Harvey, Irma, and the Vegas Massacre
THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE
The months of August, September, and October of 2017 proved to the nation, indeed the world, that natural and man-made disasters happen all the time, often in clusters, and can be devastating. Within just this three-month period, the United States would experience several hurricanes that would break flooding and rain-total records, wildfires across the entire West, including sixty different fires burning at one given time, and the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. People would barely recover from one situation, only to be dealt another blow, and another. The nation would be sent reeling into an emotional black hole, trying to deal with the physical and financial losses of these three months alone.
Emergency Management Services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. government and military—all would be taxed to the maximum and faced with lessons on what to do and not do, when catastrophic events tax services and test the fabric of human resilience. The lessons learned from the past would be applied, only to fall short with this new onslaught of mega-disasters.
It would begin with Hurricane Harvey in late August. This massive Cat 5 would make landfall and break the record for the most extreme rainfall ever on the U.S. mainland. Houston, Texas, would see over 50 inches of rain, breaking the record of 48 inches held by Tropical Storm Amelia back in 1978. The flooding and damage to the United States would be astounding, and that didn’t include the horrendous damage inflicted on the islands in the Caribbean it crossed before making landfall. As the rain continued, flooding would be beyond catastrophic, so deep that in many areas rain sensors would stop working and measuring water depth.
Rivers would overflow their banks. Lakes would too. Major roads would be closed for days, some for weeks, and even as Harvey closed in on Louisiana on the twelfth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated that city, the rains did not let up. Desperate victims and families in other states would swarm social networking sites, trying to connect, to report in safe, and to locate loved ones.
There were so many emergencies for responders to attend to, many people would die. Then, in early September, Irma came. Hurricane Irma seemed like the two in a one-two punch, striking the already shattered Caribbean, but this time aiming its power at Florida. It made landfall as a Cat 1 before becoming a tropical storm, after causing absolute chaos as hundreds of thousands evacuated inland and shelters reached capacity. The state was already suffering from a limited supply of gasoline, thanks to Harvey and the inability to import fuel from Houston. New shelters had to be set up, as people were stuck in town, unable to get out before the storm hit.
Then Hurricane Jose would threaten, although with less of a punch, as it chose to take a different route. But then there was Kate, and Maria, which obliterated the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico just over a week after Irma, to the point where over one million people were left without power. Maria was a monster, making landfall on the island as a Cat 4 with sustained winds of 155 miles per hour (249 kph). Just before it made landfall, the island’s three million plus residents were warned by local radio and told to shelter in place.
And then, on the night of October 1, 2017, just before midnight, a lone gunman would open fire on a country music concert at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, killing over 50 people and injuring over 500 others. He would shoot down on the crowd from the thirty-second floor while country music superstar Jason Aldean performed at the three-day Route 91 Harvest Festival. Before police could find him, he would shoot himself dead, leaving behind a world in absolute shock. It was the worst gun-related massacre in U.S. history, worse than the previous record holder, the shooting of 49 people at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in June of 2016. When will the next one occur?
One week later, around October 9, over 3,500 structures had been damaged or destroyed in a massive wildfire in California’s wine country. Eventually, over seventeen fires would burn down homes, buildings, and wineries and take the lives of over 29 people. As hot, dry winds blew through California, much of the state was on high red-flag alert for fires. The firestorm of October 2017 would become one of the worst natural disasters in California state history.
As the nation and the world mourned and dealt with their horror and grief, with losses of life and losses of homes and personal histories, we would once again be reminded that these disasters and emergencies can occur at any time, anywhere. We must always be prepared. We must always be ready. We can no longer say that it happens only in big cities or suburbs or out in the country, because it happens everywhere. No place is immune to its share of catastrophes big and small.
Also during the same time period, Mexico City reeled from a 7.1 earthquake that killed dozens of people and injured so many more, leaving buildings and villages in ruins as rescue workers searched for the living and the dead. It was a stark reminder to the states to the north of their own pending, even imminent, quake disasters. Are we ready? There are many faults in the United States capable of an 8 or much bigger, and we won’t have much, if any, warning. Can we survive?
The spate of mega-hurricanes alone was enough to manage, and a warning of what may come as climate change is factored into existing weather patterns. Recent computer modeling suggests that global warming may result in fewer tropical cyclones because of heated oceans, but the ones that do form will be more intense than ever. Scientists actually began discussing the possible need to revise the number of categories describing a hurricane’s power by adding on a Cat 6. Perhaps a year from now, they will be wondering if they need to add on a Cat 7 and Cat 8. With hurricanes that unimaginably powerful, will our infrastructure hold up? Will anyone survive? Not to mention the billions upon billions of dollars required to clean up and rebuild as well as pay insurance claims to victims.
The 2017 earthquake in Mexico City measured 7.1 on the Richter scale.
No matter how much of this book you take to heart and put into practice, at the very least do what you can to protect yourself and your family. You don’t have to be a hero to your city or country, although if you can help after a disaster, there will most definitely be a need for it. But take the time to sit down now and go over your plan, and put that plan to the test. Stock up now, because in Hurricane Harvey and the storms that followed, stores ran out within minutes in many cases of essentials like nonperishables and water. If you live far from the nearest grocery store, it behooves you even more to stock up at home.
With the Internet and cell phones, there is really no excuse for not signing on and learning about what is happening in your city and country and how you might need to respond in the days to come. Some disasters come with a long warning period, such as storms that can potentially become hurricanes. Others, like mass shootings, bank robberies, and hazardous chemical spills, come without warning, and you must know what to do immediately. Even with today’s technology, there is no warning before a large earthquake hits, and we now understand that they can strike in most every state of the nation.
“With preparation comes confidence.” This applies not just to job interviews, but to being in a stronger position to survive emergencies big and small, local and national, even global. No doubt, by the time this book reaches your hands, there will be more disasters to contend with. In “How to Survive a Global Disaster: A Handy Guide,” an article for the UK Guardian’s February 10, 2016, issue, writer Keith Stuart says how important it is that we forge a community as survivors, even if all we have are walkie-talkies or ham radios to do it with. He also emphasizes the importance of working with others to grow food and find water after a major global event. The problem is, many of us are not even able to do these things for ourselves and for our families, let alone contribute to the larger community that may need us to help rebuild.
Planning is essential, and if the back-to-back horrors of late summer and early fall 2017 are a sign of things to come, you may not be able to wait until next month or next year. You don’t put off buying groceries or paying the power bill, so why on earth put off doing what is necessary to save your life? Since you have to go grocery shopping each week anyway, why not add a few items for your emergency food stock each time you go? Maybe add a few gallons of water too. Before you know it, you have everything you need to get you through two weeks on your own.
But just as we fail to plan, we also fail to think. In a January 28, 2015, article titled “In a Catastrophic Event, Most People Fail to Do the One Thing That Would Save Their Life” for BBC.com, Michael Bond writes about a cruise ferry disaster in 1994 when the MS Estonia, hit gale force winds and broke apart, sending its 989 passengers into the water as it sank. Experts who studied the event were stunned by the high death toll, even taking into account the stormy waters and time it took rescuers to arrive on site.
The official report stated that people drowned because they basically did nothing to save themselves! “A number of people … seem to have been incapable of rational thought or behavior because of their fear,” the report stated. They froze up, unable to move, or went into a panic state and didn’t even respond to other passengers trying to help them. Paralysis, even for just a few seconds, can be deadly. But it is purely natural. Perhaps the best way to overcome it is with the confidence that comes from knowing you can act in beneficial ways when the SHTF.
The article included an interview with John Leach, a military survival instructor working at the University of Portsmouth. He studies actions and behaviors of survivors and victims, and he found that in a life-threatening situation, approximately 75% of people will be unable to think clearly or plot their escape because they are so mentally bewildered and paralyzed by the event. Only 15% of people know how to remain calm and rational in the face of fear and panic, and the other 10% become so dangerous they hinder everyone’s survival.
Think about which of those categories you would prefer to be in. The ones who are so afraid, they die without a fight. The ones who are so freaked out, they cause everyone to die. Or the ones who can stay clear and focused and find a way to survive. This is why we worship heroes so much, because we believe they alone have that extra-sharp mental edge to save us from our woes. We don’t realize that we possess the very same ability if we can retrain ourselves to react differently, and not from some default setting based in fear.
In an emergency there will be people who simply do not have the capacity to help themselves, even if the thing they need to survive is right in front of them. Instead, they will stampede for one exit, when many are available, killing others beneath their own feet. Or they will cower in a corner despite an open window they can crawl out of or an emergency exit lit up with an alarm sounding. The article goes on to state that there is an actual psychological explanation for this kind of behavior. It is caused by a “failure to adapt to a sudden change in environment.” The environment of a disaster or emergency is unfamiliar, and we fear the unknown. Things are also usually happening faster than normal day-to-day events, or at least they appear to be happening at ultra-high speed. A disaster also increases our emotional arousal, which can give us a kind of tunnel vision about our options and alternative courses of action. We get so caught up in what we are feeling, we forget to use our brains to think our way through. Feelings are a great indicator that something is wrong, but they don’t work well when it comes to finding viable options to save yourself and others.
Just think of how crowds behave at major sporting events or concerts when something goes wrong. They stampede and become killers themselves just trying to get away from the threat. They act without thinking. Many people just go into a deep state of shock and move as if robotic, reacting with the crowd. The problem arises when the crowd is not reacting in the best of ways. Think of the proverbial lemmings falling off a cliff because they are following other lemmings. Nobody ever bothers to ask why they are going off a cliff in the first place.
In The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why, Amanda Ripley states, “In life or death situations, people gain certain powers, and lose others.” She refers to some people having crystal-clear vision during an emergency and others having tunnel vision. Their field of sight can literally be diminished by up to 70 percent. This can also happen with hearing, where suddenly some sounds are muted and others are louder. This may be a mechanism of the brain to help us focus on what we need to see or hear to survive, but it can also hamper us from seeing and hearing important information we need.
Have you ever been in a car accident and felt time suddenly slow to a crawl? Maybe you couldn’t hear things like the car radio anymore—just the sound of skidding tires and crashing metal. Maybe all you could see was the front of your car about to smash into a wall. Time was like molasses, maybe to allow you more “thought processing time” to react properly. Then upon impact, you were shocked back into reality, and everything looked and sounded normal again. Ripley writes, “Time distortion is so common that scientists have a name for it: tachypsychia, derived from the Greek ‘speed of the mind.’” This kind of time distortion also occurs during violent crimes, major disasters, and terrorist attacks.
Studies show that time did not actually slow down of course, just our perception of it, and it may indeed be all about involving more parts of the brain, such as the amygdala, which reacts to fear, to lay down memories in a much richer, deeper way because of the intensity of the situation. Therefore it feels like time has slowed. But the cutting out of extraneous sights and sounds can indeed help the brain to focus on what it needs to by removing distractions.
We cannot count on our brains to respond perfectly in a dangerous situation. But we can feed them enough input in the form of knowledge and information to improve our odds. We may also be fighting our body’s reflexes, which happen without thinking. It takes a lot of control to get it together at the times when we most feel we are falling apart. Nor can we count on others to respond well. They may panic, but in more cases than not, they will become paralyzed and do nothing to help themselves, others, or the situation. You may have to work around them.
In disasters and emergencies, we do see many more examples in the media of people coming together to help one another. Humans are not loners by nature. We thrive in groups, and we flourish in communities. We join forces when a neighboring city is decimated by a tornado outbreak, and we give blood, time, and money when a neighborhood is devastated by a Cat 3 hurricane. We are good and we are humane, most of the time. We become extra kind and courteous and sometimes put our own lives at risk for total strangers, and we become heroes to others. But it helps to recognize the human capacity for fear, panic, anger, shock, numbness, and despair, as we will feel it. We will experience it. The more we know that we can still move past it and take action to save ourselves, the stronger we will be alone or together.
It is human nature to come together in a crisis and help one another—most of the time. As long as we don’t let fear, panic, hate, and despair overwhelm us, human beings can be incredibly noble and kind when disaster strikes.
Perhaps it helps to watch videos of disasters and see how survivors acted. Perhaps it helps to watch disaster movies and think about how you might do things differently in the same situation. Perhaps it helps to read books like this and watch documentaries. The more you can teach yourself how you should respond when the SHTF, the better chances you have of actually overcoming that initial terror and responding that way. Engage your family members. Look for videos online that are sponsored by organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, CERT, law enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security. There are live shooter training videos and videos that show you how to put out a kitchen fire. There are videos that walk you through building a storm cellar or underground bunker and videos that show how to remove a bee’s stinger. You can find just about anything in video form as well as book form for those who prefer to read.
This author was surprised to find a number of disaster video games, disaster simulators, and disaster preparedness interactive games online during a basic search. There are games that put you right into the heart of a major earthquake, a zombie attack, a tsunami, and many other scenarios. While these are games, they are also great ways to vicariously deal with a variety of situations and even compete against others, all the time learning key survival basics. “Look for Disaster Hero” and “Stop Disasters!” are the two most popular, but there are several others. Other good online resources are disaster simulations for high school and college students as well as emergency preparedness videos that offer a particular scenario involving actors role-playing in a disaster.
There is no excuse anymore. Information is everywhere. Gone are the days of saying, “I don’t know how to.…” Keep a copy of this book or any other in your emergency kit. Read it first, though.
Learn. Practice. Visualize.
Just do something to be proactive, because disasters happen, and emergencies lurk around every corner. Someone, maybe you, will break a leg on a camping trip. Your house may be robbed while you are at home. You might get bitten by a rattlesnake or burned in an office building fire. Disasters and emergencies don’t have to be the fodder of schlocky movies where everything happens but the kitchen sink, and sometimes the kitchen sink is thrown in for good measure. They can be common events that happen in common places to common people. It’s a part of life, but it doesn’t have to result in death.
Few of us will ever have the harrowing experience of being in a situation where our life literally hangs in the balance and we must fight to survive. More than likely, we will be exposed to smaller situations throughout our lifetimes that will test our resilience and strength. Few of us, if any, will escape this life unscathed by personal and collective tragedies. Even if we go into the mountains to live as hermits far from the terrors of modern society, we still face wildfires, mudslides, flash floods, wild bears, and heart attacks.
Today we can go online and buy any number of survival kits and items without ever leaving home. We can buy apps for our phones and Road ID cards, dog tags, and bracelets that give our personal and medical information if we are found collapsed on a hiking trail or in the woods. We can buy food, water, and first aid kits that have been put together for us and have them delivered directly to our door. It is only a matter of time before technology allows us to chip ourselves with ID information under our skin, as we do with our pets (and some children!). It is so easy to be prepared today, it’s a wonder there are still so many people who aren’t.
Although the U.S. military doesn’t believe that there will actually be a zombie apocalypse, they created a scenario about flesh-eating humans gone mad as an effective training scenario for disastrous circumstances.
In the year 2011, the U.S. Defense Department did what many thought was the unthinkable. They drafted a plan called CONPLAN 888-11, Counter-Zombie Dominance. While it sounded more like a video game script, it was an actual working government document. According to the plan’s disclaimer, “This plan was not actually designed as a joke. During the summers of 2009 and 2010, while training augmentees from a local training squadron about the Joint Operation Planning Process (JOPP), members of the U.S. Strategic Command found out (by accident) that the hyperbole involved in writing a ‘zombie survival plan’ actually provided a very useful and effective training tool.”
You read that correctly. The idea was to use the backdrop of a zombie invasion, ripped right out of pop culture and television shows like The Walking Dead, to assist Pentagon trainees to look at new ways of thinking about disaster preparedness and response. The zombie element gave the plan’s creators a way to break out of old and stuck mindsets and become open to more options for dealing with all aspects of a potential major emergency.
The plan suggested that, in order to better respond to huge threats, we must get out of comfort zones and get uncomfortable with our thought processes. They had some suggestions for how even members of the public can do this:
1.Identify our own zombies or potential threats to our businesses, our families, our neighborhoods. Basically, who are the “enemies” we might be facing off against?
2.Dump our inner circle for a day and look at differing perspectives. Hang out a bit with those who don’t agree with us to see what their thought processes are and how they view things. Know your opposition.
3.Find the opposites and opportunities. Consider reversing stereotypes, exploring the outlandish, coming up with innovative ways to bring totally opposite sides together.
The Department of Defense document fully laid out the basic concepts of military plans and order development, all via the fictional scenario of a zombie invasion. It covered everything from initial response to operation phases to contingency plans for dealing with hospitals and medical facilities overrun by zombies, as well as the possible deployment of remote-controlled robots to man critical infrastructure stations if the zombie threat became overwhelming. There was even a chain of command set up from the president on down to members of the intelligence community, indicating the roles each would play.
Though it sounds comical, we are reminded of one of the reasons why we flock to disaster television shows, novels, and movies. As fantastical and out of this world as the scenarios they present may be, we can vicariously react and respond and even identify all the ways the characters failed to respond properly. Nothing is more powerful than watching a disaster movie and asking, “What if?” What if that were me, how would I respond, what would I do, how would I protect my family? Perhaps it isn’t enough to ask people to do this when threatened with something real, like a hurricane or an earthquake. But if you can engage them while they are being entertained, they might begin asking what needs to be asked and identifying what their own plans of action would be as they live vicariously through their favorite heroes and villains.
The Pentagon zombie plan appealed not only to the left analytical brain but also to the right creative brain, and it worked to give trainees ideas on what wouldn’t work, what would work better, and how to improve existing contingency plans from the local to the national level. They got to think inside and outside the existing boxes of what they had always been taught and were able to identify problems and solutions they had never paid attention to before or had to think about. Besides, isn’t it good to know that our military would be ready to respond to a zombie invasion at any time?
Zombies can be a valuable learning tool. If you don’t like zombies, replace them with aliens. Or hordes of bigfoot creatures. The point is, whatever gets people thinking more about how to survive a potential emergency works, and if it leads to new ways of viewing old standard rules that may no longer work in this day and age, even better. Whatever it takes to prompt people to ask “what if” is a positive thing in getting them to consider their options in a disaster. So the next time you tune in to a zombie movie or alien invasion television show, pay close attention to the reactions and responses of the characters, and ask yourself what you would do in the same situation.
There is no escaping this darker, scarier side of life. So it behooves each one of us to be as well prepared as we can be. For ourselves. For our loved ones. For our communities. Much of the material in this book may have sounded repetitive, but repetition helps create habits, and many of the things that keep us safe in one disaster work in others too. Hopefully, the advice was strong enough, and repeated often enough, that it has moved you to take action.
Safe journeys.
