WHAT A DISASTER! "... A thorough review [of a disaster] not only confirms that people have died, but it can expose how people died. There is a difference.".

• Author: Kayyem, Juliette
• Position: FRONTIER HORIZONS

MANY MAJOR DISASTERS or events have some sort of commission or blue-ribbon group to determine what went wrong and what might be learned to prepare for the future. They can be thorough and help expose facts and lessons, such as the 9/11 Commission, whose historic words--"a failure of imagination"--captured the world's attention. In so many cases, the reasons for the disaster are easy to come by: levees broke; intelligence dots were not connected; a network was vulnerable; a virus was not contained early enough.

Fixes are urged to ensure that an identical catastrophe does not happen again. Who could be against that? However, a thorough review has an additional purpose in an era of disasters: it not only confirms that people have died, but it can expose how people died. There is a difference.

In the 2020 hurricane season, there were 30 named storms, more than ever before. They were so plentiful that the National Hurricane Center (NHC) had to turn to the Greek alphabet--alpha, beta, and so on--once it had passed Z. Twelve of those storms made landfall in the U.S., another record. Hurricane Laura in Louisiana would prove to be the biggest, creating 17-foot storm surges, the highest ever recorded. NHC launched a massive messaging campaign throughout in an effort that minimized fatalities, using the dramatic word unsurvivable to impress upon people how serious Laura could be.

There was not one fatality because of the surge or hurricane. Still, 28 people died, most of these after the storm had passed. It was not the waters. It was the gas. As the storm devastated the electrical grid, many communities had to rely on emergency generators; various areas in Southwest Louisiana had no access to power for weeks. Those generators proved to be unsafe for many. The majority of the deaths were from carbon monoxide poisoning.

These are stupid deaths, often called indirect deaths. As hurricane forecasting has improved, information has helped make us safer and better prepared for surging waters. In turn, fewer people die from direct causes, such as flooding and high winds, yet people are still dying. These indirect causes include heart attacks, car accidents, electrocution, and carbon monoxide.

We similarly have learned about blizzards in the last few decades. It turns out most people do not die from the snow or cold. They mosdy die from carbon monoxide poisoning as well, more often than not in their cars. In the 1978 blizzard in New England, nearly 100 people died during a surprise storm, one that came in so fast it was almost impossible to prepare for. Once...