As Irene rumbled up the East Coast on Aug. 26, we got to witness some very difficult risk-management decisions playing out in a very public sphere.
On the Friday before the storm's anticipated Sunday morning arrival, Mayor Mike Bloomberg issued New York's first-ever mandatory evacuation for residents in low-lying parts of the city—an order that affected some 370,000 people. Around the same time, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), in a decision not made but heartily endorsed by Bloomberg (and N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo), announced it would be shutting down the region's entire subway and rail network at noon on Saturday.
In retrospect, the evacuations were clearly unnecessary. By the time Irene reached the city, Irene's strength had dwindled to the level of a tropical storm and no longer packed a life-threatening (or emergency-vehicle-blocking) punch.
And while some rail lines outside the city did suffer significant damage, the city's subway system was largely spared—and was, for the most part, fully operational for the Monday-morning commute (as was the under-Hudson River PATH system that connects Manhattan to NU's offices in Hoboken, N.J.).
So did Bloomberg and MTA officials make the right risk-management call?
In the realm of public opinion—all important for a politician—reviews are mixed, with an edge to those giving Bloomberg and the MTA a thumbs up for their “better safe than sorry” approach (at least based on some 650 comments on this question on the New York Times site).
But plenty are expressing outrage over a perceived massive overreaction: lamenting the economic hit of the transportation shutdown for an entire weekend; angry over the real risks and hardships that come with asking 370,000 people to leave their homes on short notice; worried that the evacuation sets a bad precedent that will invite many more to come at the drop of a hat (or raindrop); and predicting a “boy who cried wolf” impact on government warnings about future storms.
And almost all of those giving negative marks to Bloomberg's risk-management skills pointed to the evisceration the mayor took for what was widely seen as a woeful lack of preparation for a December 2010 blizzard: This blunder, they feel, caused him to vastly overcompensate for Irene, with a mitigation plan totally out of proportion to the likely risk.
With such divided reviews of Bloomberg's response among the public at large, I'm very curious as to how risk-management pros would score Bloomberg's performance. Did he make the right call at the right time with the information he had on hand? Should he have waited a few more hours to get a better gauge of the strength (or lack of it) Irene would actually have it when it arrived? If Bloomberg were a private-sector risk manager, would his career survive two arguably way-off-base calls in an eight-month span? (The answer is almost certainly “no” if he worked for the notoriously perfection-demanding…Michael Bloomberg.)
Send me an email or respond to this column online, and we'll share your assessments.
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