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In 1968, Graham Tobin was a teenager living in a village just east of London when police ordered an evacuation because of an impending flood.
No one listened. The residents had survived a massive flood 20 years earlier and didn't think this one would be any worse.
They were wrong. The next day, as he cleared possessions from the soaked home of a friend who hadn't prepared for the heavy rains, a question popped into his head: Why didn't everyone take the warnings seriously?
"It's a human issue that we're dealing with," says Tobin, now a geography professor at the University of South Florida.
Spurred in part by that flood, Tobin has become an expert on the human factors that lead to devastation in the wake of natural disasters.
"Disasters aren't equal-opportunity events," Tobin says. "Vulnerabilities come about because of social and economic pressures and the political wherewithal to do something about it."
In the days after Hurricane Charley, he rushed to put together a USF graduate course to study the aftermath of that storm. He and his students have spent hours in Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte interviewing survivors and studying the recovery.
Days after Jeanne, Florida's fourth hurricane this year, Tobin talked about his research with Times staff writer Jay Cridlin.
Here are excerpts.
I would imagine these must be high times for a Florida-based flood specialist such as yourself.
For me, the study of hazards is a tremendous opportunity. Academically, it's exciting, and it may have relevance to society. Because we've had so many hurricanes, the impact on the state might be greater than if we only had one major event. It might be that some of the economic stimulation within the state will be more threatened. What is it going to do to tourism? What has it done to agriculture? What has it done to other parts of industry? If we had another minor hurricane, it might lead to all sorts of people deciding, this is enough, I'm leaving the state. For some people, one hurricane is enough.
Which hurricane hit you the hardest?
Jeanne. I had a lot of tree branches down. My fence fell down. The chimney cap came off. I was surprised how heavy those were when I went to pick it up. I've got an overhang on the roof; I was a little worried that the wind would get underneath. I actually got up there and fixed that to stop any structural damage. But this is minor compared to what a lot of people are suffering.
Tell me about the Char ley class.
I got back from some field work in Ecuador on a Wednesday night, and Charley hit on Friday the 13th. It occurred to me on the Monday after that I could put something together to give students some experience of working in the field and yet learn something about the concepts behind hazards at the same time. So I quickly put it together.
Five students in the end decided to take it. It's got fairly tough requirements. I've got one student looking at the phases of emergency response and recovery; another student who's looking at the populations in those areas and why some might be more vulnerable than others; another student who's looking at critical facilities - schools, hospitals and so on - and how those were impacted; another student working on forecasting and warnings; and a final student, a GIS expert, mapping.
We've run various models on Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte. We can take the track of Charley, the characteristics of Charley, and run it through Pinellas, Hillsborough and Manatee counties to estimate what the damage would have been had that track continued the way it was initially forecast.
What would happen in these areas?
With one of the tracks we ran, it damaged something like 93,000 buildings, I think. Then we looked at some critical facilities as well - EOCs (emergency operation centers), fire stations, hospitals, police stations, schools and so on. Over half of those would suffer over 50 percent damage. Hillsborough County would suffer $66-million in damage; Manatee, $18-million; Pinellas, $66-million. So the total at that time would be about $150-million. That's just the building damage.
Give me an anecdote from the disaster trail this year.
The media often focuses on those people with signs - "I shoot looters" is a sign you see now and again. There was one gentleman, I was taking pictures in his area, and he thought I was photographing his house. He came running out, and he had an "I shoot looters" sign outside his house. (laughs) But he was genuine; he wanted to talk and discuss things with me.
People in Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte, this was a major benchmark in their lives. We need to understand, these people are under stress. They're struggling to get their lives back to some level of normality. They want to talk about the issues and tell their story. And their stories are much more important than, say, my anecdotes.
Is there a simple solution to the problem of mobile and manufactured homes in Florida during hurricane season?
No. How many manufactured homes are there in Florida? Why do we allow so many when we know these are placing people at risk? I blame society, because we could make more noise to say this isn't acceptable. We could blame our politicians and leaders for not saying, "Developers, you've got to do more." Or we could blame the developers and say, "Yes, you have the right to develop, but with rights come responsibilities." This is society's problem.
It's kind of funny that so much school has been canceled since Charley, with three more hurricanes. Has that impacted your Charley course?
Yes, it has. We work around that. The official meeting time is a Saturday morning, but we've gone off and done field work at all different times.
Will all these missed sessions create headaches for professors at the end of the semester?
They create headaches already. I think most professors recognize that some people are undergoing a great deal of stress, dealing with their families suffering, and they're trying to come to class. There's quite a bit of flexibility at the moment, and that needs to continue. We're trying to work together.
What's going to happen with your research after the semester?
We're going to come up with a technical report, which we'll distribute to whoever's interested. We're going to be distributing it to FEMA and people in the Punta Gorda area. It wouldn't surprise me if the EOCs would like to see it in Hillsborough County, maybe Pinellas County. Some of this information will be useful to them. And some of it will be critical of how things went, how things were done, why people responded and why some did not.
Academics, we think we know everything. And we do a lot of good work. But we don't share it sufficiently. I'm a great believer in applied research, that we take our theories and models and actually apply them and see if they are useful. Some of this information may be valuable. Some of it may be very useful in certain contexts. I hope it is.