Word: mileti
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...their biggest mistake was a lack of specificity. They never clearly told the American people what might happen if Congress did not act. "If you want people to support an action," says Dennis Mileti, an expert on risk communications who has studied hundreds of disasters of the more conventional kind at the University of Colorado, Boulder, "you need to link the action to cutting people's losses. And that link isn't in place...
...Find a Face Human beings are not moved by numbers or vague predictions of certain doom. They are moved by stories. "It's simple," says Mileti. "You get one family in America. You go to their house. And you paint a picture of what their life is like one year from now. You describe a kid who can't go to college, the house that can't be sold, the inability of anyone to use a credit card. They need to get a camera crew and go to Omaha and find a family...
...People don't perceive risk," says Mileti. "People actually perceive that they are safe." To override that bias, you have to talk to people in a language their brains understand...
Because the real challenge in the U.S. today is not predicting catastrophes. That we can do. The challenge that apparently lies beyond our grasp is to prepare for them. Dennis Mileti ran the Natural Hazards Center for 10 years, and is the country's leading expert on how to warn people so that they will pay attention. Today he is semiretired, but he comes back to the workshop each year to preach his gospel. This July, standing before the crowd in a Hawaiian shirt, Mileti was direct: "How many citizens must die? How many people do you need...
...suggests just letting it sink. Postdisaster reconstruction is therefore likely to focus on strengthening the levees, but some experts in the field see that as a losing proposition in the long term. "Americans' disposition to buy a technological fix is why disasters are getting larger and larger," says Dennis Mileti, director emeritus of the natural-hazards center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "Although everything we do helps reduce losses, when a big one comes that exceeds what our technology was designed for, the damage is [catastrophic]. It ends up putting more people at greater risk in Miami...