What is Hurricane Amnesia?
The term “hurricane amnesia” is used to describe a very common trend in hurricane-prone areas of the world, in which people tend to forget the potential severity of hurricanes in the intervals between major storms. As a result of hurricane amnesia, communities and individuals may fail to plan as well as they should for big hurricanes, and as a result, they are at risk of increased hurricane damage. Organizations which focus on weather safety such as emergency services and government agencies often find hurricane amnesia extremely frustrating. Hurricane amnesia can manifest in a number of ways. Most classically, people underplay the dangers of hurricanes outside of hurricane season, or in regions where severe hurricanes have not touched down for several years. As a result, they regard awareness campaigns and proposed safety reforms as scare tactics created by industries which profit from hurricane preparedness, rather than recognizing such campaigns as an important way to make their com
