Disaster Could Have Been Far Worse, Says Sociologist Who Thinks New Orleans 'Lucked Out'

By JENNIFER HOWARD

Related materials

More Coverage: Articles about how Hurricane Katrina has affected colleges, plus photo galleries, an interactive map, commentaries, and other information.

Katrina Update: Announcements from colleges, associations, and government agencies.

Colloquy: Read the transcript of a live discussion with Scott S. Cowen, president of Tulane University, about his institution's efforts to recover.

Forum: Discuss the effects of the hurricane and exchange information.

Charitable aid: Coverage from The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines Higher-Education Price Index Rises 3.6 Percent The measure of colleges' inflation costs grew only slightly more than last year, but it doesn't include recent jumps in some expenses, like utilities. Higher-Ed Bill Slowed by Two Disputes Campus Planners Discuss How to Attain Sustainability Ruling Says Colorado Board Discriminated Against University Universities in Beijing Tighten Security for Olympics U.S. Universities Negotiate Tricky Terrain in the Middle East Newly Found Chameleon Lives Fast, Dies Young Commentary Richard H. Hersh and Richard P. Keeling: On a 'Liberal Education'

Headlines

College leaders and associations say Bush's hurricane-relief proposals aren't enough to rebuild

Tuition-refund policies anger parents of some students displaced from New Orleans universities

Senate approves new measure on tax incentives to encourage donations

Disaster could have been far worse, says sociologist who thinks New Orleans "lucked out"

Peer-review researchers explore hyped conclusions, open access, and bias

Badge requirement for foreign researchers is less likely, Pentagon says

Louisiana State U. settles lawsuit by instructor who said she was pressured to raise athletes' grades

U. of Memphis student is arrested as FBI investigates possible terrorism ties

 4 professors are among winners of Lasker Awards for medical research

Information Technology
U. of California researchers say they can identify text by analyzing the sound of keystrokes



The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina came as a shock but it wasn't a surprise, at least not to Lee Clarke, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. In Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming in November), he lays out what could happen if New Orleans were hit by a major hurricane.

He argues that instead of weighing the probabilities -- playing the odds -- policy makers need to take a hard look at worst-case possibilities: What if the Category 5 hurricane does hit a major and highly vulnerable population center? "As a colleague of mine puts it," he says, "things that have never happened before happen all the time."

In an interview, he explains why he thinks the city "lucked out" this time around.

Q. Explain the difference between what you call possibilistic and probabilistic worst-case thinking.

A. Probabilism says, in normal language, What are the chances X is going to happen? If the chance is really low, you don't really need to worry about that very much. That's probabilistic thinking. Possibilistic thinking says, even if the chance is low, what are the consequences if that chance plays out? ... If you're 30,000 feet in the sky and your plane gets into a lot of trouble, it's not the probabilities that matter, it's the possibilities.

Q. In the book you say that, contrary to popular opinion, "disasters aren't special. They are as normal as love, joy, triumph, and misery." Why is it useful to be able to imagine the worst as an ordinary part of life?

A. It increases the chances that you'll be able to control things. It's a dangerous world. And there's no reason we can't be more prepared than we are. That doesn't mean we have to live on the knife edge of terror and anxiety. If you can afford it, you buy life insurance when you have kids. ... That's not dwelling on the worst case; it's looking at the possibilities square in the face.

Q. Is it fair to say you weren't surprised by what happened in New Orleans?

A. No, I was not surprised. This was an easy one. ... What's really frightening about this one ... is that it was easy to see this one coming, and many people did.

Q. How could we have been better prepared, knowing what the possibilities were?

A. The body count, whatever it ends up being, didn't need to be as high. Evacuation could have happened sooner. I'm putting aside the effort that could have been taken to strengthen those levees. ... But this is exactly the problem. Possibilistic thinking says, Let's empty New Orleans on Thursday, 'cause look at this thing -- it's a monster. ... Soon after it crossed over Florida it turned into the storm from hell. But the risk, from a decision-making point of view, is, What if we empty New Orleans and [the storm] takes a right turn and goes back into Tampa? Taking action on the basis of a possibilistic approach is going to cost us.

Q. Could it have been even worse?

A. Worst cases could always be worse. ... They lucked out. I mean, the Mississippi pretty much stayed put. ... I sound macabre, don't I? But I think it's a book of hope.

Q. You talk in the book about "disorganizing for risk." How can we better prepare ourselves, as individuals and as a society, to deal with worst-case scenarios?

A. It means thinking about preparedness at the organization level, in our social networks, in our communities. ... We need our organizations to be more prepared, but we also need to expand our conception about what critical infrastructure is. We usually think of it in engineering terms: We need to protect the power grid, the water supply. And all of that is true. But we're a highly interdependent society. ... In central New Jersey, where I live, some of us worry about chemical plants. ... If something should happen, most likely the safest thing for most of us to do is shelter in place. That means the first-grade teacher, she becomes the first responder.

Q. What role should government play in disaster preparation and response?

A. We need government to be prepared, as much as it can be, especially when events like Katrina come along. You have to have large organizations involved in the response, just because the tasks are so overwhelming. ... But bureaucracies are inherently normal. They're just not organized to deal with extreme events. ... Command and control doesn't work in disasters. Assuming that big organizations or the military ... are always going to ride to the rescue is a dangerous, dangerous assumption.

Q. In New Orleans, did social networks fail along with bureaucracy?

A. Lots of things failed. Poverty, that's just so important. The larger principle there is -- and again it flows from seeing disaster as normal -- that we die as we live, in patterns. So 75 percent of the victims at the World Trade Center collapse are middle class ... white men. You wouldn't call that racial or institutional discrimination, but it was certainly a pattern. ... We have very strong evidence in disaster research that class is very important. ... It's not everything, but it's not nothing.

Q. If we're always imagining the worst, won't we live paralyzed by fear?

A. I'm not suggesting that we throw out probabilism, only that we have a balance. ... People can handle a lot more scary things than we give them credit for.

Q. What keeps you up nights?

A. Worrying if I'm going to be interesting in my "Introduction to Sociology" class tomorrow. [Laughs.] I worry a little bit about near-earth objects because I think there are very few institutional interests that will push to pay attention to that. I worry about bird flu. It's only a matter of time. And I worry about our trains -- the most prosaic of technologies -- we're utterly dependent on them, and they're just a disaster waiting to happen. Or a target waiting to happen. A single chlorine car near Los Angeles puts four million people at risk.

• Opinion: New Orleans and the Probability Blues (9/14/2005)