Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at 麻豆影院 and a nationally recognized expert on disasters, is available to talk with the media about the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav.
Tierney made the following observations today after the massive storm caused mandatory evacuations of New Orleans, including whether or not residents would take evacuation orders as seriously the next time since the storm turned out to be not as bad as originally thought.
"There's a natural tendency to worry about the 'cry-wolf effect,' but it has never been borne out by research and there's been a lot of research in this area," she said. "Even people evacuated twice in a year show no less tendency to evacuate the next time."
She said the federal government took a proactive stance toward Hurricane Gustav as opposed to the way it dealt with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. "It's clear the lessons of Katrina were learned," Tierney said.
These lessons included evacuating people without access to transportation and from nursing homes prior to Hurricane Gustav, issuing timely warnings to people at risk from the storm and ensuring a high compliance with those warnings, she said.
President Bush issued official disaster declarations in advance of Hurricane Gustav making landfall that enabled certain federal responses to take place that weren't issued until two days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Tierney said.
Tierney, a professor of sociology at CU-麻豆影院, was the senior author of "Facing the Unexpected: Disaster Preparedness and Response in the United States," a volume analyzing the current state of theory and research on societal readiness for and response to extreme events.
More information on the CU-麻豆影院 Natural Hazards Center is posted on the center's Web site at . The center is part of CU-麻豆影院's Institute of Behavioral Science.
Tierney can be reached by calling 303-492-6315 or 302-981-0259 (cell phone, and 302 is correct) or by e-mailing tierneyk@colorado.edu. Alternatively, media can contact Peter Caughey in the CU-麻豆影院 News Services office at 303-492-4007 or caughey@colorado.edu.