Time to scale back the scale

[JamieOber]

That's unbelievable Re: the Charleston city officials. Just wow.

Re: the surge's role in fatalities, this was acknowledged and thoroughly covered earlier in this discussion-- read back a bit.

Ah, see it now.

Yeah, I was a bit taken aback by it. They might also figure they can evac out and the benefits outweigh the risks.

[EastCoastLow]

If I may offer some observations.

Generally, people are stupid and ignorant of current news events these days. Sad, but it's true. Most people mentally tune out anything they don't want to hear, even if they are actually listening to it in the first place.

People also generally can't be bothered worrying more than two or three days ahead of what they are doing now. To tell most people that a hurricane MAY affect them in a week's time...they just don't care unless it is 100% certain and going to happen tomorrow. By which time it's too late to do anything anyway.

People also think "oh, if anything bad happens, I will be rescued/saved anyway". Witness all the "adventurers" that set off with nothing to save themselves from harm, totally relying on the safety net of SAR resources.

And to top it all off, as a society, we are much more nomadic than we were 30-50 years or more ago. We'll up stakes and head off somewhere totally different, whether it be for work, lifestyle, cheaper housing or whatever. So you get the effect of a semi nomadic population inhabiting regions that haven't been hit by a decent storm in say10-20 years and very little local knowledge remaining of what areas flood etc as most new residents don't tend to mingle with older, more established residents who have perhaps been through several storms. So the information doesn't pass on through social osmosis as it once would when populations were less nomadic and tended to socialise across broad age groups more regularly.

What could possibly work is roadside signs stating typical surge levels, even indicated by a mark on the post or similar. That would make people think, as would perhaps making it a condition of sale that the owners or inhabitants of a newly rented or purchased building attend a half day session on what surge flooding would do and how it would affect them and their house directly. People need to see things to believe these days. Forget media, no one pays attention to it frequently enough any more and forget scaring people, the last two generations have lived through live images of many grotesque wars, as if a bit of wind and rain is going to even rate as an issue to them!

We also are quite prepared to develop and profit from the sale of land that 50 years ago would be considered unsuitable for high density development, purely because of the threat from weather or flooding. Now, we gleefully sell (and buy) such land without even a thought, and wring our hands when the meteorological poop hits the fan and try to point the finger of blame anywhere else but at ourselves.

So, the problem is not adequate warnings, but getting the message across using new techniques and actually demonstrating the threat to people. If it has to be mandated by laws that new residents must attend information sessions or otherwise be made aware, then so be it.