The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation
The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation
Chas Keys

The Texas flood, Australia and the psychology of evacuation

The Texas flood on the weekend of 4 July has produced a shocking toll – probably well over 200 people dead, including many children.

Inevitably, the usual questions have been asked: Why were so many in camp grounds and cabins in a known flash-flood environment? Why did some of the warnings not get through? Why did people not evacuate before the floodwaters arrived? And was President Trump’s cost-cutting of federal services partly to blame?

These are all reasonable questions, and they are not necessarily easy to answer. It should be said straight away, though, that the event in Texas was by all accounts an extreme one – very intense rainfall over very few hours, a river which rose rapidly to a great height in the dead of night and little time for people to react to the warnings assuming they got them. Probably, it was an event that would have overwhelmed whatever strategies could have been employed.

It might have been similar to what hit Lismore in 2022, when, in the middle of the night, a flood far bigger than anything the local community had ever experienced struck the town and deeply inundated much of it including the Central Business District and many dwellings. Few managed to evacuate ahead of that flood, and many had to be rescued from dire circumstances and by privately-operated tinnies. It is truly remarkable that in Lismore, on that dreadful night, only four people died.

One question which tends not to be much discussed relates to the problem of evacuation when a big flood is unfolding. Note too that there are cases when “stay in place” is more appropriate: it is unwise to encourage evacuation through fast-flowing, debris-laden floodwaters or on flooded roads.

Evacuation, generally, is difficult to implement, in part because the natural reaction of most people is to resist it. They trust the potential disaster “won’t happen to me” or take the view (often born of hope rather than evidence or reasoning) that the authorities have got it wrong and evacuation is unnecessary. They want confirmation, too, which leads them to wait for evidence which usually means seeing the floodwaters actually arriving. That means delay, which is dangerous when time is short. People have died because they haven’t evacuated or did so too late and were caught in floodwaters.

People relying on their own experience is also a problem, especially if the coming event is of proportions they have not previously witnessed.

Evacuation is nobody’s hobby: it gets in the way of whatever people want to do and in any case it can of itself bring risk, for example of an accident while escaping the danger or of having one’s property looted while away. And it is common that voices are raised against evacuation and will compete with “official” warnings advising evacuation. Confusion will result, and movement will be discouraged.

Warnings often don’t break through these elements of resistance. They need to be compelling, using graphic language and an urgent tone if they are to convince people to evacuate. This, of course, invites problems if the event turns out not to have been as dangerous as expected: it will make it look (and will be portrayed) as though the authorities exaggerated the threat or were incompetent. But accuracy, like timeliness in a flash flood event, is difficult to achieve, and moreover some warnings don’t get through just as some individuals are programmed not to evacuate or cannot do so.

There are things that can be done to help boost warning effectiveness and thus evacuation. Those managing the warning function can ensure, time permitting, that they use several channels including television, radio, online messaging and loud hailers in the street – and door-knocking, if possible. Using a multiplicity of methods boosts coverage, and the repetition involved helps convince people of the case. It is critical that the message is tailored to the relevant location(s), using their place names, and it is helpful if there is local input from people who know the at-risk area(s) and understand the local flood problem. Locals are the best door-knockers and conveyers of the unwelcome message.

Door-knocking is resource-intensive and difficult to manage, but it is a better way than most to ensure the message lands. In some cases, of course, lack of time makes door-knocking impossible.

All this is in the evacuation textbooks and the best-practice manuals – but it is difficult to enact effectively in the limited time often available. The result is that evacuation is often poorly managed and more chaotic than one would want. Traffic management on evacuation routes can be poor, some people are “missed” (indeed some hide from door-knockers) and some people resist the call aggressively and angrily.

The command to evacuate sits poorly with the modern wish for engagement, consultation and autonomous decision-making. But in most flood environments, the time for engagement is well before a flood is developing. It should be done via education well outside flood time, and building on formal school curricula which deal with hazards not just as science, but as part of potential human experience and covering responses to extreme events as well as more “routine” ones.

Trust has to be built in warning and other management arrangements, too, and it must be purposefully built. Again, educational programs must be developed.

There is much to be done here and nothing is guaranteed success. We must recognise how difficult evacuation is to motivate, and how important it is that people understand that, in the end, flood management is about their own decisions and actions. Maintaining public safety against floods is not just about engineering, science and technology.

Like Texas, Colorado and the Appalachians in America, Australia has many environments in which warning times as floods develop are inevitably short, as on the flanks of the Great Dividing Range, at the bottom of the Adelaide Hills and in Wollongong and Coffs Harbour. Big death tolls in these areas are not difficult to foresee.

 

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.

Chas Keys