What If, Evacuation
In Texas a drama is taking place that is claiming a lot of my attention. It's about evacuating places in advance of a hurricane, but it's not because I want to be prepared. I've never been in an evacuation scene, and I think the chances are nil that I ever will. Still, I find it incredibly easy to put myself in the place of those who are faced with it.
Ordinarily I try to avoid speculations like this. Too often I've heard people saying, with the utmost self-assurance, that if they had been in such-and-such a situation in which so-and-so did such-and-such a thing that didn't work out at all, they would have done something else entirely that would have solved the whole problem.
So quite often descendants of the slaves from Africa will hold slaves and even survivors of Jim Crow in contempt, saying that if they, the modern generation, had been around, they wouldn't have stood still for a moment for such treatment. Instead they would have picked up guns and kicked butt, and so forth. They can do this so blithely because they can afford not to bother with taking the time and the trouble to consider all the thousand and one factors that caused those on whom such injustices were inflicted to take other courses of action, or inaction, as the case might've been.
In the case of evacuations, I chance the "I would've done such-and-such" snare because it's a question that strikes directly at several aspects that are important to me.
Newsweek ran an article called "Riders on the Storm" by two writers that addressed this issue, but I think it announced that it was going to fall short at some point and lapse into the merely patronizing when it began with the tale of a "stay put" who survived his house breaking into two but had to watch his dog being carried away by Hurricane Ike, and then they asked the question, "Why do people stay when they're told to leave? Is it out of necessity, or ignorance, or foolhardiness?" Note that by the number of words they gave the choices, they suggested that the non-sensible reasons are twice as likely to be the case as what they regard as being the sensible ones, which involve
not acting on one's own information or calculations or instincts, but instead doing strictly what one is told.
They then went on to discuss the "legitimate" reasons and then the non-legitimate ones. The people with legitimate reasons included the elderly and feeble who are too fragile to go anywhere on their own, poor people who have no car or other means to escape, or can't risk losing days from work in case it's a false alarm, and people who have "legitimate concerns" about the security of their homes and their belongings. But wouldn't that last one include everybody anyway?
The illegitimate reasons involve denying reality and engaging in denial, thrill-seeking, depending on having survived previous storms, being part of a community culture that values being stoic and defiant, and being the independent kind that rejects being ordered by the authorities to do anything at all. But isn't that last one legitimate nevertheless?
The authors then arrived at their conclusion, which is that laws should be passed to eliminate all those foolish stay-puts, and they ended by returning to their ultimate horror story, and saying in effect, "See? Though your own misguided life as a stay-put may be spared, you will be punished worst of all by seeing your child or, even worse, your dog being carried out to sea."
But I think they left out some important aspects. One is free will. Another is the sanctity of one's home, and still another is abhorrence of the supreme self-importance that authorities love to assume in out-of-the-ordinary moments, and nowhere is that more obvious than before, during, and after evacuations.
Of course, in today's world, with travesties such as all these wars on drugs, on terror, and on countries one after the other in the Middle East, free will is scorned whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Meanwhile, when you're talking about evacuation, you're talking about not merely leaving a crucial part of one's being, his home, but instead abandoning it to its fate. And one of the worse results is that when you try to return, you might very well be barred from doing so by men with guns and the full force of the law, for some period of time, as happened in Galveston, or conceivably, as has happened in various ways in New Orleans, forever.
And as for the elderly and infirm, children, and even dogs being wards of the state and therefore out of the hands of the ordinary citizen, the state is so indifferent to the welfare of the less advantaged that it doesn't do the best job of warding, and therefore, because its decrees too frequently are put into place by people who are more interested in being obeyed than they are in being charitable and considerate, what the law orders doesn't automatically come under the heading of virtue. Nothing does when it's at the point of a gun.
Ordinarily I try to avoid speculations like this. Too often I've heard people saying, with the utmost self-assurance, that if they had been in such-and-such a situation in which so-and-so did such-and-such a thing that didn't work out at all, they would have done something else entirely that would have solved the whole problem.
So quite often descendants of the slaves from Africa will hold slaves and even survivors of Jim Crow in contempt, saying that if they, the modern generation, had been around, they wouldn't have stood still for a moment for such treatment. Instead they would have picked up guns and kicked butt, and so forth. They can do this so blithely because they can afford not to bother with taking the time and the trouble to consider all the thousand and one factors that caused those on whom such injustices were inflicted to take other courses of action, or inaction, as the case might've been.
In the case of evacuations, I chance the "I would've done such-and-such" snare because it's a question that strikes directly at several aspects that are important to me.
Newsweek ran an article called "Riders on the Storm" by two writers that addressed this issue, but I think it announced that it was going to fall short at some point and lapse into the merely patronizing when it began with the tale of a "stay put" who survived his house breaking into two but had to watch his dog being carried away by Hurricane Ike, and then they asked the question, "Why do people stay when they're told to leave? Is it out of necessity, or ignorance, or foolhardiness?" Note that by the number of words they gave the choices, they suggested that the non-sensible reasons are twice as likely to be the case as what they regard as being the sensible ones, which involve
not acting on one's own information or calculations or instincts, but instead doing strictly what one is told.
They then went on to discuss the "legitimate" reasons and then the non-legitimate ones. The people with legitimate reasons included the elderly and feeble who are too fragile to go anywhere on their own, poor people who have no car or other means to escape, or can't risk losing days from work in case it's a false alarm, and people who have "legitimate concerns" about the security of their homes and their belongings. But wouldn't that last one include everybody anyway?
The illegitimate reasons involve denying reality and engaging in denial, thrill-seeking, depending on having survived previous storms, being part of a community culture that values being stoic and defiant, and being the independent kind that rejects being ordered by the authorities to do anything at all. But isn't that last one legitimate nevertheless?
The authors then arrived at their conclusion, which is that laws should be passed to eliminate all those foolish stay-puts, and they ended by returning to their ultimate horror story, and saying in effect, "See? Though your own misguided life as a stay-put may be spared, you will be punished worst of all by seeing your child or, even worse, your dog being carried out to sea."
But I think they left out some important aspects. One is free will. Another is the sanctity of one's home, and still another is abhorrence of the supreme self-importance that authorities love to assume in out-of-the-ordinary moments, and nowhere is that more obvious than before, during, and after evacuations.
Of course, in today's world, with travesties such as all these wars on drugs, on terror, and on countries one after the other in the Middle East, free will is scorned whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Meanwhile, when you're talking about evacuation, you're talking about not merely leaving a crucial part of one's being, his home, but instead abandoning it to its fate. And one of the worse results is that when you try to return, you might very well be barred from doing so by men with guns and the full force of the law, for some period of time, as happened in Galveston, or conceivably, as has happened in various ways in New Orleans, forever.
And as for the elderly and infirm, children, and even dogs being wards of the state and therefore out of the hands of the ordinary citizen, the state is so indifferent to the welfare of the less advantaged that it doesn't do the best job of warding, and therefore, because its decrees too frequently are put into place by people who are more interested in being obeyed than they are in being charitable and considerate, what the law orders doesn't automatically come under the heading of virtue. Nothing does when it's at the point of a gun.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:20 AM
2 Comments:
Any person who has never been in the situation of being forced to flee in the wake of a hurricane could never understand the feelings that you go through. When we evacuated for Dennis, I insisted that we take 2 cars (for 4 people). I took every picture I could get my hands on (took them off the walls), my computer hard drive, the ashes of our deceased dog and my great-grandmother's china doll. I was a couple of hours out of town when I remembered all of the video tapes of my son's first few years. My husband thinks I am insane, but this things represented my LIFE. I only took a couple of changes of clothes. Clothes, TVs, couches can all be replaced, but these things could not be. Then there is an overwhelming fear of what will happen while you are gone, how long it will be before you are allowed to return and other overwhelming fears and horrors. We were lucky, we lost a few branches off of a tree that needed trimming anyway. In '04, when Ivan came through a tornado passed over the house (luckily not anywhere near touchdown), DSD swears he will never stay again after that. I, however, totally understand staying, this is my HOME. I know it is not as important as my life or that of my family, but I am one of those who would stay if it were just me. I leave only to protect them.
Having said that, in answer to your comment on my blog, I ADORE hurricanes. They are the most fascinating thing in the world to me. I would love to be Jim Cantore standing out in the middle of one, just once. :-) I don't wish them on anyone though and feel horrible for the people who have suffered from them. What a world we live in.
Unluckily, my satellite receiver is broken and I've been missing out on all the Weather Channel's doings these days, but my wife, who was in Fla during Fay, informed me that those guys and girls (notably S. Abrams) were in full excitement mode, as they were in 2005. I get a big kick out of seeing how, with Cantore in the lead, while taking the obligatory note of the death and destruction the storms bring, they nevertheless are clearly excited out of their minds at having a string of hurricanes to testify to and to experience in person and on camera, in contrast to what must be the deadly dull business of reporting ordinary weather. That makes perfect sense to me.
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