What Are the Chances?

The news readers, weather reporters, and TV personalities were rushing into Galveston and Houston as the locals were being herded onto the roads to evacuate ahead of the slow-motion onslaught of Hurricane Ike. Even several days before the anticipated landfall, every 24-hour news station and nightly news broadcast was dedicating a significant portion of its allotted time showcasing their on-site babblers in the path of the storm. The newsies, in turn, obliged their network overlords by shoving microphones into the faces of anyone marginally interesting.

Homeowners lugging plywood sheets out of building supply stores were stopped and queried about their concerns. People boarding buses found their less-than-fifteen minutes of fame by providing the viewers at home the name of the family cat and the fact they were hoping to bunk with relatives in Memphis. The Mayor of Galveston gained higher visibility as an elected official than the President of the United States. I once flipped the station only to follow the mayor to another live network feed where he was asked the very same questions he had just answered.

Satellite maps featuring the predicted path of the storm provided the graphical digital wallpaper for the backdrop. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released warnings in the classic Teletype-format of the previous generation using ALL CAPS that became increasingly more dire as the hurricane approached the densely populated coast of Texas. Ultimately, they contained the dire words ‘certain death.’ We all tuned in to see the latest status and everyone had an opinion about how horrific the damage would be.

As the first outer bands of rain and wind approached land and started to push water over the seawall, reporters and TV personalities raced each other to see who could be the first to be filmed with wet, horizontal hair. I found myself wondering if the hooded jackets they all wore were purpose built to catch each little zephyr in order to get to most footage out of any particular storm. When the full fury of nature was finally beginning to make landfall, I found myself (with many others) secretly wishing a monstrous bellow would just sweep the prattling reporter off their feet an full on into a palm tree.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s wonderful we have the technology to predict and track storms like hurricanes. In 1900, Galveston was struck by a hurricane that took the population almost completely by surprise and tragically killed about 8000 people according to the best estimates of the day. Although people still lose their lives to these weather events, we have been able to dramatically reduce that likelihood with the use of sensors, satellites, and, of course, the broadcast media.

A day and a half after Hurricane Ike had passed, the government released the first official death toll for Texas: 11 people had been killed by the storm. That same day, there was a short news blurb showing an aerial view of a pile of passenger rail cars scattered across the tracks. There had been a collision between a passenger train ferrying commuters in California with a freight train. It appeared to be human error; specifically, inattention by the passenger train operator.

After a brief recap of the accident data, it was back to moistened TV personalities racing around Galveston and Houston looking for rescue workers, local officials and residents to interview for the next half hour. I couldn’t process what I had just seen, so I flicked the remote until I found another station covering the wreck. I stopped when I saw the fluttering aerial video of the smoldering train crawling with emergency workers. I waited to make sure I had heard right. I had. Twelve had apparently died just commuting home from work using a statistically safer mode of transportation than any road-bound car or truck.

Officials would ultimately discover more deaths attributed to the hurricane, and people were affected and a few even killed in places like Louisiana. However, most of the people who lost their lives to Hurricane Ike would still be alive had they reacted appropriately to the days of warning they received. The families of the poor commuters who perished in the train accident could not have even perceived their loved ones would die just riding home from work.

Risk management is a peculiar science, and one best practiced unemotionally. Days of watching a hurricane approach a population center makes for great television drama. We make judgments about the people served up to us by the media. We cringe at the off-handed arrogance of bar patrons refusing to leave the path of the storm. We help wrestle with the painful choices those with several pets or a farmer with livestock must make. We like to assign blame and castigate government officials for apparently not doing enough. Then, out of the blue, 12 innocent people are taken from us. Without days of warning, and without a TV personality in a rain suit to decry the loss for the world to watch.

John McCumber is a security and risk professional, and is the author of “Assessing and Managing Security Risk in IT Systems: A Structured Methodology,” from Auerbach Publications. If you have a comment or question for him, please e-mail John at: [email protected].