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                                            Why Hurricane Ike's "Certain Death" Warning Failed





Willie Drye
for National Geographic News
September 26, 2008

As residents of Galveston, Texas, were allowed to return to the devastated island this week, experts puzzled
over why tens of thousands of others had remained during Hurricane Ike—despite the National Weather Service's "certain death" warning.



Among the possible explanations:

memories of a chaotic 2005 evacuation, an anti-government attitude, and a
false sense of security fueled by TV news and the abundance of hurricane data on the Web.









Gentle waves lap the shore near beach houses (top) on Texas' Bolivar Peninsula on September 9, 2008, just a few days before Hurricane Ike rolled into Galveston Bay.

An aerial photo of the same shoreline taken by the U.S. Geological Survey on September 15 (bottom) illustrates the dramatic destruction the strong Category 2 storm wrought on the coastal community. Yellow arrows mark the same distinguishing features in both images.


Photographs courtesy USGS