Why They Stay: The Challenges with Evacuating Communities in an Emergency

September 17, 2018 by Amanda Dylina Morse, MPH in Social Determinants, Environmental Health, Emergency Preparedness

As I write this, Hurricane Florence is devastating the Carolinas on the east coast of the United States and, as with previous storms, there are questions flying about why people in the evacuation zone have chosen to remain in their homes and “shelter in place.” Although many people leave when local authorities declare their home inside an evacuation zone, there are always some people who remain despite the warnings. Why do they stay? Don’t they know they’re in danger? Don’t they care?

The short answer is that evacuating is complex and can be very, very expensive for the person leaving. Paying for gas (if you can get it before the stations are emptied), booking hotels, renting a car (if you don’t have one), and getting time off work are all major financial concerns for many, many Americans. Whether you shelter in place or evacuate, you may need to buy food, water, and supplies like batteries. If you have pets (as most Americans do), that’s another expense to accommodate since the hotels which take pets (not all do) generally charge a hefty fee for each night they stay.

It’s not possible for me to share all the personal and structural challenges to evacuating communities from disaster zones, but my hope is that this post provides some insight into why so many individuals remain in the path of natural disasters.

Reframing Violence as a Community Epidemic

February 17, 2018 by Amanda Dylina Morse, MPH in Injury and Violence Prevention, Social Determinants, Health Equity

In a previous post, I discussed the intergenerational effects of violence and trauma, but today I’d like to dig a bit more into violence as a disease in communities. We often think of violence as something that one person does to another—and that is certainly accurate—but the individuals who commit that violence have often experienced it themselves. Like influenza spreads through a community from person-to-person, family-to-family, violence also spreads through the spaces we inhabit.

We model what we see and what we live and then pass on the love and pain we experience to others. Please be warned that some of what I’ll discuss may be upsetting or trigger memories of abuse that you may have suffered. Please be gentle with yourself.