Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley Read Free Book Online Page B

family dinner of roast beef with mashed potatoes and green beans. On holidays, even the minor holidays, he decked the house with ornaments. On St. Patrick’s Day, he stationed leprechauns all around the house. On Valentine’s Day, he hung little cardboard hearts from the bushes. It was known in the neighborhood as the little holiday house, and people would drive by to see it. Christmas was the grand finale. On Christmas Eve, Turner hosted a party for all his relatives. Nearly a hundred people would pack the house. Cousins flew in from San Francisco and Birmingham. Every year, no matter how warm it was, Turner put on a big, heavy red suit and played Santa Claus. He did this for forty-eight years. “He was very handsome,” remembers his youngest daughter, Sheila Williams. “He had a full set of white hair.”
    But Turner was also stubborn. And the older he got, the more obstinate he became. “My dad was always right,” Williams says. “He was strictly Catholic. There was no other religion that existed except Catholicism. And ooh, my gosh, don’t say nothing bad about President [George W.] Bush. He kept his Christmas card Scotch-taped to the window in the kitchen.”
    Sometimes Turner’s certainty masked his fear. He hated hospitals, for instance. “He was an Archie Bunker, a terrible patient,” Williams says. He had a deep distrust of doctors, convinced they were using him for his Medicare reimbursements. He didn’t often talk about his experiences in World War II, but the memories stalked him after dark. Several times a week, he used to wake up at night crying from nightmares. And he was also afraid of dying, Williams says. “I know he was scared.”
    When Hurricane Katrina began its approach toward New Orleans in August of 2005, Turner’s children, now grown, knew it was serious. By Friday, three days before landfall, they had moved past denial and toward deliberation. They started calling motels in Mississippi, looking for rooms. Then Williams called her father, who was then living alone. “And that’s when he started giving us trouble,” she says.
    “Let’s wait,” he said. “It’s too early.”
    By Saturday, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin was advising residents to evacuate. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a test. This is the real deal,” he said at a news conference. Even in Nagin’s lazy drawl there was a sliver of urgency. “Board up your homes, make sure you have enough medicine, make sure the car has enough gas. Treat this one differently because it is pointed towards New Orleans.”
    Williams called her father again. He said he had made up his mind: he was staying. “These storms always make that turn to Pascagoula,” he told Williams. She argued with him. He laughed. “You are all very dramatic,” he said.
    On Sunday morning, less than twenty-four hours before the hurricane’s landfall, Nagin called for an unprecedented mandatory evacuation. “We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared. This is very serious,” he said on TV. “I want to emphasize, the first choice of every citizen should be to leave the city.”
    Turner went to Mass, just like he did every day. There weren’t many people there. After the service, when the priest asked him what he was going to do, he said he would stay put. “My family’s aggravating me, but I’m staying.” Turner was stuck in denial, while everyone else around him moved on to deliberation and decision. It wasn’t that he thought he was immortal. He thought often about death, especially as his siblings began to pass away. No, Turner was in denial about Katrina because something else scared him more.
    Williams and her brother decided to ride out the storm in a neighbor’s house, which was well built and far from any trees. That way, her father wouldn’t have to deal with evacuating the city. She asked him to come spend the night with them. He would not. He invited her to come to his house, a one-story structure two blocks from Lake