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Fatal Security

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Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 25, 2008

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is lulling coastal residents into a fatally false sense of security. That's because the scale's five single-digit categories distort the danger of an approaching tropical weather system.

It happened during Hurricane Katrina, when some South Mississippians made the mistake of underestimating the hurricane's threat by comparing it to Hurricane Camille. Because Camille was a 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale and Katrina was weakening into a 3, some people assumed Katrina was less of a threat to their lives and property.

That assumption cost some people their lives.

While Katrina's winds were slower than Camille's, its unprecedented storm surge was far deeper and deadlier.

The same thing just took place in Texas, where coastal residents understandably but regrettably compared Hurricane Ike, a deceptively low-level Category 2, to previous higher-level storms and decided not to evacuate.

We appreciate that perfection is not possible.

As Max Mayfield, the former National Hurricane Center director, says, "To get a perfect storm surge forecast, you have to have a perfect forecast for the track, a perfect forecast for its intensity and a perfect forecast of its structure, and we don't know how to do any of those perfectly."

Benton McGee, supervisory hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's storm surge center in Ruston, La., said of the computer models that produce storm surge estimates: "Models are based on data, so if you don't have a lot of data, then the model is limited in what it can do. We're really just now putting out enough (surge) sensors and enough instruments in the field to really record exactly what's happening."

"Just now" is obviously not soon enough to save lives that have already been lost.

We need something - a number or a word or a phrase - that immediately conveys to coastal residents the potential danger of what lurks just over the horizon and the risk of not getting out of its way.

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