Despite days of dire forecasts and explicit warnings, hundreds of thousands of people in New York and New Jersey ignored mandatory evacuation orders as Superstorm Sandy closed in. Now, after scores of deaths and harrowing escapes, emergency officials will look at what more can be done to persuade residents to get out when their lives are in danger.
"The issue of those who either can't or won't abide by those orders â€" that is a question that we have to address," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said during a tour of ravaged Staten Island over the weekend.
The same troubling pattern has been seen in previous storms, and the ideas tried across the country include stern warnings about the dangers of staying behind, moral appeals not to imperil rescuers, scary ads, and laws that threaten fines or jail time. And yet people refuse to leave, and some come to regret it â€" that is, if they survive.
"Staying there was the stupidest thing I've ever done," acknowledged Steve Shapiro, a 55-year-old Staten Island resident who witnessed Sandy's surge lift nearby houses off their foundations. Two of his neighbors, a 13-year-old girl and her 55-year-old father, died when the rushing water destroyed their house.
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said officials should work to make sure residents can feel safe in shelters and confident their homes will be safeguarded in their absence.
AP
Cathy O'Hanlon poses in front of the charred remains of her home in the Breezy Point section of the Queens borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2012. A fire destroyed more than 50 homes in the oceanfront community during Superstorm Sandy. O'Hanlon and her husband plan to rebuild the house. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Close But to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, it's a matter of changing minds, not tactics. The city notified people by such means as automated phone calls and sending around police officers with loudspeakers.
"People have got to start learning that when we say something, we mean it â€" it's based on the best prognostication," he said.
Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people and left others stranded for days on roofs, in attics and on streets in flooded New Orleans in 2005, starkly illustrated to the rest of the country the importance of getting out.
Often, though, people believe that a storm won't be so bad or that their homes are built tough enough. Some want to avoid shelters or the expense of staying in a hotel. Still others worry that their homes will be looted.
Florida State University professor Jay Baker, who has studied the subject for decades, said it is not unusual for one-third to half of all residents to defy mandatory evacuation orders, especially in places that haven't been hit hard recently.
Sandy was blamed for more than 100 deaths in 10 states, with many victims drowning in their homes or while belatedly trying to escape. In New York City alone, 35 of the 43 deaths were from drowning, largely in areas ordered to evacuate. Other people survived after police and firefighters risked their lives in churning floodwaters to reach them.
Only about half of the more than 350,000 people in New York City who were told to flee did so, officials say. New Jersey officials estimated 90 percent of the 115,000 people ordered to evacuate obeyed. But the areas under mandatory orders in New Jersey included many vacation homes. In New York, the threatened neighborhoods consisted mostly of year-round homes.
Ginger Matthews has lived all her 59 years in Long Beach, N.Y., long enough to remember Hurricane Donna's strike nearby in 1960. But determined to watch over her home and the coin laundry she owns nearby, she defied evacuation orders.
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