In the days leading up to Hurricane Irene, the messages urging me to get ready for the storm were ceaseless: Stock up on nonperishable food, water and batteries; fill up the car with gasoline; clear the yard of objects that couldn’t be secured.
The warnings came from city officials here in New Haven, Connecticut, university officials at Yale, local talk-show hosts, friends and neighbors. I had never faced the threat of a hurricane before -- ice storms are a more common threat where I’m from -- so I didn’t take the advice seriously at first. But the size of Irene in aerial photographs and her predicted trajectory, slicing right through this state, were pretty hard to ignore. Plus, I have a young child in the house that I need to protect. So, ultimately, I followed the officials’ advice, checking off a list of emergency "to-dos," but stopped short of buying a generator or packing an evacuation go bag.
Today, my family is fine, as are most who live near me. But was I right to prepare? Am I just one of those people who heeds all warnings, or were the messages clearer this time?
As disaster looms (whether it’s a one-time storm like Irene or the larger threat of global climate change), what should we be listening for? That’s the question I asked David Ropeik, risk expert and author of How Risky is it Really?, before Hurricane Irene made landfall. Little did I know that in its immediate aftermath, that question would be just as relevant.
"Unless [public warnings] are done in certain ways, they don’t affect as many people as the 'warner' would like," said Ropeik, who has built a career around explaining the factors that determine the way people respond to threats -- and why the size of their fears is so often out of proportion with the size of the dangers they face.
One of these factors is the nature and effectiveness of warnings by public officials. Here’s Ropeik’s short-list for what they’ve got to get right in order for the public to take their warnings to heart:
- Consistency: The message from one leader, whether it is the president, a FEMA official, a governor, or mayor, has to be the same as the message from the next. Conflicting messages cause too much confusion in the listener and lead to inaction.
- Action items: Leaders have got to tell us what we can do, even if it’s as simple -- and seemingly petty -- as "buy batteries." Why? It sends the message that the person issuing the warning respects your desire for control, according to Ropeik.
- Tone: This one’s tricky. The listener won’t be receptive to the message if it seems "formulaic, cold, bureaucratic; as if Big Brother is speaking," he said, "or if it doesn’t connect with people’s worries." In other words, it needs to feel a little personal and appropriate to the occasion.
Getting these three things right in the face of a disaster can mean life over death. Get them wrong, as Ropeik said officials did with the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and Hurricane Katrina, and the public says, "What?" Mass confusion ensues and people get needlessly hurt. (A recent example: the Japanese government mishandled evacuations after the explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Evacuees from a nearby town headed north, believing the winds were carrying radioactive emissions in the opposite direction. Only later did they find out that winds were carrying emissions toward them, putting them at increased risk for exposure.)
The thing is, the way our public officials talk is just one of many hidden factors that we must parse, both consciously and unconsciously, as we decide how to respond to a threat like a hurricane. (For a more complete explanation, read this). But our leaders play a role in one other important way: Trust. If you don’t trust the person who is telling you to evacuate, you might think twice. (You think those Japanese townsfolk who fled the wrong way will ever trust their government again?) "No one source will be trusted by everybody," said Ropeik. "So if you’re anti-climate change or anti-evolution and the warning comes from a scientist, that doesn’t work so well." The same holds true if you lean liberal and your governor leans libertarian. And so on. "The message needs to come from multiple voices."
To be effective, then, we need our leaders to perform as an ensemble cast, speaking the same, empowering lines, all in a way that make us feel they’ve got our back. (One reason that our society is failing to prepare for global climate change, after all, is that we’re getting mixed, muddled messages from those in authority.) So now that the worst of Irene is hopefully over, it’s instructive to consider: What did you witness in the lead up? There will inevitably be a next time. How will you respond then?
Image via Zach Frailey/Flickr
