Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [20]
Risk is often counterintuitive in Extremistan. Our old tricks don’t work. For example, just like Turner, many of Louisiana’s oldest residents had survived Hurricane Betsy in 1965. They had also survived Hurricane Camille, a category 5 storm that struck in 1969. Turner rode out both storms without a problem. So he saw no reason to leave for Katrina. He hunkered down in denial.
As it turned out, the veteran Louisianans were half right: Katrina was indeed less powerful than Camille. Had the world stood still since then, they would have been just fine. In Mediocristan, they would have survived.
But since Camille, rapid development had destroyed much of the wetlands that had created a natural barrier against storm surge. The force field, in other words, was down. Humankind had literally changed the shape of the earth, and we had done it faster, thanks to technology, than we could have throughout most of history. This fact was well reported in popular media. But the firsthand experience of Camille was more powerful than any warning.
As it turned out, the victims of Katrina were not disproportionately poor; they were disproportionately old. Three-quarters of the dead were over sixty, according to the Knight Ridder analysis. Half were over seventy-five. They had been middle-aged when Hurricane Camille struck. “I think Camille killed more people during Katrina than it did in 1969,” says Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center. “Experience is not always a good teacher.”
After Katrina, a poll of 680 New Orleans residents asked why they had not evacuated before the storm. The respondents could give multiple explanations. A slim majority did indeed cite a lack of transportation. But that was not the biggest reason. The most popular explanation, given by 64 percent, was that they did not think the storm would be as bad as it was. In fact, in retrospect, half of those who hadn’t evacuated said that they could have found a way to leave if they had really wanted to, according to the study, conducted for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post. Motivation, in other words, mattered more than transportation.
A Baseball Bat and a Crucifix
At 7:00 A.M. on Monday, August 29, Katrina made landfall in Louisiana with winds of up to 140 mph. At 9:00 A.M., Turner’s children dialed his number again. Sometime before then, as the storm screamed by his window, he’d put his phone back on the hook.
Turner answered the phone. “It’s real windy,” he told his son. The electricity was out. And he was worried about the big tree in his backyard. Then he said something he rarely ever said: “I think I made a mistake.”
His son told him to hang in there. They’d drive out to get him as soon as they could. “My daddy was in very, very good health. No pacemakers, no surgery, nothing,” says Williams. “We figured as soon as they’d cleared the roadways, we could get him.” They hung up.
But then the floodwaters came, breaching the levees in half a dozen places and charging through the streets. Then the five-mile bridge that crosses Lake Pontchartrain broke into pieces, cutting Turner off from his children. And finally, the phones went out for good.
Turner’s neighborhood, like much of New Orleans, was in a bowl. Water poured in from the lake, rising to five feet in his one-story house. All of his possessions—the photographs, the Santa suit, all the reminders of his wife, who had died three years before—everything was sinking. Turner pulled the stairs down and went up into his attic. He brought up a gallon of water, a bucket, and two candles.
For nine days, the phones stayed down and the roads remained un-crossable. All of Turner’s children except Williams had lost their homes. They were desperate to get to their father, but they could not. Finally, the phones came back on and Williams made a frantic call to a radio station. She pleaded for someone, anyone,