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How to leave town
If hundreds or thousands died, why didn't more people leave town? I can think of a few hypotheses:
1. They were plain, flat out stupid.
2. They were not stupid per se, but human beings underestimate the potential for small probability, massive disruptions to their accustomed status quo.
3. They made a rational calculation, but just happened to catch the wrong number on the roulette wheel of nature.
4. Bad policy meant they didn't have many good options for leaving.
Sadly, #4 seems to have played a role:
As many as 100,000 inner-city residents didn't have the means to leave, and an untold number of tourists were stranded by the closing of the airport. The city arranged buses to take people to 10 last-resort shelters, including the Superdome. (link here).
Some tourists took 76-mile cab rides to Baton Rouge, where they rented cars. Admittedly, the stayers (arguably even the poor stayers) were stupid not to have done this, but saving lives is more important than who is to blame. A different framing of the choices might have brought many more people out of town.
Government could have commandeered a fleet of buses to help the carless leave town altogether. (Was it enough to offer to take them to unappealing shelters?) Some people foresaw the potential problem in advance, but only Wednesday did buses start taking people out of the city. Neither FEMA nor the state of Louisiana nor the mayor appears to have done a good job.
When such a disaster comes, should we waive price gouging laws, and temporarily repeal liability for those helping strangers?
Should we expect these same people to protect us from avian flu?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 1, 2005 at 01:47 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
I wonder why there wasn't some sort of solution that involved hiring cruise ships to host refugees/move evacuees. Even if the docks are inaccessible, couldn't helicopters deliver people to the decks? Then sail people to Houston or Tampa or wherever. Repeat.
I guess it assumes a surplus of cruise ships or a big payment to induce the lines to bump folks, although presumably cruises set to leave from/to New Orleans were canceled. Would the fact that the ships are not US flagged matter?
Posted by: Robert S at Sep 1, 2005 1:57:19 PM
Yes too many had no means to go. Worse they had no where to go to. If you have no money that means not tranportation but also no hotel to stay in. Once out of the danger zone where would they stay? Civil shelters are obviously not designed to be occupied for more than a day. Bus, train, plane, boats all left early and no one was going to take people away for free.
Posted by: t.W. at Sep 1, 2005 2:21:30 PM
Frankly I tend to get vaguely angry at any tendency to blame the victims as "stupid". One crucial factor that seems to have been neglected by a majority of the media is one that is among the most crucial, that being the time in the month the storm struck. Coming only days before folks were set to receive their monthly paychecks, the poor in the city (and New Orleans is, last I checked, the third poorest major city in the nation, only behind El Paso and San Antonio, which are marked by huge, spawling barrios of recent immigrants) had little to no opportunity to avoid a storm that, to remind everyone, was only upgraded to a monster storm a matter of hours before it hit.
Theoretically, even if there were enough buses and cabs to get the entire population out (which, of course, there weren’t), can one expect several hundred thousand carless families to gather everyone together, pool every dollar they have, and set off in a cab to a faraway city (which, for all you know, will end up getting hit even worse) at the last minute? When you compound this with the CW that the only folks who die in a hurricane are those who live directly in the path of the storm surge, live in mobile homes, or who are stupid enough to go outside or stand in front of the window I find it very difficult to call someone who decided to weather the storm by holing up in the center room in their multi-story apartment complex (which was on a hill) "stupid". It can be an entirely rational decision to determine that you’d rather spend the bits of money you have saved up on supplies to board up your windows (or whatever) and not risk the possibility of being stuck in traffic in an automobile during a hurricane…
Posted by: M.S.K. at Sep 1, 2005 2:56:11 PM
They are considering the use of cruise ships -- http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-zcruise01sep01,0,3604734.story?coll=sfla-business-front
However, there are some concerns involving the risk of navigating the Mississippi, whose bottom may have shifted in the storm.
Posted by: DK at Sep 1, 2005 3:32:09 PM
I think that "stupid" is far too strong. "Ill-advised", or "guessed wrong" seem much more appropriate, especially given the uncertainty before the hurricane hit.
If you're a family with tens of thousands of dollars accessible, and there's a 10% or 25% chance that your house will be destroyed, it makes sense to pay $1000 to get the hell out of dodge. If you've got three hundred bucks to your name, and it's going to be a matter of certainly having nothing when your cabbie drops you off in the middle of nowhere vs. maybe having nothing if the hurricane hits... I'm not sure what the right course of action is, and I certainly don't think that staying is necessarily "stupid."
Posted by: Jake McGuire at Sep 1, 2005 4:05:48 PM
And it doesn't help that the media make every hurricane into The Deathstorm Of The Century, with newshounds hoping to ride "gripping" hurricane coverage into the Dan Rather Anchor Desk. You can't help but go into "cry wolf" mode after seeing a half-dozen deathstorms go by and do nothing but knock some trees down, make big puddles, and kill some guys who did Something Dumb, while you hid in a shelter and came back to see that someone robbed you.
When The Big One actually does show up, you're skrewd...
Posted by: Foobarista at Sep 1, 2005 4:21:40 PM
Not to mention that people who left the ghetto were risking their own homes being looted if the city was abandoned, but the storm didn't hit hard.
If you have $250 cash to your name and no insurance, but own a fridge, microwave, TV, stereo, etc. how willing are you to risk the most valuable physical capital that you own and flee to god-knows-where?
Posted by: Dan at Sep 1, 2005 4:22:43 PM
Number one reason so many stayed must have been lack of resources.
But plain stupidity is always out there. Not long ago I saw an interview of a lady who decided to stay put and not evacuate because "God will protect" her.
Posted by: zoom at Sep 1, 2005 4:25:41 PM
Would it not have been the height of irrationality for a "poor" person to leave without a relative or friends house as a destination? Wouldn't the only possible "safe way out" for someone in those conditions have been if they survived? There was a women who belonged to a choir group that had been here in Chicago for the weekend being interviewed on the local news, she was now stuck here because her flight had of course been canceled. Her worries:
Family
Home
That her Boss would be mad that she wasn't there the next morning, even though her work was apparently under water.
I'm not sure staying was irrational when you are living at that level. What if you evacuated, but the storm didn't hit, and you were docked for not being at work? It happens, and such happenings must be figured into equations dertermining "rationality".
Posted by: Johnny at Sep 1, 2005 4:26:16 PM
You are badly over-analyzing this.
I live in So Florida and we get alot of hurricanes. The decision to leave is more difficult than you think, and policy doesn't have a whole lot to do with it.
First, you have to decide to leave, and you have a small window of opportunity because storm predictions greater than 24-48 hours in scope are notoriously unreliable.
Second, you have to leave. You have to book a flight - along with lots of other people trying to leave - and there may not be an available flight because of timing, overbooking, or the cost is simply prohibitive.
Alternatively, you can drive. But to where? Alot of people in Miami drove south to avoid Andrew and got nailed. Alot of people drove north to avoid Frances - and got hit.
To drive out of harms way from So. Florida - which you'd only do if you KNEW a major storm was hitting you within 24-48 hours - is to drive north with your family (not only the wife and kids mind you, but in-laws, parents and people you don't even remember) along with millions of other people and their relatives all the way to . . . where exactly? The whole southeastern US is a potential stike probability and you don't know where it's going to strike.
Third, you have to book a hotel. Where?
I really like your blog, keep it up!
Posted by: Ron at Sep 1, 2005 4:30:42 PM
"Commandeered"? Couldn't the government just charter the buses?
Posted by: y81 at Sep 1, 2005 4:56:08 PM
Ron: I'm from Florida too, but I don't think Florida's experience with hurricanes is applicable to the rest of the country. Florida is a fairly narrow peninsula. If you're at the southern end, it's very hard to get to an area that's far from a coast. If you're in New Orleans, you can just head inland, which is almost certainly safe.
Posted by: Xavier at Sep 1, 2005 5:32:47 PM
Assuming 50 persons per bus, it's 2,000 outbound bus trips filled to capacity within two days' time to handle 100,000 bus-dependent evacuees. Seeing as the self-interest motive is virtually nonexistent on the part of those who would design and implement "policy" to handle such an arduous evacuation, it seems to be an unlikely occurrence that all those bus trips materialize.
I wonder whether a city that uses a decentralized jitney system for urban transport (i.e., its transport-needy citizens are accustomed to paying for rides in other citizens' private cars) would be better prepared for evacuations of this nature. I'd guess that plenty of cars left New Orleans carrying a two- or three-person family, with the remainder of the car stuffed with belongings. In a disaster situation, in a city where citizens are used to paying for rides, it seems the value of the family's marginal belongings could be readily outbid by a fellow citizen seeking a ride.
Posted by: Jason Briggeman at Sep 1, 2005 6:16:18 PM
I asked the simple question on my blog, I ask it here:
»If you declare a mandatory evacuation of a city, isn’t it standard operating procedure to provide transport and shelter for the evacuees? I’d even say you try to keep individual evacuation traffic down to get everybody out in the fastest and most efficient way. Wouldn’t you?
So what the hell went wrong in New Orleans. Or is USanian reality and rationality really so different?«
Posted by: TH at Sep 1, 2005 6:39:58 PM
Even many hours after the Hurricane hit, it seemed like New Orleans had dodged a bullet. This was just such a unique situation. Natural disasters are hard for economists to conceptualize, because they do not always follow any sort of logic. They can come unexpectedly. The magnitude can surprise you. You can prepare and plan, but you can't really prevent. You can't really even mitigate or neutralize most natural disasters.
Posted by: Will Franklin at Sep 1, 2005 8:15:46 PM
To follow up on Will Franklin's comment, staying in the city indeed would have been a sensible decision had the levees not begun leaking on Monday. Damage from the hurricane itself wasn't too severe.
Posted by: Peter at Sep 1, 2005 10:01:30 PM
Living in DC, it occured to me to wonder what I would do if something truely bad happened here, as I have been told, many military and agency planners believe is inevitable. So it seems like there is poor planing timber to pull out of my own eye before I start critiqueing anyone else.
Posted by: Mike Beversluis at Sep 1, 2005 11:35:38 PM
It seems that someone should try to organize some (most) of those that are now homeless and jobless to help with the work that needs to be done. Sure the sick need help and everyone needs food and water but why are we trying to get more humanitarian workers into the city when there are thousands sitting around (granted suffering)?
Posted by: Vincent Davis at Sep 2, 2005 12:20:27 AM
relevant blurb from the NYT:
Brian Wolshon, an engineering professor at Louisiana State University who served as a consultant on the state's evacuation plan, said little attention was paid to moving out New Orleans's "low-mobility" population - the elderly, the infirm and the poor without cars or other means of fleeing the city, about 100,000 people.
At disaster planning meetings, he said, "the answer was often silence."
Posted by: Jason Briggeman at Sep 2, 2005 1:24:01 AM
Maybe they should have commandeered 1000 trucks, filled them with dirt, and had those 100,000 people filling sandbags. Then all this would be a moot point.
Posted by: Austin at Sep 2, 2005 1:50:46 AM
"Government could have commandeered a fleet of buses to help the carless leave town altogether."
Uh, looks like they did. One report says ten buses were commandeered from (carless) tourists who had chartered them for their evacuation. Way to go.
Posted by: Max at Sep 2, 2005 1:54:21 AM
With all the looting we've seen, how irrational was it to try to stick it out in your house with a gun?
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 2, 2005 4:39:24 AM
I was involved in disaster planning
in the Charleston area. In our area,
a 15 or 20 minute drive will get you out
of the areas where storm surge is a danger.
Of course, there isn't anything like enough
public accomodations (motels) for everyone
and most people drive one to three hours to
other major cities.
Unless, of course, you have family living in
high areas nearby. (Leave the low lying area
near the coast and go 20 miles inland and stay
with your cousin.) This is especially important
for poorer citizens. One doesn't necessarily
need your own car to do this. You can get a ride
with a relative.
As for people who have no such relatives, the
plan in our area is for school buses to take people
to public schools in high areas--10 miles or so
inland.
People are encouraged to avoid depending on that
"resource." It is supposed to be a last resort.
Huge numbers of people refuse to evacuate. While
the most of the relatively well-off people living
in beach front communities leave, the native peoples
(black and white) who live further inland, often
say that they and their families have weathered many,
many storms.
If the Hurricane hits just south (or west on the coast,)
then the storm surge can kill you.
Hugo came right up Charleston Harbor. People came close
to drowning in two-story buildings in McClellansville,
a small fishing community about 10 miles north. They
aren't on a barrier island.
In the aftermath of Hugo, police were out in force,
I have heard it claimed that police were ordered to
not bother trying to arrest looters but rather to
must beat them senseless and leave them. Some claim
that the New Orleans police force had no instructions.
One did hear reports a couple of days ago that the
priority was saving lives and that property had to
wait. It sounds to me like there was a decision to
allow looting.
Of course, in Hugo, the water went rose in the night,
and it was gone in the morning. It wasn't gradually rising
all day and staying there. So the temptation to focus on
rescuing people from their rooftops seems natural.
Posted by: Bill Woolsey at Sep 2, 2005 8:08:25 AM
"If you're in New Orleans, you can just head inland, which is almost certainly safe."
Not really, if i remember correctly the only way out of New Orleans is one of several bridges, which explains why they are having a hard time getting inside the cite with supplies also.
Posted by: cube at Sep 2, 2005 9:55:14 AM
I'm not sure government (and by "government," I'm combining federal, state and local gov'ts, as ideally they'd be working together in this sort of situation) would need to comandeer or charter the buses needed. (I wouldn't support comandeering, anyway.) Taking into account school districts, local transportation systems, prisons, military bases, etc., I'd think they'd have enough to have been able to make those 2,000 trips.
Posted by: Nick at Sep 2, 2005 12:37:03 PM
