Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [117]
The story of New York City’s missed opportunity is a reminder of the power of fear to distort our behavior. Like the fear of panic, the fear of litigation is a silent partner in emergency management. Two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin delayed calling for a mandatory evacuation. He had to check with his lawyers, according to a New Orleans Times-Picayune story from that day, to make sure the city wouldn’t be held liable by business owners forced to shutter their shops.
Like the fear of panic, this fear of being sued is not entirely irrational. Responding to a lawsuit, even a bogus one, can be punishingly expensive and stressful. It’s also true that lawsuits have made the world a safer place in many cases. But that benefit comes at a great cost. “Fear of liability slows response. It can cost lives,” says William Nicholson, the author of two books on emergency management law and a former general counsel for the emergency management office in Indiana.
Because of this fear, officials do not share vital information with the public, and uncertainty can stop good people from helping one another. The anxiety also poisons the relationship between the public and the people who are supposed to protect them. Every line of legalese breeds distrust. We start to confuse real safety warnings with legalistic nonsense. We lump fire drills and airline safety briefings together with the sticker on our new toaster warning against using it in the bathtub.
To make matters worse, the people in charge also routinely misunderstand liability. Ironically, after Hurricane Katrina, the government was sued anyway. One wrongful death lawsuit was filed by three families who had lost elderly relatives in the aftermath of the storm—including a man whose mother died in her wheelchair after waiting in intense heat for help to arrive at the Convention Center in New Orleans. The image of Ethel Mayo Freeman’s slumped corpse became a symbol of America’s tragedy around the world. But in the spring of 2007, the lawsuit was thrown out. The federal judge correctly noted that government officials enjoy immunity against many lawsuits—so that they can do their jobs without fear of lawsuits. “Fear of liability—like most fear—is, in my opinion, based largely on ignorance,” Nicholson says. In fact, most government employees are protected from lawsuits if they are doing their jobs in good faith, according to sound training. But not enough people understand emergency management law. “The ignorance of public officials, from leaders of government to emergency managers, is compounded by the ignorance of the attorneys who advise them.”
In New Orleans, the lawyers should have known what the liability risks were well before the hurricane even had a name. The evacuation decision never should have been delayed because the lawyers needed to get educated. “If it were a town of five thousand, I wouldn’t have any complaints about that,” says Nicholson. “But for a huge city like New Orleans, which had obvious hazards everyone knew about, [that] is scandalous, I think.”
But fear of liability can be a convenient excuse, too, like fear of panic. Whether they are at an airline or at a command center, experts will err on the side of excluding the public, as we have seen. If they can avoid enrolling regular people in their emergency plans, they will. Life is easier that way, until something goes wrong.
In the 1990s, a committee of the British House of Commons suggested that aircraft cabin simulators be placed in airport waiting areas. That way, passengers