Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [78]
When Dengler asked the locals where they went when the ground shook, they pointed to a nearby hill, about a hundred feet high, or, says Dengler, “right about where I would have told them to go.” They seemed proud of their devotion to evacuating and said they never considered a false evacuation a waste of time. (Interestingly, on the entire island of Simeulue, only seven people out of seventy-eight thousand died from the tsunami. And they all died, Dengler says, because they were trying to save their belongings. They were gathering, a tendency that is, as we have seen, common in disasters.)
When Dengler’s team visited Jantang, however, they found a totally different skill set. Before the disaster, “No one had ever heard anything about tsunami,” she said. When residents heard what sounded like explosions coming from the ocean, many locked themselves in their houses, fearing gunfights between rebels and the Indonesian military.
Long before guns, there were tsunami. Human beings have dealt with killer waves for thousands of years, as have animals. Hours before the 2004 tsunami, a dozen elephants being ridden by tourists started suddenly trumpeting. One hour before the wave hit, the elephants headed to high ground—some of them even breaking their chains to get there. After the tsunami, wildlife officials at Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park were shocked to find that hundreds of elephants, monkeys, tigers, and deer had survived unharmed. But people don’t seem to have retained these survival skills as well as other mammals.
We have the ability to do better, and in some places, we clearly have. That is very good news. In communities with survival traditions, like Grand Bayou and Langi, precious time spent in the deliberation zone can be extremely productive. And it must be. Because now we are out of time. We have passed through the denial and deliberation phases, and there is nothing left to do but act. What happens next will be, as we will see, very hard to undo. The decisive moments are the cumulative results of the delay and dread, of the influences of fear, resilience, and groupthink. They can be years in the making, and they can play out in a flash.
Photo Insert
The devastated Port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, one of the busiest in the world, seen after a ship carrying explosives blew up on December 6, 1917. The blast killed 1,963 people. Credit: U.S. Army Signal Corps
In 1917, Reverend Samuel Prince opened up his church to treat the injured in Halifax. Later, he wrote the first serious study of human behavior in disasters. Credit: Alan Ruffman Collection
Two minutes before a tsunami obliterated Khao Lak, Thailand, in December 2004, tourists stared at the strange behavior of the sea, unaware that vanishing water is a sign of an imminent tsunami. Credit: Charles De Pierre
In Koh Raya, Thailand, the water also receded before the first tidal wave came. This shot was taken moments later, as a giant wave silently barreled inland. Credit: John Russell
Taken ten days after the tsunami, this shot of the coast of Banda Aceh in Indonesia shows the epic reach of the disaster. Credit: Choo Youn-Kong, Pool/AP
Before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, elderly people were among the least likely to evacuate—partly because the brain values experiences over official warnings, and older people had survived many storms. Here a Coast Guard rescue swimmer helps load survivors into a helicopter. Credit: U.S. Coast Guard
A view of the Louisiana Superdome taken two days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Credit: U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate Airman Jeremy L. Grisham
The first phase of the survival arc is the reckoning stage, which takes precious time. On 9/11, people in the World Trade Center took twice as long to descend as safety engineers had predicted. Firefighter Mike Kehoe, who survived, was in the stairwell of Tower 1. Credit: John Labriola/AP
Deliberation is the second phase of