“More people are killed each year by bee stings than by bears.” But when asked, people are more frightened of bears.
When you are considering threats, take that same approach that we do in homeland security disaster planning - even if it's when considering a competitors products for your company or personal planning. Facets of disaster planning are helping in getting to the heart of a matter and efficiently handling it.
First, consider the hazard. In New Orleans, we don't have a history of bear attacks but we do (incredulously) have a history of snow. Snow in a city that has no means of pushing it off roadways or melting it is extremely dangerous - especially with the terrible drivers already there so you hear a morning accident report on the news instead of a morning traffic report. In the neighboring suburbs of Jefferson Parish when it snowed Christmas one year after Katrina, they used sand distributed in bulldozer buckets bouncing down it onto the ground for the emergency room ramp at East Jefferson General Hospital. (Great ingenuity until cleanup a few days later...) In a region of elevated highways, snow and freezing temperatures are extreme hazards.
However, the second basic part of disaster planning is risk - how often is hazard you've identified likely to happen. Snow in New Orleans is a very rare occurrence. And when it does happen, everyone is so conditioned to think of cataclysmic events that they automatically imagine a "snowmageddon" incident. That's fair from a human perspective when you consider the bad events befallen the region. You need to look at facts - such as the last three snow events put barely a dusting on the ground though the ice in January/February of 2014 (where there were several days of freezing temps after rain) knocked out power to many families and has only happened once in half a century or more.
Hazard times risk (with the history factor) is the probability of the disaster. No bears so far in New Orleans. Not a lot of bees. But Bourbon Street has seen its share o casualties of a different sort of hurricane. Humans are resilient and the residents of this area bounce back pretty well. It's understandable how people are tired and still trying to come back from the last round of hits.
Tomorrow, Hurricane Katrina's ten year landfall will be just two weeks away. She was a predator that The Big Easy actually considered the year before in an exercise because the hazard is high and risk is annual, with the history factor of "100 year storm". The Hurricane Pam scenario was actually slightly a worse case scenario because the storm was a direct hit and if you can imagine the Mighty Mississippi overflowing into the bowl of the French Quarter, it's surreal.
It's an appropriate time to consider your personal plans for emergency reserve finances, illness, or even home issues. The thing to remember for planning is lessons learned - AND applying what you've learned so that you are better prepared for an incident, that you know how to counter bad press if your organization is rated for bad service, or if your competitor seems to be hitting the sweet spot with their new widget. Go on facts; just as this article says, the media hypes up a lot of things. Do you own due diligence so you can plan ahead.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/08/150810-grizzly-bears-attack-yellowstone-animals/
