Looking at the devastating scenes of destruction in the wake of Hurricane Ian raises the inevitable question: Why didn’t more people get out ahead of the storm? It seems puzzling —especially for those of us not living in the hurricane corridor. But I know firsthand the strong inclination to ignore the official warnings and decide to ride out a storm like Ian is not just typical of Floridians.
Seventeen years ago, like many other longtime residents of Louisiana, my extended family members prepared to hunker down despite the warnings of a direct hit. My widowed father was finally able to coax them north to Memphis. Figuring they’d be away for no more than a couple of days, they arrived with little more than the clothes on their back. Katrina made landfall with winds of 125 mph laying waste to their homes and businesses as it destroyed wide swaths of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. Had they stayed, it is likely my relatives would not have made it out alive.
Tragically, the numbers of deaths in Florida linked to Hurricane Ian are still rising – 115 and counting. The Fort Myers community of 92,000 residents is in ruins. Survivors of Ian’s 7-foot storm surge and 150 mph winds are now grappling with the pain of losing friends who didn’t make it. Fort Myers Beach Fire Chief Ron Martin told FoxWeather about reading the final Facebook posts of a dear friend who wrote, as the storm worsened, “Hey the water is coming in" and “God am I scared.”
Florida residents are accustomed to hurricane seasons that last from June through November and too many of them have weathered predictions of massive storms that failed to materialize. A Fort Myers woman named Halle B. almost died when Ian’s surging water lifted her bed to the ceiling. She told ABC Meteorologist Ginger Zee the water receded just as she had only 1 foot of air left to breathe. She regretted not evacuating pointing out she’d been through hurricanes before, “I’m the stupidest woman. I’m from Florida. I went through Andrew, Irma. I decided to stay.”
Halle B. and others who stayed were aware of the possible danger but chose to trust their own instincts more than the official evacuation orders from local leaders. I think it’s part of a larger lack of trust in institutions, a drop Gallup has reported for most of the last 15 years. Last July, a Gallup poll revealed that Americans' trust in major institutions dropped to “an all-time low.” When you don’t know for sure that the institutions you need to rely on are telling the truth, why pay attention? What’s more, as a 2019 report by the Scholars Strategy Network makes clear, "Trust in government becomes more important when citizens face crises” — whether that crisis is the public health pandemic response or hurricane evacuation and recovery.
Abraham Lincoln saw trust as a two-way street, observing, “The people when rightly and fully trusted will return the trust.” Sadly, the same people who didn’t trust the government warnings to leave before Ian made landfall are skeptical about the state and the federal government’s promise to help them recover from the widespread wreckage. I hope they are proven wrong.
