Unsurvivable Storm Surge? Is that a thing?

[dreamshark]

I mean, a lot of people actually survived the storm surge in Galveston in 1900. Many thousands of them didn't, but still. Is any weather event actually unsurvivable? I realize that Big Weather has pretty much made its fortune by sensationalizing the weather over the past 50 years, but if that's going to be our new Shocking Weather Term, I think that's going a bit too far. 


Survivors wrote of wind that sounded "like a thousand little devils shrieking and whistling," of 6-foot waves coming down Broadway Avenue, of a grand piano riding the crest of one, of slate shingles turned into whirling saw blades, and of streetcar tracks becoming waterborne battering rams that tore apart houses.

Note the lead word in the excerpt above.  It was the deadliest weather event in US history, but here WERE survivors. 
 

Comments

[redbird]

That read as somewhere between "riding things out the way you would for a wind- and rainstorm won't work here, and some evacuation routes will be flooded" and "remember 2005, and Katrina? Leave while you can."

[lydy]

My assumption is that "non survivable" basically means that you are more likely to die than not, and that survival will be more a matter of luck than preparation. So, slightly hyperbolic, but if you were trying to decide if you should ride this out, no, really, you shouldn't.

[dreamshark]

So you believe that more than 50% of the people who refused to evacuate will die? I very much doubt that. There will probably be some deaths, and a lot of unhappy people who find that nobody comes in to rescue them from their rooftops until the surge dies down, but most people who decided to stay put will survive. And the next time some official decides to use the term "unsurvivable" nobody will listen and they'll have to come up with an even more ridiculous exaggeration. And the people who did survive will be left with the belief that they have super powers of some kind. Or that "God has special plans" for them. Or whatever.

[lydy]

No, but I do think that if you are in the direct path of the storm surge, you will almost certainly die, and that your shelter will not, in fact, shelter you. From an article on wired ( https://www.wired.com/story/hurricane-laura-storm-surge-could-be-unsurvivable/ ): “Storm surge itself is and does remain the deadliest aspect of hurricanes,” says Chesterfield. “If you put yourself in a situation where there's even 10 feet of storm surge, chances of you getting out in one piece are fairly small. But when you get up to 20 feet, there is no home structure, anyway, that's going to keep you safe.”

I think that the challenge, always, with weather is that it doesn't hit everything everywhere the same. Exactly where the storm surge will hit is more of an educated guess than a certainty. But if you are in the path of the surge, your survival will be unlikely, and if you do survive, it won't be because of anything you did, it will just be luck.

Honestly, I feel for people trying to correctly characterize the severity of a potential weather event. If you undersell it, people assume that it's gonna be just like the last time that they were fine. People really, really don't want to leave their homes (and how can you blame them) so they are going to try very hard to believe that this will be like something they have already experienced. On the other hand, if you oversell the severity, or gods help you, you are wrong, then people lose their trust in your advice and forecast. All of this is made more complex by two significant social factors. The first is that weather forecasting used to be quite bad, and the older you are, the more often you have seen the weatherman be wrong. (Remember the old joke that the weather service was a "non-prophet organization". Always loved that joke.) Although forecasts are much much better than they were 50 or 20 or even 10 years ago, weather is also getting both more severe and more chaotic.

So, I think that unsurvivable is actually a reasonable term to apply to being directly in the path of the projected storm-surge, but that they are not nearly as humble about where that surge will happen as perhaps might be useful? I dunno. Communicating with a people who have a large range of personal experience, access to information, and educational history is tough.

[dreamshark]

In my opinion, when the government deliberately lies about health consequences they only make things worse. You might get a few more people to pay attention the first time you use the newly alarming terminology, but nobody who survived the last false alarm will pay any attention the next time. To use your turn of phrase: "people assume that it's gonna be just like the last time that they were fine."

A violent volcanic eruption - now that is an appropriate use for the term unsurvivable. As I recall, the handful of people who ignored the final warnings about Mt. Saint Helens were incinerated. Storm surges are life-threatening but they are not unsurvivable. Strictly speaking, well over half the people who were in Galveston in 1900 DID survive, but somewhere around 8,000 perished. Some in horrifying ways like being tangled in trees by their hair and cut to pieces by flying slate shingles. Knowing that would motivate me to get out of the way of a 20 foot storm surge far more effectively than colorful and inaccurate adjectives. If I were trying to motivate people to run for their lives, I'd just keep quoting from the accounts of the Galveston survivors.

[lydy]

So I am probably missing something important, for which I apologize, but to my ear, you are conflating "storm" and "storm surge". I am sure that the storm itself is survivable for many people. I am unclear that a 20 foot wall of water, moving at speed, is survivable, and I think that this is what is meant by "storm surge". As for Galveston, I think that the survivors were mostly not subjected to the actual, immediate wall of water which is, if I understand things correctly, the actual storm surge. But, I may be missing a lot of things all at once.

I do very strongly agree that the fact that the CDC has been lying to us, and that the government in general issues statements filled with inaccuracies and lies, makes it much harder to trust what anybody official is saying about anything at all. So I absolutely agree with your larger point.

[dreamshark]

While I have never experienced a hurricane, I read the book Isaac's Storm, which I enthusiastically recommend. It made a big impression on me.

As I recall, the storm surge that hit Galveston was 30 feet, and it completely inundated the island (which is essentially a glorified sandbar). A surprising number of buildings DID survive, but I don't think there was one that escaped major damage. Your point about not knowing which houses would survive is well taken. Galveston was the richest city in Texas at the time, and many of the houses were massively constructed. Because the "high ground" was something like 8 feet above sea level, the finest houses were raised on high pillars of brick and stone. So that seems pretty safe, right?

The climactic storm scene that is seared into my memory took place in one of those houses. Neighbors from blocks around came to take refuge there as their own homes were torn apart by the storm surge, which came over the utterly insufficient sea wall in massive waves. There were a couple of dozen people in the big house as the water crept up the pillars and filled the first floor. They retreated to the second floor, and finally to the third floor. At this point, the house LITERALLY BURST APART, catapulting everybody into the surging flood waters (which were by this time as high as the attic of a huge Victorian house!). Some of those people survived albeit with lifetime PTSD (as loved ones were torn from their arms and drowned).

There was another unforgettable vignette where people who were trying to escape by rail and were well onto the mainland were overtaken by the storm surge and drowned IN THE TRAIN. Seriously, I don't know why no one has made a movie out of this. Maybe because it doesn't have a happy ending. But it sure does have some dramatic moments.

Somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 people perished, and they pretty much all died in the storm surge. Before the island was finally inundated some of them were crushed in falling buildings or clobbered by flying objects as they stumbled through knee-deep waves surging down the main street, but I think most of them just drowned. So I give you no argument about the deadliness of massive storm surges. But still, Galveston had a population of 38,000 plus a constant flow of businessmen and sailors and so on, being the most prosperous port city in Texas, so there were probably 40,000 people there when the storm hit. Almost nobody evacuated (except the ill-fated passengers on that train), because the newly formed US Weather Service had serious issues leading to them essentially not noticing what was heading their way. So worst case, maybe 1/4 of the people caught in the storm surge died. Which is horrible, of course. But nowhere near "unsurvivable."

As for Laura, it's beginning to look like the forecasts were just plain wrong. As of 3 pm there have been 4 deaths reported, all of them from falling trees. Apparently the storm surge was only half of the worst-case forecast. Destructive, but not even particularly deadly. But even if it had been 20 feet, you'll never get me to believe it would have been unsurvivable. And now they've used up the most ridiculously overblown adjective they could think of, what will they say the next time? What's more outlandish than "unsurvivable?"

[lydy]

Drowned in the train? IN THE TRAIN! Dear god.

I am surprised that the casualty rate was so low.

I am also becoming persuaded to your point of view. But I do wonder what they should have said. Thank god I don't have to create warning statements.

[ckd]

The 2004 tsunami caused the world's worst ever railway disaster by death toll; 1700+ people died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Sri_Lanka_tsunami_train_wreck

[laramie]

Survivable or not, your descriptions of the Galveston surge have me doubly glad to be so far from the coast, and doubly concerned for the people who may not take warnings seriously.

[laramie]

That sounds like a fair and cogent analysis of what's involved.