Improving Public Communications During Hurricanes

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1 to 5 categorization based on the hurricane’s wind speed at any given time. Developed in 1971, by civil engineer Herbert Saffir and meteorlogist Bob Simpson, who at the time was the director of the National Hurricane Center.

Prior to 1971, there was no usable scale or metric to use to help gauge the potential for damage from an approaching hurricane. The dirty little secret is that the scale is flawed on a number of levels, and may have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of people.

In 1969, Saffir,  a structural engineer was doing a study on the impact of wind damage on low cost housing in hurricane prone areas for the United Nations. When he determined the need for a scale to help quantify the amount of damage that could be expected with a given range of wind speeds, he attempt to modify the Richter magnitude scale which is used in the study of earthquakes.

He could not have foreseen that the scale would become the topic of endless media coverage, and that future generations of citizens would make life or death decisions based solely on this scale.

It is routine for people in hurricane prone areas to monitor approaching storms and formulate plans of action based entirely on the simple scale. “We don’t evacuate for anything less than a Category Four” remarked an unidentified survivor of Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas, “that was a mistake”.

Initially, Saffir attempted to include metrics for storm surge and flooding into the scale, but with mixed results. Since the impact site itself was not considered, the scale could be very misleading. Hurricane Rita, for example was a much more powerful storm than Katrina at landfall, but since it impacted more rural areas, the damage was substantially less than it’s well know cousin, Katrina.

In 2009, the National Hurricane Center removed any allowance for storm surge, and other effects, transforming the scale into a pure wind speed metric.

The scale’s rapid acceptence and increased usage in media coverage during the late 1970’s and 80’s also reveals a geographical myopthy that may have contributed to the problem. The National Hurricane Center is located in Miami and because of it’s coastline Florida typically suffers only minor damage from storm surge and in-land flooding. Wind damage is the major threat from hurricanes in that state, and with that bias, the scale must have seemed a God send to the public information staff struggling to make threats from various storms meaningful to their audiences.

Here was finally a way to “rank” these storms, and insure that larger, and more powerful storms would receive more media coverage, and compell a greater sense of urgency from the public. But the scale has proven to be a double-edge sword.

In recent years, category three storms (Katrina and Ike) have struck the Gulf Coast states, and become disasters of near biblical proportions. Storm surge and in-land flooding impacts racked up billions of dollars in damage and great loss of life. The scale’s flaws were masked by the absense of major stirkes on the Gulf Coast.

Changes in local building codes also served to make the scale less meaningful. Improved construction techniques and materials in hurricane prone area resulted in considerably less damage for the same storm ranking than in year’s past. People began to regard even category three storms as being “not that bad”.

Recent storms have made the imperfections obvious to the NHC, and thankfully to many in the media. Coverage of approaching hurricanes is now more complete, with less empahsis on the Saffir-Simpson scale. More air time is devoted to discussing the potential for storm surge, in-land flooding, and tornadoes.

But the legacy of the scale remains a fixture in media coverage, and is ingrained in the minds of the public. Changing that cultural bais may take a generation. In the meantime, it’s important that PIO’s place increased emphais on all the risk factors associated with land falling storms. Some recommendations might be:

• “Leading” press conferences and media appearances with the most signficiant risk factor instead of always starting with “Hurricane X is a powerful category four storm….” If storm surge is the biggest threat to your area, consider leading with “Hurricane X may bring storm surges of over 15 feet to the downtown area tonight…”
• Meet with TV meteorologists in your area now, and stress the importance of making their coverage of any threat well rounded. Highlight the potential impact of flash flooding, surge, and severe weather.
• Provide supplemental information on your agencies web site, including charts and graphs that stress all risk factors, and don’t focus in on wind speed alone.
• Provide frequent reminders using social media such as Twitter, E-mail, and the web.
• Educate local government officials and public safety leaders to insure that their own plans and decisions are not affected by “tunnel vision” based solely on the storms ranking on the scale.
• Insure that your own employees and staff are educated on all the risk factors, and consider all potential threats in making their own decisions.

The scale has served public information officers well over the last thirty odd years, but it does not offer the complete picture. Make sure that you’re giving your stakeholders all the information that they need.