Hurricanes Harvey and Irma dominated the news cycle during the past few weeks as they left a trail of devastation in their wake. But it wasn’t the Category 4 winds, massive storm surges and torrential rains that kept the cameras rolling in Texas and Florida. All they needed were the floods to give us a story rivaling some of Hollywood’s most successful films.
The box office is the only proof we need of society’s fascination with disasters. The highest grossing film in 1974 was Towering Inferno. Armageddon, a film that critic Roger Ebert called “an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained,” won that honor in ’98.
Of course, news coverage of hurricanes isn’t entertainment. They’re stark reminders of life’s unpredictable cruelty. But we’re also drawn to the tube because witnessing real life tragedies from the comforts of our home provides us with a comparative sense of security.
Dan Rather pioneered live television coverage of hurricanes when Carla ravaged Texas in 1961. Like Hollywood, the news media recognized its national audience wanted more. And they’ve been happy to boost their ratings by bringing us live disaster scenes ever since.
But the days of nonstop coverage have their limits. We’re often fed the same pictures over and over.
I first observed this back in 1989 after San Francisco and Oakland were rocked by a magnitude 6.9 earthquake. At the time, I was an engineer with the Washington State Department of Transportation. Having recently completed a six-month study on the seismic vulnerability of bridges in the Puget Sound area, I was keenly interested how Bay Area bridges performed during an actual event.
But almost all the television news gave us were shots of the Cypress viaduct collapse and the single span which failed on the 2-mile long Bay Bridge. That’s because only a small percentage of bridges were damaged that day. And San Francisco’s downtown skyline remained entirely intact.
Tragically, 63 people lost their lives. But that’s a remarkably low death toll in a place six million called home. Especially in comparison to the 1906 earthquake. It killed between 700 and 3,000 of its million inhabitants.
The nation’s history of hurricanes tells a similar story. An unnamed storm hit the Texas coast in 1900 and killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. The population of nearby Houston at that time was 44,000. Six decades later, when Rather was introduced to Carla, it had grown to a million. It’s doubled since. But the death toll across the state was less than 100 for it and Harvey.
The difference between these disasters stories is society’s faith in the science and engineering professions. We can thank NASA’s storm tracking systems for saving most lives. Engineers have done their part by improving the ability of buildings to resist damage from extreme winds and earthquakes
None of that would matter though if elected officials at all levels ignored the experts.
Unlike the question of climate change, scientists at NASA have complete bipartisan support for the work they do on hurricanes. And even anti-regulatory Republicans won’t complain that more stringent building codes drive up the cost of construction.
Flooding is a different story. Science hasn’t ignored the problem. But while its causes and effects are better understood, there are too many inconvenient truths for policy makers to do anything about it. Instead, presidents, congressional leaders and governors follow the news media, and their political noses, to disaster sites where they get to praise first responders, pass out food, and express wonder at the resiliency and cooperation of the affected public.
It’s not as if the scientific community is clamoring for attention after the storms strike. Their objective is to be heard long before that. That’s because, when it comes to natural disasters, the reward is minimizing the destruction that would otherwise occur.
Climate change presents the same choice. We can put our faith in the scientists at NASA and around the world, invest in renewable energy research and development and hope it’s not too late. Or wait for inconvenient reality of coastal flooding from Miami to Southeast Alaska. If we choose the latter, we’ll certainly be too wrapped up in our own disaster to find comfort in apocalyptic scenes from Hollywood or the national news.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. He contributes a regular column to the Juneau Empire.
