y ago
    Seems like you're trading one risk for the certainty that you'll eventually flood your house. Flooding basements isn't uncommon, if you move your living area downstairs then you'll be flooding that instead. Also, most people don't want to live in daylight bunkers to mitigate a risk.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    People like to have windows, rather than everyone living in a basement. And tornadoes aren't that common anywhere in the US midwest.
  - war1025 6y ago
    Because tornadoes are extremely rare. And when they do occur, the area they effect is very small.
    - Groxx 6y ago
      This. The reason we hear so much about them is that they're so flashy - they appear rapidly, can cause pretty major destruction where they hit, and disappear rapidly. You also don't get days of build-up like a hurricane, it's only around 10-15 minutes to go from "a storm that might make tornados (like many are)" to "one is likely to appear at X" to "hopefully you're already sheltered, it's here". Hunkering down has to be done rapidly, which is stressful and memorable, even if nothing happens to you.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I always wondered, why don't they build houses level with the ground in the midwest to protect against tornadoes? In no particular order: 1. Expense 2. Flooding 3. Radon 4. No one aspires to be a basement dweller.
- thehappypm 6y ago
  New England too. We get nor'easters (big storms from the Atlantic that create a lot of rain, snow, and wind) but these aren't close to disastrous like a hurricane or an earthquake. Even Hurricane Sandy, that rocked New York and New Jersey, ran out of steam before reaching New England.
- 7402 6y ago
  Except for this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811–1812_New_Madrid_earthquakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811–1812_New_Madrid_earthquak... "The 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes were a series of intense intraplate earthquakes beginning with an initial earthquake of moment magnitude 7.2–8.2 on December 16, 1811, followed by a moment magnitude 7.4 aftershock on the same day. Two additional earthquakes of similar magnitude followed in January and February 1812. They remain the most powerful earthquakes to hit the contiguous United States east of the Rocky Mountains in recorded history."
- ghaff 6y ago
  Significant areas of Midwest can have floods though and they tend to be able to affect much larger areas than in less flat areas of the country.
  - take_a_breath 6y ago
    All that fresh water can certainly cause problems.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Come to the US Midwest, we don’t have earthquakes or hurricanes. I live by the Great Lakes: we don’t have earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes. Plus I don't have to worry about an aquifer running dry.
xwdv 6y ago
Hurricanes are more profitable. When a hurricane is coming all manner of business opportunities open up. You can install shutters on homes for a few hundred bucks each. Scalp essential supplies. Cover your roof in blue tarp and claim "damages" on insurance. Can't do that with earthquakes probably.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
What does this have to do with the article, other than the word 'hurricane' ?
cowboysauce 6y ago
I would 100% live in a tornado prone region over an earthquake prone region. Tornadoes, by their nature are small and very localized. An EF5 tornado could pass within a few hundred feet of your house and you'd come out essentially unscathed. Earthquakes can inflict damage in a massive area. During the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, the fracture happened along several hundred miles of the fault and the resultant tsunami devastated large stretches of coastline. Since tornadoes are so localized, recovery happens quicker. Additionally, if your area was struck by a tornado, nearby areas likely weren't, which can provide you a place to buy supplies. I'd rate them from worst to less worse as: * earthquake * hurricane * tornado The warning a hurricane gives is invaluable. You can evacuate, you can gather up important documents, you can get a refill on any medications you take. An earthquake gives no warning. Even tornadoes give a lot of warning when compared with earthquakes. Not to mention the tsunamis that earthquakes can cause.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Tsunami risk is specific to particular fault zones (subduction), a small fraction of all earthquakes. And proximity to water. Effects can be widespread (as with Indian Ocean), though that was a ~50 year event. Awareness, warning, elevation, and robust construction mitigate risk. Earthquakes are generally infrequent (Japan and Chile are notable exceptions). Up to mag 7 or so, most structures can be designed survivable, though with poor construction, even mag 5 (100 times weaker) can cause widespread death & destruction (unreinforced masonry, stone, brick, etc.).
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Each tornado is much less dangerous than an earthquake, but there vastly more tornadoes than (serious) earthquakes. Having lived in the Bay Area since 1995, I've lost more respect for quakes than is probably healthy.
  - war1025 6y ago
    Wikipedia [1] tells me that most tornadoes are less than 250 feet across, and even the biggest tornadoes are only 2 miles wide. So basically the area of effect they have is similar in size and shape to a roadway. Yes, you don't want a tornado landing on you. But two blocks over it'll be nothing more than a windy day. Perhaps you should lose some more respect for tornadoes as well :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
It's not a dichotomy though, most of the world is stable in terms of earth and weather. We get the odd storm once in a while, worst case is some roof tiles and/or fallen trees.
ufmace 6y ago
Haven't been around earthquake zones much, but I will say that the pre-hurricane drama is all media hype. They can mostly be ignored, leading you to at least as good of an outcome. IMO, it's well-known that the media will hype up the danger for pretty much a whole state worth of area / coastline. But the really serious damage from a hurricane is mostly limited to a medium size town worth of area. Trouble is, nobody knows exactly what area that will be. Hurricanes can be very large, but most of the area of them doesn't amount to much more than a pretty hard rainstorm. Possibly a few tree limbs down and some power outages. Not likely to be much major damage to houses or cars outside of that small high-intensity zone. Yes it's best to buy and/or check your hurricane supplies around the beginning of the season and avoid the buying panic in the days before a predicted strike. Having supplies for a few days to a week without power, water, or ability to buy food from stores is prudent.
ironmagma 6y ago
In Florida, we see hurricanes as some of our only excitement each year. People take their plants and furniture in, stock up on gas and water, and then if it doesn’t hit it or isn’t that bad, mostly it feels like a disappointment. Historically we’ve gotten used to rebuilding things pretty quickly after a bad one. Plus, many buildings are engineered specifically to withstand hurricane force winds. So yeah, I’d rather live in a hurricane prone area in FL with a decent history of rebounding quickly than in California where an earthquake could strike at any moment and people generally just pretend they don’t happen.

bonniemuffin 6y ago

I was in Houston during Hurricane Rita in 2005, and we tried to evacuate. We got on the freeway, sat in the traffic for a while, made it about one exit down the road before we concluded the storm would hit before we actually made it out of town, got off at the next exit and went home to ride it out at home. I don't think Houston is a city that was designed to be evacuated. It's just not feasible. I'm sure an exacerbating factor was 250k extra Katrina-evacuees[1] from New Orleans who had just arrived in Houston a few weeks before (I was one of those people), who had all just seen the TV coverage of people stuck on roofs after Katrina and heard all the victim-blaming that said it was their fault for staying. Previously I wouldn't have evacuated for a storm like Rita, but after living through Katrina a few weeks prior, I thought I'd better at least try to get out of town. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/25/new-orleans-west-houston-hurricane-katrina https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/25/new-orleans-...

cmurphycode 6y ago
"I don't think Houston is a city that was designed to be evacuated. It's just not feasible" Such an interesting contrast to this frontpage post yesterday: "The highways themselves were specifically intended to facilitate the reasonable objective of Houstonians not to get annihilated by a nuclear blast...[In] case of atomic attack on our key cities, the road net must permit quick evacuation of target areas" (Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24331698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24331698) So one might ask, if all these highways don't even permit quick transit, what the heck are they doing?
- rightbyte 6y ago
  Quicker transit than the same roads but half as wide? I guess evacuation is in the aftermath of the nuclear strike to escape radiation for those that were not hurt initially.
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  Houston's population was 1.7 million in 1970[0], it's 6.4 million now. I'm making the guess that their highway system was approximately done in 1970, but it's basically the same story if you put that number at 1980 (2.4 million) and so on. FWIIW underutilized modern highways are amazingly efficient and pleasant to drive on. As far as I can tell they're limited to recent construction in Europe (Spain for example; it appears to have a 2005 era German highway system designed for 2-3x their population). [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23014/houston/population https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23014/houston/population

reincarnate0x14 6y ago

I was in Houston for Rita and it really demonstrated the gross inadequacy of modern US disaster planning. That the evacuation panic was more deadly than the storm may be a bit of black irony, but there is simply no way to get millions of people out of a major city in a small number of days. (a friend was stuck in traffic for 18 hours after his wife decided they needed to flee -- then they gave up, turned around and drove ~8 minutes back home to weather the storm in a neighborhood that hadn't flooded during the tropical storm a few years prior that famously drowned IH-10 for miles) Of course then Hurricane Harvey came through and illustrated the questionable unbounded development in a swamp, but not for very long. I like Houston. It's a more cultured and vibrant city than its usually given credit, but it's already living on borrowed time. It's not going to take a whole lot of sea level rise to start inundating the east side and down towards Galveston, and it feels like it won't be long before flood insurance abandons the eastern half of Harris county back to its swampy past.

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BurningFrog 6y ago
> * I was in Houston for Rita and it really demonstrated the gross inadequacy of modern US disaster planning* Yeah, I wouldn't have foreseen that effect either, but to the authorities specifically tasked with planning for that eventuality, it should have been obvious. If, that is, there actually is such an authority?
- reincarnate0x14 6y ago
  I'm not really sure. In theory, it should be the governor of the state working with NOAA and FEMA, but in practice it seems like cities or counties have been mostly left to try and interpret NOAA's information on their own. FEMA is supposed to be the national authority, but has a ... marginal track record a its often headed by political appointees with minimal experience who can coast along just fine for years because nothing major happens -- five near-miss hurricanes mean getting some extra food and water down while the linemen put the power lines back, and it's all easy. Then Katrina or Harvey happens and you find out really quick who has any idea which way is up. The complete impracticality of a large scale evacuation probably precludes any real effort finding its footing. CalFire out in CA is probably one of the better organizations you could look to worldwide in terms of trying to get people out of harms way, it still seems to be mostly on individual communities to figure out how they're going to evacuate once the word comes down. There were some awful stories out of the Camp Fire of people caught by the fire as they were stuck on the limited roads out. And most of those communities are small. I don't think it's possible to evacaute, say, the Bay Area in under a month if you had to do it. Too many people all on the same roads, and while the airports might be able to conceivably move a few hundred thousand passengers a day, you'd still have the problem of getting people TO the airports and coordinating fuel and crew and all that. There probably is a way to get some kind of realistic planning capability in FEMA and the NRCC, but given the near-total failure of the US Congress in the last two decades the likelihood of a major reorganization that put enough real experts in long term positions with goals that weren't tied to immediate events seems like it's about zero. This turned into a bit of rambling digression, but at least from an observer in a vaguely related field of critical infrastructure, it really feels like there has been a serious lack of meaningful leadership outside of the old DOD/NORAD planning for nuclear wars (for which rapid evacuations of populations were basically out of the question from the beginning).

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

I think the "race to the bottom" that has befallen homeowner grade generator sets over the past ~20yr deserves some credit here too. Faced with a possible week or more without power a lot fewer people are gonna choose to evacuate these days.

gruez 6y ago
I don't get it. are you trying to say that "homeowner grade generator" got cheaper, making it easier to weather out the storm at home, or that "homeowner grade generator" got crappier, making it harder to weather out the storm at home?
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Cheaper meaning more people have them so fewer people not in the flood path feel compelled to evacuate. I was poking fun at people who complain about the "race to the bottom"

rossdavidh 6y ago

Hypothesis: Houston residents were nudged towards sitting tight instead of running for the hills, by Covid-19. They had either lived through, or seen pictures of, the Rita evacuation that turned into a parking lot. The idea of being packed into a crowd, even if you are in your own car, gave a gut-level push in the direction opposite what fear of the hurricane gave. However, I also found myself thinking, if there was really a 25% chance of a hurricane strike, was it really the right thing to not evacuate? Well, given that Houston is probably not able to evacuate anyway, I suppose it was.

Balgair 6y ago
You'd have to go off expected values. Throwing numbers out: If you expect 1 death per 1,000 residents with a Cat 4 strike, and the city is 1,000,000 people, you'd get 1,000 deaths. If there is a 25% chance of a strike, then you expect 250 deaths. I know that math is a bit funky, but that's what seems to be done. You compare that to the added deaths due to an evacuation event, and then whatever the math says, you should then do. I agree, it seems strange. But I'm at a loss as to how else you should calculate things.
tolbish 6y ago
Could a sliding scale work here? As in, for expected damage up to some threshold, advise only evacuating the most at-risk, such as those in lower elevations and in valleys, or those in older houses.

baq 6y ago

I'd just like to take a moment to underscore the accuracy of the NHC forecast track - the eye of the cyclone had made landfall right at where these guys predicted 3 days prior. Hats off, science and experience have shown their value.

consumer451 6y ago
> I'd just like to take a moment to underscore the accuracy of the NHC forecast track I am very curious how detrimental 5G rollout will be to this accuracy. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/forecasters-fear-5g-wireless-technology-will-muck-weather-predictions https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/forecasters-fear-5g-...

spodek 6y ago

Science works so much better than "thoughts and prayers". I hope we learn to apply it everywhere on the environment, especially conservation.

tqi 6y ago

The article is pretty light on actual details, but it's a great example of how media narratives are mostly post hoc nonsense. It seems like forecasters took a calculated risk and turned out to be right. If the storm had followed the predicted path this same article would be painting them as irresponsible villians for not telling people what the models truly predicted.

ufmace 6y ago
Very much so. Even with what actually happened, the narrative also could have been that the forecasters and administration were reckless and irresponsible in ignoring the most accurate forecast model and not ordering evacuation they should have. Sure, they got lucky this time thanks to random chance, but do we dare take the risk of having such dangerous science deniers in office? They may not be so lucky next time! Better boot 'em out before it's too late! Okay I got carried away a bit there. Just goes to show you though, you decide on the spin you want to put on it in advance, and the headlines all but write themselves.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Are Technica articles are noticeable for being very opinionated (and often political and non-technical, despite the name). For some reason I find it jarring because I expect more hard tech/news perhaps because of the name and because it's older than Gawker.

ufmace 6y ago

I lived in Houston for a while. It's true that the Rita evacuation was a disaster, for multiple reasons. Even absent the traffic jams getting out of the city, I had also heard from some friends who did evacuate that there was little gas and no hotel rooms to be found for ~400 miles. I decided to stay at home, rather than risk getting stuck in the middle of the road somewhere in a car out of gas when the hurricane actually hit. It worked out pretty well. I think the big lesson of Rita was that you really, really shouldn't evacuate if you don't need to, because too many people in low-risk neighborhoods evacuating will take up all of the highway capacity, gas, and regional hotels for all of the people in flood zones that really do need to evacuate. Like seriously, don't evacuate unless being in an out-of-gas car stuck on a highway somewhere is definitely better than being at home. This was put in place for hurricane Ike, to mostly good results.

PeterStuer 6y ago

It is called confirmation science (aka bad science), gambling and ofc cover your ass politics. yet somehow the author wants to spin this as clever and brave?