Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
of San Francisco refer to the 'Great Fire of 1906'
rather than the 'Great Earthquake of 1906'. In these
people's minds, great fires are rarer than great earth-
quakes and, hence, a similar disaster would be less
likely to recur. If a place is attractive climatically, has an
alluring lifestyle, or promises better economic oppor-
tunities, then it will continue to grow despite any
calamity that can be associated with it. That is why
people continue to move to California, that is why
Mexico City has grown so rapidly since 1960, and that
is why Wellington, New Zealand, continues to grow.
In the short term, even in the above locations, a
warning of imminent disaster can also invoke a casual
reaction bordering on disregard. For example, during
the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires in Australia, some
people nonchalantly sat around pubs escaping the heat
of the day, while they watched one of the worst con-
flagrations witnessed by humanity bearing down on
them (Figure 13.1). A non-evacuation reaction may be
macho-based bravado, a public display of fearlessness,
a normal psychological response of a low-anxiety indi-
vidual, a religious taboo, or even the sensible thing to
do. An example of a religious taboo occurred in
Bangladesh (East Pakistan) during the 1970 cyclone
surge. At the time the cyclone struck many women
were prohibited, by established religious practice,
from going outside for the period of a month. Even if
residents had been given warning of the storm surge,
few women would have evacuated and broken that
taboo. Non-reaction to imminent disaster can occur for
other reasons. Warnings of disaster imply evacuation,
and that may appear too radical a departure from
everyday life to be acceptable. Peer-group pressure
also may be at work. If you are the only one in your
neighborhood to evacuate, then you may be ridiculed
or made to look silly. This has always been a human
response to warnings of doom. For example, in 1549, a
cadi (judge) in eastern Persia predicted an earthquake
for his city. After trying to persuade his friends to leave
their homes for the open, and after spending time
alone in the cold outside, he eventually returned home
only to be killed along with 3000 others in the ensuing
earthquake (Michaelis, 1985).
Impending disasters are also times of worry, fear,
and confusion. Most people at Hilo, Hawaii - reacting
to sirens warning of the approach of a tsunami follow-
ing the Chilean earthquake of 23 May 1960 - were
confused (Lachman et al., 1961). Only 41 per cent of
people evacuated to safer locations following the
sirens. Twenty-seven per cent of the population,
including some who evacuated, did not know what the
sirens meant, while 46 per cent thought they were only
a preliminary warning. More worrying was the fact that
no mechanism existed to inform people it was safe to
return. Of the sixty-one people killed by the tsunami,
many believed it was safe to return after the first few
waves had arrived at shore. The overt decision to 'stay
put' may represent a subliminal mechanism for coping
with the unknown and the unexpected. Generally,
those of low socio-economic status, ethnic minorities,
and women respond least to warnings. Older people
find such change difficult to handle physically and
mentally. For example, one old man died in the Mt
St Helens eruption because he refused to move despite
all the warnings. He had lived there all his life, and
nothing was going to make him move. During tropical
cyclones in the United States, the militia has evacuated
people, at gunpoint, from coastal areas. Old couples
died in the 1983 Australian bushfires along the coast
south of Melbourne, because they had retired to those
communities and there was nowhere else for them to
go. If their retirement home were to be destroyed by
fire, they would stay behind to save it, or 'go down with
the ship'.
This reaction to imminent disaster can be explained
in psychological terms. High-anxiety people perceive
events occurring around them as confirming their
anxiety. They tend to take action and in fact be psy-
chologically conditioned for survival. Similarly, people
Drinkers at a pub in Lorne, Victoria, casually watching a
bushfire bearing down on them on Ash Wednesday,
16 February 1983 (photograph © and reproduced courtesy
of The Age, Melbourne). This fire and others turned into one
of the greatest conflagrations ever witnessed.
Fig. 13.1
