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You can’t always understand an idiomatic phrase when you’ve only seen it in a single context. Case in point: George Bush’s “Bring ‘em on!” I now understand that if you’re a Texan, this means “I have no prudence, and am very likely stupid.” The clarifying second example:
Texas holdouts urge Hurricane Ike to “bring it on!”Tell me I’m wrong.GALVESTON, Texas (Reuters) - Hurricane Ike may be taking aim for the low-lying coast of Texas, but grocery store worker Jacqueline Harris is staying put — in a flimsy, wooden beach bar.
“If nature is going to come and get us, bring it on!” Harris said as she sipped a Bud light beer at the Poop Deck, a tavern a stone’s throw from the sandy coastal strip thrashed by white-capped waves. …
Residents of vulnerable coastal areas like Galveston Island are under a mandatory evacuation order. They face 111 mile per hour (177 kph) winds and tidal surges of up to 20 feet (6 metres) if Ike makes landfall as a dangerous Category 3 storm as expected late on Friday. Texas governor Rick Perry urged residents to heed evacuation orders in such low-lying areas of the Gulf of Mexico that face severe flooding from tidal surges and heavy rains.
Some have decided to stay, boarding up their windows and preparing to move to higher floors ahead of the storm’s surge, which is tipped to top Galveston’s 17-foot (5-metre) sea wall and flood the island from end-to-end by daylight on Saturday.
A Category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Galveston in 1900 killed at least 6,000 people, making it the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
The manager of the Poop Deck, Marie Aldrich-Creasy, says she has no plans to leave. She has stockpiled batteries, candles and a few tins of food, but said would not be shuttering her bar, which faces the sea a few yards (metres) across a highway. …
Hmm, I think it's probably a hubris detector.
A very, very good one.
(Gesundheit, Teresa!)
Early reports this morning stated that workers were unable to respond to frantic calls for rescue and help due to the rising water and wind. Ill advised, yes; lack of foresight, yes. No reports yet of calls saying "We've turned the corner," or "The surge is working."
I would amend to "I have no prudence, and am very likely stupid - with a deathwish."
Lockwood: Judging from the flooding and fires, this is the one time when "the [storm] surge is working" would be absolutely truthful.
Rita's evacuation was worse than the hurricane, and the stories I heard from family who went through it--well, I wasn't pleased that they all stayed put this time, but I also agreed with their decision.
I'm absolutely certain that a lot of that "bring it on" stuff is bravado covering fear. If you're choosing between death by being washed away, or death by being blown away while you're stuck in a traffic jam, it's not all that stupid to pick the place with the alcohol.
Wow. That's... a rather impressive failure of sense. I just saw video from Galveston, the storm surge picked up BOULDERS (possibly from the jetties) and tossed them up over the seawall and across the road. All the piers along the seawall are gone, including the Balinese Room.
I doubt this bar exists anymore.
Uttered by people who are the Star of Their Very Own Movie and have no idea that there are other movies playing out there, with far greater audiences -- and besides movies are NOT real life, despite how much we're persuaded that movies and television (and the internet) are Real Life.
Love, C.
"Everything I own and love is on the island; I'm going down with the ship"
The idea of starting over, trying to build a new life in a new place, can be absolutely terrifying. She didn't say that she would beat the storm but that she would rather die than give up everything that she knows.
In the big picture, that attitude doesn't make sense, but in the moment of fear...well, making sense isn't always a priority.
As for me, I fear the unknown much more than death. Yet I will attempt to brave the unknown rather than embrace death.
You are wrong. What this woman is doing is not stupid. It is, actually, very wise. See, she's looking at the larger picture: mankind. This is a self-nomination for a Darwin award. I wish her all the best.
>Tell me I’m wrong.
You are wrong.
(You didn't say I had to MEAN it. Always eager to oblige, me.)
That woman certainly sounds self-destructive -- that's the kind of rhetoric that I associate with alcoholics and others who are chosing suicide by slow methods.
I have just never, ever understood people who don't evacuate when they have the option.
I was raised in eastern Washington state. I grew up on stories of of the St. Helen's eruption, and I grew up in the reality of what the term "fire country" means. I will never, ever understand the logic of people who choose to stay behind when they have the time and resources to evacuate (and I know that not everyone always does), especially when their explanation for remaining is an attachment to or desire to protect their home or business. The desire to protect one's property is understandable, but in the end property can be replaced, people can't. No building, no matter how beloved, is worth dying for.
Think of it as Darwin at work. People who are too stupid to leave the site of what might be a dangerous event shouldn't be left around to contaminate the gene pool.
I have been in a few tropical storms, they're not funny; and they're bloody impersonal. Only an idiot with a death wish would challenge the mother and father of breezes to a fight. All you can do if you can't get out of the way is hunker down and hope. Hope is a very thin support when you discover exactly what 'torrential' means.
Down on the sea wall, Robert Shumake laughed when asked why he had not left the island. Walking with the American flag on a four-foot pole, Mr. Shumake said he had not broken his routine in seven years and, “by golly,” he was not going to deviate now.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, he said, he has not missed a day of his morning ritual of walking along the shore carrying the flag. “This is nature meets the proud United States of America, and my US of A is going to win,” Mr. Shumake said.
Every time I hear a story like this, I think of the evacuation of Iceland's Heimæy Island. A smaller island, admittedly, but the entire population was saved, save for possibly one person looting a pharmacy. No one said, "bring it on" or "I'm staying with my home," because everyone who lived there knew there was no arguing with a volcano.
I'm not sure everyone would be so sensible here. As I recall, there were folks who remained on the slopes of Mount St. Helens, too.
I've been told that in Iceland, in stories of man versus nature, nature always wins.
sadly, if they survive their stupidity, they will feel vindicated and will only continue to act even dumber in the future...
I'm a Texan, and that kind of behavior is considered stupid.
Even though we're way north, we made preparations. The storm took an eastward path from us, but you don't know these things two or three days in advance.
Best thing I did was top off the gas tank before the prices went up. ;-)
Fragano @ #13, "all you can do. . .is hunker down and hope."
Which is what we did back in 1992. (Chile had its 9/11 in 1975; Hawai'i had its in '92.)
I've come to strongly dislike the "think of it as Darwin in action" meme. Some of the people who refused to evacuate were parents; if those families had been washed away by a twenty-one foot storm surge (note: this didn't actually happen), would the deaths of the children have been something we regard with a wisecrack about "Darwin in action"? I think not.
The point of human culture is to enable us to make choices based on something other than nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw. Acgtual "Darwin in action" would have probably meant early deaths for Arthur Hlavaty, Jo Walton, and Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
And yes, it's aggravating to watch people do stupidly self-destructive things, but if we can help them, we ought to anyway. No Darwinian law precludes the person who's too stupid to get out of the way of obvious danger from also being the person who, twenty years later, creates something that improves the lives of millions. We don't know. "Even the Wise do not know all ends."
The real purpose of sentiments like "think of it as evolution in action" is to reassure ourselves--that because we're smarter than that, we're in control. That misfortunes on that order won't befall us. To help ourselves pretend that we live in an ordered world in which certain kinds of stupidity are reliably punished and certain kinds of intelligence are generally rewarded. We all need that kind of reassurance frequently. None of this is to reprove anyone for emitting the "Darwin in action" meme; I've done it myself. But we should think about whether it's actually true and what we actually mean.
(Mind you, I also agree with Teresa that people who declare in no uncertain terms that they're nitwits deserve, at the very least, to be mocked. See also Beth Meacham's notion, from many years ago, of a legal category analogous to "legally blind," viz., "legally stupid." It was Beth's contention that such people should have to wear bright orange vests, often over their business suits.)
Thanks, Patrick - that nicely expresses my feelings about it. I spent a grim while last night thinking about kids stuck on Galveston owing to their parents' decisions; fortunately it sounds much less bad than it could have been.
The real purpose of sentiments like "think of it as evolution in action" is to reassure ourselves--that because we're smarter than that, we're in control. That misfortunes on that order won't befall us. To help ourselves pretend that we live in an ordered world in which certain kinds of stupidity are reliably punished and certain kinds of intelligence are generally rewarded.
...And to make us feel better about harm coming to someone else, because they probably deserved it, or at least, it's all for a greater cosmic good. It's a way of insulating ourselves against human connection with people who are different from us.
Some people are stupid; yes. Some people are reckless; yes. It's very difficult to help some people; yes. But no person is worthless.
Thanks for saying what you did, Patrick.
Lockwood @ 2... The surge is working
Twelve hours a day for the last two weeks.
(I figured I make that joke before Ginger did.)
Serge @ 22: I can neither confirm nor deny that comment.
'legally stupid'.
Sounds like a good idea. I'd say that people who won't evacuate even when they're told it's a mandatory order, and that no one will be coming to rescue them, are qualified for it. The people who were there with their children and didn't send the kids to safer places, for sure.
Patrick - I disagree with how you interpret the Darwin meme in regard to this particular event.
Hurricanes don't spring up over night. They come with plenty of warning. People who live in those places know what a hurricane can do. The intelligent thing is to evacuate. There are resources for those who can't afford to leave on their own.
I don't think we say that because it gives us the illusion of control, we say it because we can't believe that there are organisms in this world who are that ignorant.
Have to say I've gotten REALLY tired of the Darwin meme. And I find it especially amusing when applied to people who have already reproduced....
it's aggravating to watch people do stupidly self-destructive things, but if we can help them, we ought to anyway.
This way lies mandatory evacuation enforced by the National Guard. I'd rather let people make their own decisions and take their own risks. I suspect the "it's good the idiots will get killed" is adopted as insulation against the urge to help even when you're not wanted.
I've been watching Twitscoop, which was rather instructive during the hurricane. There's a lot of relief and a lot of reporting going on Twitter right now, of people assessing damage and being glad it wasn't worse.
And then of course there are people who are all like, "'Certain death', my a$$! I'm never going to listen to the warnings again, they're just hype!"
*facepalm*
Thank you, Patrick.
And to the social Darwinists out there: you have said "they're stupid and they deserve to die" about the low-income whites on Galveston Island. Did you say the same about the low-income blacks in New Orleans after Katrina? Explain.
David Dyer-Bennet: And what of the people those who refuse to leave have control over? It's not a soluble question, but all things being equal, I think mandatory evacuation isn't an evil thing.
People who don't really comprehend what they are up against may need to have their predjudices/rugged individualism overridden.
At some level I am my brother's keeper.
TexAnne @5:
If you're choosing between death by being washed away, or death by being blown away while you're stuck in a traffic jam, it's not all that stupid to pick the place with the alcohol.
Very Sean of the Dead, that line of thinking.
PNH 19: Some of the people who refused to evacuate were parents; if those families had been washed away by a twenty-one foot storm surge (note: this didn't actually happen), would the deaths of the children have been something we regard with a wisecrack about "Darwin in action"? I think not.
Not a wisecrack, no. But if one really believes that the parents are improving the genepool by taking themselves out of it, that implies that stupidity and arrogance are genetic, and to remove those genes from the genepool requires taking out their children as well. Heartless? You bet. But that's exactly what the Darwin meme implies.
"Oh, so you think his kids should be killed too?" Is a good response when someone says that (and yes, I've been known to do it too). Sidling right up to the Godwin wall can't hurt either.
And I just heard a rescue worker on NPR saying that no, they don't have any resentment toward people who should have evacuated and didn't. Paraphrasing, he says they have all sorts of reasons for not going; no money, no transportation, nowhere to go, or just misjudged the topography of the neighborhood. Some of those are more sympathetic than others, but who are we to judge? Perfect people who never do anything dumb?
Well, I am, but no we're not.
abi @ 31... Very Sean of the Dead, that line of thinking
A Hero shall rise... from his sofa.
JJ Fozz @25:
There are resources for those who can't afford to leave on their own.
Please tell me you didn't just say that. What exactly do you think happened in New Orleans during Katrina?
we say it because we can't believe that there are organisms in this world who are that ignorant.
There are. But there are also organisms who are unable to do the smart thing for other reasons—poverty, attachment to someone who will not or cannot move, reasons I do not know. And their bravado, their making the best of it, sounds exactly like stupidity.
Point is, we can't tell the sheep from the goats, the foolish from the unfortunate, or the wise from the lucky. Unless you're one of that sect of Calvinists who think that divine favor is reflected in earthly fortune, you can't read the soul from the outcome of the situation.
Besides, I've certainly done some mind-bogglingly stupid things in my life. I was, for the most part, lucky in the outcomes, apart from that exploding bottle of stove fuel. But when my luck ran out, I am glad no one thought that it was just Darwin doing his thing.
abi @ 35... One problem is who gets to define stupidity.
#36: Well, it won't be me; but I'm really glad I'm a Beta.
David Dyer-Bennett @27: I don't actually think manual enforced evacuations are necessarily a bad thing. One of the things that always happens in these situations is that some people think they want to stick it out and they'll be fine and realize right before/just as things start getting bad that actually they really should have left. At which point getting out is either impossible or considerably more difficult and requires the assistance of rescue/emergency personnel.
Sometimes our first stubborn instincts are wrong, and sometimes it requires someone else bodily hauling them out of a situation for people to realize that.
While we're talking about rhetorical figures we dislike, I'd like to grumble a bit about people who talk as if some ghostly spirit of Charles Darwin was flitting about, giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to various people or animals. It's evolution in action, not Darwin. Bad enough we've got religious nuts insisting that "Darwinism" is a state-sanctioned religion, we who know better shouldn't be helping them out.
Also, Frankenstein's monster.
Jon Meltzer @ 37... I'm really glad I'm a Beta
Did you know that, in French, 'bêta' means 'nincompoop'? Heheheh.
Otto West: Don't call me stupid.
Wanda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
Otto West: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.
I think I read somewhere that Darwin hated the idea of natural selection. After all, lots of creatures who wind up on the losing side get to live in pain if they don't quickly die.
And, you know, a valued Fluorospherite (at least I value her) stayed in Houston. I don't think anyone here would want her to think that the snarkful discussions of "improving the species" were directed at her.
I was going to write a diatribe...and then found that Patrick had done it.
"Think of it as evolution in action' and the like are cues to dampen compassion. But I agree with Philip Dick and a lot of other people over the millennia that empathy is crucial to being human - what distinguishes the machine from the human is precisely that the machine doesn't feel, and doesn't ever feel sympathy or regret or anything else.
I think that dismissing others' humanity and worth on an individual basis makes it that bit easier to do it to all of the people in a social class, belief, or nation, too. It's a vile thread in the tapestry of current thought, and well worth plucking out. As I've been putting it in some health care-related arguments lately, even stupid and ugly people are still people, and deserve better from us than being just dismissed. A person may be doing something that looks foolish and probably is - Teresa's right about "bring it on!" as a marker in that regard - but that doesn't release us from doing the stuff that all people have a claim to.
Aren't culture and charity evolutionary advantages?
Patrick @ #19, I see your point, but if someone like Jim dies trying to rescue someone who deliberately defies a sensible evacuation order, I think I would be justifiably pissed.
Also, what Clifton said @ #20 about stupid parents putting their kids at risk.
TomB: I have no idea if charity is an evolutionary advantage or not. But I'm also very strongly inclined these days not to care. I mean, there's a certain biological elegance to the brain cancer that killed Dad, and yet I propose to help stomp such things out, if I can. I believe that people genuinely incapable of feeling empathy do exist, and that in various situations that lack of connection to humanity gives them competitive advantages, but I still don't want them in power. And so on.
Short form: I'm more interested in what's good than what's in some sense objectively efficient.
I'm going to say something that's probably going to be unpopular, but I'm tired of everyone who ignores a mandatory evacuation order being regarded as "stupid" or "evolution waiting to happen".
The state officials don't always give the best orders for every single person in the area. Case in point: the Gustav evacuation. Damn thing was only a Cat 2 when it hit the coast, the floodwalls held just fine, and the rains were severely attenuated by a band of dry air that got caught up in the storm circulation and essentially gutted it. A lot of people who could NOT afford to evacuate listened to the overblown, deliberately-panic-inducing warnings from the likes of Nagin and Broussard and bugged out, spending their rent money, their utility money, their mortgage money, their grocery money on gasoline and hotel bills that were completely unnecessary. When the evacuation was ordered, FEMA officials assured people that FEMA would pay for evacuation expenses, and there was no need to hurry back. Afterwards, however.... FEMA officials suddenly remembered that you only get paid for evacuation expenses if your house is unliveable when you return, and a power outage doesn't count.
There's a whole lot of people who aren't evacuating next time, because they were lied to and burned up money they couldn't afford for NOTHING.
I've ridden out quite a few hurricanes over the years. I always monitor the NHC advisories and forecast discussions carefully, study the satellite imagery, and make up my own mind based what the NHC says about how dangerous the hurricane will be where *I* live. I evaluated Katrina, and evacuated out ahead of the crowd to someplace above sea level. I evaluated Gustav, realized from the keywords used that Nagin et al were trying to panic people into fleeing (and Aaron Broussard went into panic-mode like he does every single hurricane), weighed it against my personal situation, and stayed put. My home took less damage and there was less risk than to the place I would have evacuated to did.
That being said, staying on the beachfront with a big hurricane coming in is either suicidal or retarded. Go visit a friend who lives somewhere well above sea-level until the storm passes. Riding out hurricanes is only for those with good roofs on their houses and a house that is somewhere well above and beyond the storm surge.
My recommendation: Stand in front of the birth control display at the local pharmacy, and each time someone buys something, shake your head sadly and say "Think of it as evolution in action." (What, you think your fitness is mainly determined by how many hurricanes you ride out?)
#48
Do you really want to bet the lives of your family, or, worse, those of the rescuers, on the forecast being always for conditions worse than actually happen? I sure wouldn't want to.
The people putting out evac orders are trying to make sure that everyone is out of the area so they don't have to rescue people at the last minute, or find and remove bodies from the debris afterward.
One of the primary vectors for the spread of "Think of it as evolution in action" was Niven and Pournelle's 1982 novel Oath of Fealty. If I remember correctly, the phrase first appears as a graffito written by a depressed man about to attempt suicide.
Thank you, Patrick. I despise the "evolution in action" crap, as you know, and it lessens my view of the decency of people who spout it. You're more polite and thoughtful than my gut reaction is.
I think people who say stuff like that need to consider the idea of part-time stupidity. We are, almost all of us, stupid about some things, often for reasons we aren't aware of or in control of. Has no one else done things so goddamned stupid that they realized later, or even immediately after, that they could have died right there and looked like a complete idiot? Or lived their life deliberately in a way that carries significant risk, making a knowing trade of safety for other considerations? I walk around New York at night by myself in sketchy neighborhoods, because there are limits to the degree to which I'm willing to circumscribe my life, and there's no doubt that it makes my life less safe.
I'd evacuate for a hurricane like this. I wouldn't express that kind of moronic bravado if I stayed (but that's not my personality; no doubt I would rationalize it in other eminently mockable ways). But I don't live there, and don't really have any sense of what it's like to have to evacuate, or to potentially lose everything while I'm gone, as a New Orleans friend reminded me a couple weeks ago when I was critical of those refusing to evacuate. I certainly don't conclude that anyone who stays must be an idiot in all ways, let alone a worthless person better dead for the sake of humanity, and I think it's simplistic -- without even considering the implications upon one's soul to dismiss people so cavalierly on the basis of a couple quotes in a newspaper story -- to so conclude.
Scraps, I'm off to have a torrid affair with your phrase "part-time stupidity". I love it.
Galveston and Houston are not the the same place.
The uncategorical "leave or you face death" warnings were for Galveston only. For other areas the warnings were "if you are on low ground susceptible to likely flooding out evacuate.
Katrina was several years ago and, while this is not a polite thing to say, New Orleans is a city that didn't vote the Republican--compare how Mississippi was treated, particularly the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, before the hurricane hit, during the storm, and after, to the federal treatment of New Orleans--a relief mission sent out from a Navy ship (some small boat or other relatively small surface vehicle that normally was on the ship, that could do landings) going to New Orleans with supplied including clean water was actually called back when very near the city, because the Executive Branch? or someone higher up than the ship's captain otherwise, ordered the ship to go to Mississippi coast instead to provide aid.
And no, I'm not exaggerating, not making that up up, at least one of the the would-be rescue missions members got I think interviewed by the new media afterward and was irate about the situation.
Texas, however, is the state the the occupant of the White House maintains his legal residence in.
The concern he evinced de for the devastation of New Orleans was alligator tears--flying in for a photo op and having the temerity to not even leave the generator that provided the power for the lights for the photo-op, behind to help provide power in New Orleans, even though the main city generators continued to be offline.... talk about offensive, obnoxious evil exploitive manipulative grandstanders....
Does anyone remember what, if anything, McCain said about the situation?
Do you really want to bet the lives of your family, or, worse, those of the rescuers, on the forecast being always for conditions worse than actually happen? I sure wouldn't want to.The people putting out evac orders are trying to make sure that everyone is out of the area so they don't have to rescue people at the last minute, or find and remove bodies from the debris afterward.
Do you really want to trust the government officials putting out the evac orders? I sure wouldn't want to.
I don't think I'd care to lecture someone who's been through this about her evidently thoughtful considerations of her situation, and her irritation at labels of stupidity being casually flung around.
I would like to observe that most of the morning and early afternoon featured video and live reports from Galveston. For the last two hours, since in fact the pool helicopter headed toward it, there have been absolutely no current reports.
I don't think that means that there's nothing worth reporting.
Avram: re Evolution in action
Not quite. One of the designers of Todos Santos says it, in the earshot of someone who is prevented from committing suicide. He later kills himself, and leaves it scrawled on the wall near where his body is found.
Good point, Beth. I'm looking at the KHOU forums for the Bolivar Peninsula right now--that's where the east wall of the eye hit. One poster says that the causeway to the mainland flooded Friday morning when the storm was still 200mi offshore. (That's pretty unusual.) Another person says that everything from the ferry to High Island is gone.
As a non-USAian, I'm curious what evacuation support was provided to people without cars, people with limited mobility (i.e. in a wheelchair, needing help to walk, etc.), people on low incomes, etc.
I'm wondering how many of the people who chose not to evacuate did so because evacuation wasn't a feasible, or even a possible, option for them.
Beth Meacham @ 56: I saw what purported to be CNN live from Galveston an hour ago, at the bus station.
Are any of the folks who were down at the Seawall Friday, getting themselves immortalized in photos, among the living?
scraps, I'll trust NHC and NOAA, even though a lot of the rest of government has been corrupted to one or another degree. At least until they're demonstrated to have gone bad also. FEMA, not.
I just got some more wind-up flashlights. You can never have too many.
There's risking one's life when able-bodied by call-it-stupidity, and then there is forcing would-be rescuers to risk their lives... the Appalachin Mountain Club is particularly unfond of of idiots who go hiking up Mt Washington without any sort of water, jackets, etc., when the weather predictions are for bad weather there... especially the idiots who do that in the winter. Other people have to risk their lives trying to retrieve the hikers--or their bodies. It's got some of the worst weather of any place inhabited on the planet.)
P. J. Evans -- live weather satellite imagery is hard to fake....
Oceanesque @ 59 - I had the same question about assistance.
According to this article, Galveston had buses to get people to Austin and numbers to call to ask for help. I haven't heard any reports of how well it actually worked, though.
abi @ 35:
Thank you. A very, very fervent thank you, 'cause it kept me from a rant.
Oceanesque @ 59:
Friends/neighbors and I had that conversation right after Katrina (all of us living in low-income housing in downtown Seattle). Out of 39 of us, over 50% were disabled in some way or other. Maybe three of us had cars... public transportation wouldn't even have been adequate for the able-bodied. Me, I had a car, so - who would I take with me? If I took person X and her wheelchair or walker, that wheelchair would take the place of a person. The discussions were... interesting, to say the least. And extremely depressing, 'cause the ways out of Seattle are limited, I-5 or 99 north and south, and the two floating bridges to the east - in other words, there'd be the same sort of clusterfuck there was for Rita three years ago. The despairing conclusion we reached was "might as well stay; we're screwed no matter what we try to do."
FEMA officials suddenly remembered that you only get paid for evacuation expenses if your house is unliveable when you return, and a power outage doesn't count.At the risk of detracting from the ongoing flamewar, I would like to point out that this is an absolutely outrageous standard. Given who's currently running FEMA I have exactly zero faith that it is even the correct standard to apply, but if it *is* the correct standard it needs immediate congressional action.
If an official evacuation advisory is issued, FEMA should be required to pay evacuation and return expenses regardless of whether the advisory was right or wrong. Because you really don't want people to be weighing the risk that they'll have to personally eat that cost in their decision to evacuate or not.
Then you need institutional safeguards against the *bureaucrats* weighing the cost in their decision to issue evacuation warnings or not.
One of the main points of having a government is to spread that kind of risk and cost over broader shoulders than it would otherwise fall on.
FWIW, I don't think there's a flamewar going on.
Paula, I'm not arguing that people doing stupid things to put themselves in need of rescue (and putting rescuers in danger) is defensible. I'm arguing against calling it "evolution in action" or cheerfully dismissing people who do such stupid things from the ranks of those who deserve to live -- or defining people and their worth by any one thing we know about them (if a couple of quotes in a newspaper article can even be said to be knowledge).
Nevertheless, when a snowmobiler gets drunk and hits a tree five miles from the trail head at two in the morning when it's forty below ... I do my very best to save his life.
The ultimate comeback to the "evolution in action" idea, from The African Queen:
"Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above."
It is OUR nature to be less unforgiving than Nature herself. I worship Nature (Natura Sola Sufficit), but Dorothy Day put it very well IMO when she said "God has no hands but ours to work His will." And no, she didn't mean defeating the Heathen!
David Foster Wallace was found dead. Police say he hanged himself. He was 46.
Evolutionary fitness is statistical and contextual; just because you die in the plague doesn't mean you're unfit, it means you're unlucky. (Old, young, didn't have enough to eat the last couple days, tired...) Your plague-relevant genes might be the ones that are going to get into the future, courtesy of a 80% mortality rate versus the 99.995% the other plague-relevant genes are getting. (Keep in mind that when measles hit Asia Minor, entire cities just went away, never to return. Those are not inherently implausible proportions. There hasn't been a nasty green-field epidemic in a long while, at least not among people; what's happening to the Pacific sea lions is another thing.)
The core problem with treating disaster survival as an intelligence test, with categories of failure denoting the sorrowful state of being too stupid to live, is that it's the future, and everyone is guessing. Some better than others, but it's extraordinarily easy to apply some sort of post-facto rationalization to events. (There's a Chuck Yeager story about his tenure running the USAF test pilot school; guy in the rear seat ejected from a crash, guy in the front seat rode it in. Large parts of the plane wound up in the rear seat; the front seat had a defective ejection mechanism. Yeager apparently used this an example of school graduates making good calls. Holding this up as an example of making good calls is wrong; it's an example of dumb luck turning out well.)
Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance, sure; in my tribe, insufficient forethought and planning is a sin. Those jump bags Uncle Jim goes on about? Damn good idea.
But you're still going to be rolling dice when it's real. Rolling 7 when the other fellow rolls snake eyes isn't a metric for worth.
Xopher: thank you.
My dislike of the Retort Darwinistic aside, I've seen enough disasters to feel all that good about insisting that I know what the smart thing for a given person or family to do is.
Generally, you guess based on what you've got and find out when it's too late if what you had was right.
Meanwhile, the Elissa survived:
"not to feel all that good", clearly. S'rry.
Rest in Peace, David Foster Wallace.
Xopher @ 70... It is OUR nature to be less unforgiving than Nature herself.
If not for that, we'd have gone extinct a long time ago. Not much good in trees. Not very fast on the ground either.
"Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one thing that sets above the other animals? What other merit have we? The elephant is larger, the horse stronger and swifter, the butterfly more beautiful, the mosquito more prolific, even the sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?"
(Spencer Tracy in Inherit theWind)
Many of the people choosing to ride out this hurricane have ridden out many hurricanes before, and have had lots of opportunity to compare their first-hand experience with the advance predictions and warnings. I'm saying we should let them make their own choices, and live with them.
How many times a year would we evacuate from Galveston if we went every time it was "ordered"? What would that cost?
Thinking we know better than other people what's good for them, and the subsequent urge to force them to do what we think is good for them, is a major source of horridness, evil if you like, in the world. Even if in some sense we're right a lot of the time.
I'm not against all law or even all regulation, but when the justification is "it's for your own good", I'm very suspicious. The laws against murder, robbery, and so forth aren't for the good of the people they hope to prevent from acting; they're for the good of society. While vaccination does help the individual child, the argument for *requiring* it is for the good of the group of children in the community.
As with all real-world problems, there are complexities. I agree the question of what degree of control parents should be allowed over their children is an important and very difficult one, here as in so many other areas.
The question of risks to rescue workers is IMHO simpler (not simple; but that last one has real bones in it, and I think this one is simpl*er*). At some level of danger, if you want to declare a "mandatory" evacuation, I think it's at that point perfectly fair to say there will be no emergency support until it's all over. That's a factor people can take into account in their decision making. I do think that if you order a mandatory evacuation you need to *pay* for it. Although at some point, it's time to say "nobody living there is eligible for emergency assistance ever again."
When Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel was covering the approaching hurricane Gustav, he reported that several families had taken shelter on their shrimp boat in the port. Even though their children were on board with them, and they knew that the storm could generate a massive storm surge that would destroy their boat, they refused to leave.
Jim was clearly upset about their refusal, and he looked like he really wanted to yell at them for being so stupid and risking their children's lives, but he only sounded sad when he said that they refused to leave even knowing the risks.
This morning some of TWC's people were interviewing citizens who actually made it through Ike on Galveston Island. One was a man in his early 20's who used the time on camera to assure his parents he was alive and unhurt, but hastened to say he'd never do that again. He was shaken but obviously glad to be alive.
Nevertheless, when a snowmobiler gets drunk and hits a tree five miles from the trail head at two in the morning when it's forty below ... I do my very best to save his life.
It makes sense even from a wrong-end-of-the-telescope, zero-empathy, betterment-of-the-species point of view, if you really think it through. There's a chance he might have learned something, a chance that he might tell somebody else and make an impression. It's not a 100% chance by any means, but in this case it has a much better chance of resulting in smarter people than natural selection.
(Or maybe that's not exactly a zero-empathy argument--it requires thinking of the crash victim as a human being.)
People spinning glib narratives about self-deselecting humans often forget that cultural evolution works on a faster time scale than the biological evolution of behavior, and not all cultural transmission is parent-to-child--which is a strange thing to forget in the present era. My favorite examples of this are all the people who make bold predictions about future society based on differential birth rates. Religious conservatives have more kids than secular liberals, so the conservatives will inherit the earth! (Stupidest version: the claim that Democrats are aborting themselves out of existence.) It sounds plausible until you realize that that religious conservatives had more kids than secular liberals even generations before the Pill and Roe, probably to a greater degree, and everyone isn't a religious conservative now.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden @ 19: Seconded. Thirded. n+1ed.
As I am daily reminded of, “The whole point of society is to be less unforgiving than nature.”
#68 James D
...and then you show everyone at the next convention you're at where you got frostbite....
I just keep having this thought, without some facts that are probably known (but I don't know them) and some information that almost certainly is not known at this time.
Some number of people chose to stay on Galveston Island. (My mother lived in Houston in the early 50s and observed that they were nuts, by the way and she's a big "property and MY house" type.) For purposes of discussion, let's assume that number is 10,000.
There was some sort of official pronouncement made that to stay was "certain death."
Before we know what the death toll is, I can't help wondering what number/percentage of deaths would make that statement a reasonable one. If the percentage of those who stayed and died is 100% then it was obviously a terrible choice. But at what point does that become a "Well, they were lucky that the death toll was only -- what?"
I don't know the answer, but I'd like to have some clarity in my mind on that before the death toll really becomes known. 1%? 100 deaths? 10%? 1000 deaths?
Since I did see a news story that said that one land of the damaged bridge off the island had been cleared for outbound traffic only and people were leaving, it obviously isn't 100%. But what is the number that justifies mandatory evacuation? (I think it stands at somewhere over 10 deaths, but if it is over 100, then it should have been forced.)
And you do have to factor in that the evacuations themselves may cause deaths in certain vulnerable populations.
I just don't know, but I really didn't like the phrase "certain death" unless it was qualified in some way that I'm not aware of.
All that said, I'd be so gone. Actually, I'm absolutely sure I wouldn't even want to live in such a place.
Lynn C #82: I just don't know, but I really didn't like the phrase "certain death" unless it was qualified in some way that I'm not aware of.
It's used infrequently enough in official weather jargon that I agree with its usage in this case regardless of the actual casualty count; it is a very clearly noted phrase that must be taken seriously. I'd even go so far as to say that people in the target area who did not heed its warning should have their insurance rates significantly increased by way of justified punishment.
PJ Evans @ 50 -
Do you really want to bet the lives of your family, or, worse, those of the rescuers, on the forecast being always for conditions worse than actually happen? I sure wouldn't want to.
The thing is - those who evacuated might have. If they aren't getting reimbursed for that rent money, that utility money, the food budget for the next month, or the money to pay for their next batch of pills - they might well be dead.
Oh, not today, or tomorrow - but with no home, no lights, no gas, no food, or no (insert here - anti-depressants, HIV cocktail, etc. etc. etc.) they may well be just as dead as if Gustav had drowned them.
Nagin likely made the right call - given what he knew at the time - to say "Get out or get dead". Hopefully, next time a Cat (large) storm is bearing down, the mayor (Nagin or otherwise) will say 'get out or get dead" and people will again (mostly) listen.
But in some cases, the correct answer might be "y'know, that's a pretty smart idea - but I'm not leaving because (insert - my job's just too damn important to leave, I just can't afford it, my health condition won't let me, just not willing to suffer another relocation, or whatever)".
The people putting out evac orders are trying to make sure that everyone is out of the area so they don't have to rescue people at the last minute, or find and remove bodies from the debris afterward.
Assuming good will on the part of those putting out evac orders, this is correct.
Unfortunately, I'm not certain that is, in fact, a safe assumption to make in all cases.
Lynn C --
It's statistical, so "certain death" means something like "we are more than 95% confident that if our prediction is accurate, you will die". Far from perfect, but it's a guess about the future, so this is to be expected.
Mandatory evacuation happens when the competent authority orders it, where I live. Toronto had a spectacular 4 AM fireball a couple-three weeks back, because a propane depot blew up. Lots of property damage, one direct death, some probable indirect deaths, and a mandatory evacuation while the emergency crews went through, established that there were no further huge explosions in the offing, that it was safe to return, and that the core infrastructure remained in place. I don't think anyone commented about how there shouldn't have been a mandatory evacuation.
(The whole thing about "no emergency services there ever again"? Elegant but also requiring people to be horribly inhumane to someone they can see is suffering. The side effects from that start at bad and get rapidly worse.)
It's used infrequently enough in official weather jargon that I agree with its usage in this case regardless of the actual casualty count
What? If the casualty count was negligible, then it wasn't certain death. And I don't understand the logic of "agreeing" with it just because it's rarely used, either. I'd take it more seriously because it's rarely used, but the measure of certainty is whether it was true, not whether people should have believed it.
Scraps @67, et al: I don't think the "evolution in action" remarks are made *cheerfully* as a rule (except when by sociopaths or the utterly shallow), but rather as bitter, sardonic gallows-humor -- a response for when you have to either laugh or cry.
As I say on my emergency kits page: "Some situations are non-survivable. Think ahead. Stay out of those situations."
Abi - maybe it wasn't clear, but I wasn't referencing Katrina. That boondoggle was the fault of the feds, state, and Mr. Chocolate City himself.
My comment about Darwin was meant in this capacity:
How hard is it for a person, who is capable and intelligent and has been through a hurricane before, to leave when they're told that certain death is coming their way?
AND if they're single and they die, and their genes aren't passed to the next generation, then that does support Darwin's theory.
Regardless, there are plenty of morons in the world, we're not going to run out any time soon.
(Yeah, I know, I set myself up for it. All of you can rejoice and start making jokes.)
Karney"My brother's keeper", that's an interesting point - when do you stop looking out for your brother and start looking out for yourself and family? Tough choice.
Some people are not too smart as far as interpreting evidence. But, you all sound like snobs. Read this and tell me you just think these people deserve to die.
http://blogs.chron.com/hurricanes/2008/09/refusal_to_evacuate_leads_to_d.html
Why not instead consider the many possible reasons these folks might have not to trust police or other authorities. Where you put your fear is not always based on the same standards other people would put it.
anyone know if the poop deck lady survived???
The previous thread's discussion of emergency evacuation and preparedness in Cuba IMHO proves that all this talk about whether people are too stupid or too stupid to evacuate, whether it's "Darwinian", etc., are pure hogwash.
Cubans don't die in hurricanes because Cubans are mutually committed to having no-one die in hurricanes. It's truly important to Cuban leaders and the citizens at large for *no one* to be left behind -- even if they're poor, even if they're crippled, even if they're stupid. Their reaction to being all in the same boat is *not* "who do we toss over the side first?"
JJ Fozz @89:
You're assuming a lot of things. You're assuming that people are capable of leaving -- something other commenters have already pointed out the flaws of -- you're assuming that "certain death" is an accurate and meaningful assessment -- ditto -- and you're assuming that evacuating is, in fact, reasonably easy for anyone -- something I can assure you is not necessarily so. Oh, and you're assuming that single=childless, which is a ludicrous assumption.
Seriously, as others have pointed out, there can be a great many good reasons not to evacuate. Darwin comments are both inaccurate and in poor taste.
AND if they're single and they die, and their genes aren't passed to the next generation, then that does support Darwin's theory.
This has been explained before, but I'll try again: You understand neither the relationship of genetics to human behavior (which is muddied by many other factors, to say the least), nor the way natural selection plays out in the human world. The idea that there is a serious genetic component in play in most people's decision to ride out a hurricane, and that the deaths of the non-parents in that pool of people will remove a genetic trait from the gene pool to any significant degree, is simply insupportable in any scientific or mathematical way. Just on the level of science, what you are saying is nonsense.
On the level of assessing your fellow human beings, well, you seem to have entirely ignored these points the first time round, so I'll try boiling it down to one question: Do you really want to defend the idea that the worth of people can be defined by the one decision of theirs -- never mind the reasons they might have that you don't even begin to consider?
The "Bring It On!" attitude is exemplified by the cartoon image labeled "The Last Great Act of Defiance", featuring a mouse giving the finger to the hawk about to sweep it away.
How hard is it for a person, who is capable and intelligent and has been through a hurricane before, to leave when they're told that certain death is coming their way?
Because, JJ, in most cases the authorities are wrong. I refer you, once again, to the Rita evacuation. It was a clusterfuck. Nobody who went through it will ever evacuate willingly again. Mandatory evac for Gustav? Turned out to be unneeded. Ike? The flooding on the Bolivar Peninsula started Friday, well before it should have, and people were stuck in Crystal Beach and Gilchrest. Those towns aren't there anymore, and as far as anybody can tell, neither are the people who were stranded. Are you happy now?
A data point: I live in Iowa City, which two years ago was hit with a big tornado right near the downtown area. I've lived in the Midwest my entire conscious life.
My response to a tornado warning is to ignore it at best and roll my eyes and snort. My response to the tornado sirens going off is to ignore them because it's never a tornado.
Okay, I don't ignore them entirely. If I'm outside heading somewhere, I listen for interesting chords and echoes as I go on my way.
Doctor Science @92: Add to which, Cubaños and other islanders have fewer options than mainlanders for relocation, and no guarantee that a hurricane will not sweep their entire island from end to end, leaving every one of them in the same desperate straits -- "in the same boat", as you say.
Pyre, "cheerfully" (like "blithely") has longstanding rhetorical use when describing people expressing offhand cold-blooded opinions about other people. If you want me to be more precise, I'll say that I don't find (as you do) that most people who say "evolution in action" seem bitter; if not precisely cheerful, they almost invariably seem flippant, unfeeling, and smug.
#90 Liz
I live in New England. When the weather forecasting says "blizzard warning" people run to the supermarkets and empty the shelves of perishables--it's ...entertaining... to see what a supermarkete completed emptied of milk looks like.
The only evacuations around here in the past decade or so I can think of, involved an LNG truck crash and limited ones around flooding rivers.
Regarding supplies at emergency shelters--there hasn;t been a mass evacuation of the populace in this part of the country for a long long time.
Perhaps the rules on evacuations should be reconsidered, and recommendations be made that if people get a call to evacuate, they should try to bring have some amount of supplies of food with them if possible.
But regarding evacution for incoming hurricanes--the bottom line is that staying is deadly, there may be problems regarding food etc. at a shelter, but they're problems only the living have, if you're dead from a storm surge or washed out to sea, food and shelter are irrelevant.
The shelter and provisioning might be screwed up, but is a lot less deadly than sticking around. Where there's life there's hope and all that....
==
Another issue is one of trust: New Englanders often make snarky comments about weather forecasts, but listen to them. Yes, sometimes the blizzard warnings are more severe than the weather that happens, but sending people home early and precautionary evacuations, work a lot better than having situation such as the Blizzard of '78, when weather forecasts was a lot less accurate than it is today, and people were stranded for up to a week and the roads choked with not so much all the snow--and there was lots of snow--but with bumper-to-bumper abandoned cars left on the roads.
Prattle on you simps, I'm up a yard after today's games and tomorrow is looking even better. I'll buy every one of you a beer next time I see you. Adios, amoebas.
Patrick and Graydon, thanks-- evolution is probably a little more knowable than God's will, but not much, and not enough to base policy on. Besides, evolution can take care of itself. We don't have to help it, even if we had the foggiest idea of what that would mean.
IIRC, the warning was something like "probably certain death". I don't know if it was sloppy thinking, a cultural distaste for making absolute statements (something I've noticed in Americans generally), or a fine-tuned claim that if things go wrong enough, death is certain, but they might not go that wrong.
Scraps: If (and this is a problematic if) Gustav had landed when predicted, where predicted... so far as I can tell, the odds of being on Galveston and surviving were about the same as being on the beach at Aceh. Some would, because some almost always survive... even when an Arclight strike of 50,000 lbs of high explosive lands all around one.
That, (as with Katrina) this wasn't as bad as it could have been doesn't really change the accuracy of the report. A wave front of 30 ft, plus an extra 10-20 ft. of battering waves would have been lethal. That's what the best models said was more likely than not.
JJ Fozz I look out for me, and I look out for them. "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I look out for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when?". Killing myself to save them is a bad idea (because who knows that they will survive).
But I've done things which put my very life at risk; for strangers. No regrets (ask Jim about things like that).
For myself (and trying to be as charitable as possible) I am either offended, or appalled, (or perhaps both) by your reference to Mayor Nagin.
How hard is it to leave... pretty damned hard. My stepfather's brother has had part of his house destroyed by hurricanes (at least three times, two of those one season after the other... the repairs had barely been done when the same part of the house was destroyed again. The winds ripped a tree out of the ground and threw it across the street. Had the previous storm not removed the tree in their yard it would have prevented that one landing in the living room).
They don't have the money, they don't have the transportation, they don't have reason to believe the forecast (this one proving to be less bad that the possible outcome will make people doubt the next warning).
Being able to leave isn't that simple. If I had to leave... It would be hard. We have dogs, and snakes, and valuables. We are blessed, in having the trucks to move the horses, and the dogs. But if we didn't... or if the chickens weren't a luxury, but our livelihood... I don't know. It's not always stupidity.
I'm in the army. I have dead friends, some of whom are dead because they did, "stupid things". It has been argued they were doing things which made it possible for their tribe to survive. In that case they may not have offspring, but the argument (less relevant to the US than say, Clan McGregor in the 1600s, but still a reasonable argument) is they have made it easier for their siblings, cousins and other kin to survive.
Things aren't so cut and dried as people try to make it seem.
JJ Fozz, you really won't even take a shy at defending what you said? I hope you haven't passed on any of those flaccid reasoning genes.
There was some sort of official pronouncement made that to stay was "certain death."
I noticed that at some point the phrase got changed from "will face certain death" to "may face certain death", which seems oxymoronic.
But, on further reflection, I think the modification was intended to indicate that the certain death for people staying in single-family homes was conditional on the giant predicted storm surge, which was larger than the one that actually happened.
Terry, I persist in thinking that "certain" means what it says, and that if something is probable but not certain, "probable" is what should be used; and that when people say something is certain and it doesn't happen, the next time people will be less likely to believe them, which strikes me as being of some importance if part of your job is giving people warnings.
The exact wording of the NHS warning was:
"Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single family one or two story homes will face certain death."
This in reference to people along the shore in the hurricane strike area.
So far, the only people who succeeded in surviving Ike on Galveston Island, at least to give interviews to TV crews, were on higher ground, in multi-unit apartment buildings or hotels.
So no, I don't think the warning was too much. We have no idea, at this point, whether any such houses survived the storm. Aerial video leads me to think that perhaps not many did.
Paula @100:
For people who live in areas regularly hit by hurricanes, the bottom line is that the forecasts are often wildly inaccurate, and leaving can risk death just as much as staying, if leaving is even possible. I understand that it's different in New England. Perhaps you should listen to people who live and have lived in hurricane-prone areas, and understand that it's different there.
Amplification:
Incompetent authorities who are logistical at best ignoramuses are a different issue than the crick is rising try to get the hell away from it to somewhere the floodwaters won't reach.
FEMA failures to competently evacuate and provide adequate food and shelter, don't obviate the sanity checking of "there is a forecast for deadly flooding. The forecast may be wrong and the flooding won't be as major as expected--or, the forecast may be wrong and the flooding may be even worse than predicted. Is it worth risking one's life to hang around, as opposed to possible unpleasantry and bureaucratic bungling in evacuation?
Around here, often blizzard warnings contain the term "life-threatening" and contain dire warnings for people to stay indoors. Sometimes the streets look relatively clear during a blizzard, except for the bad visibility and drifting snow, because the only vehicles out are emergency vehicles, mostly snowplows. If the ordinary traffic were out, it would be the Blizzard of '78 all over again.
Paula, the warnings you get are to stay indoors. The warnings people get about hurricanes are to evacuate -- whether or not they are physically capable, have transportation, have the money for it, and any number of other factors. It is not as simple as you are making it out to be, for many people. Full stop. And, generally speaking, the people for whom it is not that simple are the ones who stay. You are making analogies to a situation which is not analogous, and you are refusing to listen to the people who do know what it's like.
Yes, in a perfect world, everybody would leave, and that would be good. It's not a perfect world, and incompetent authorities, money spent evacuating, health problems, limited mobility and other issues are entirely relevant.
JJ 101: Prattle on you simps, I'm up a yard after today's games and tomorrow is looking even better. I'll buy every one of you a beer next time I see you. Adios, amoebas.
"Prattle on you simps"? What kind of thing is that to say? And are you talking about fantasy football, or using that as a metaphor to say that your predictions are coming true? Or is this, in effect, a way of saying "Look, I'm too intoxicated to argue at the moment. Still like you, but I'm done here"?
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