Life on the Edge in California firestorms and the value of the personal fable

Life on the Edge

Each catastrophe teaches psychologists
more about how the mind copes.

By Jeneen Interlandi

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Updated: 9:28 PM ET Oct 25, 2007

Three nights after his side of San Diego's Wildcat Canyon had been evacuated, Bob Younger talked his way through the police barricade and returned home. While half a million acres of the surrounding region burned and thousands of people sought shelter in Qualcomm Stadium, Younger, 54, and several of his neighbors decided to stay in their houses and fight off the giant embers and spot fires that threatened to burn them down. "We were prepared," he says. "We have water and generators and all the clothing and equipment that firefighters have."

Younger might seem irrational. But to psychologists who specialize in the mental trauma associated with natural disasters, his response is normal--perhaps even healthy. "After a disaster, there are people who flee and people who stay and become more proactive," says Gilbert Reyes, author of the 2005 "Handbook of International Disaster Psychology." "Both are ways of coping and both are normal." The key: people who see their responses to disaster as a sign of personal weakness are more likely to suffer long-term trauma, psychologists say. "That's the single best predictor of how long it will take people to recover," says Gerard Jacobs, director of the University of South Dakota's new Disaster Mental Health Institute.

The field of disaster psychology has exploded as an increasing number of people like the Youngers choose to live in catastrophe-prone regions of the country. With each wildfire, hurricane and flood, researchers find more answers to intriguing questions: why do some people choose to live in threatened areas in the first place or choose to stay after a disaster strikes? Why do some rebound so well, while others slip into despair? And what can our response to natural disasters teach us about ourselves?

While the answers may vary by disaster, geographic region or individual, one constant psychologists have found is that people crave order in the face of unpredictable forces. "Studies show that if the immediate response is disorganized and chaotic, more people will suffer posttraumatic-stress disorder, and for longer periods of time," says Yuval Neria, a clinical psychologist who specializes in disaster psychology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. "The most crucial element to people's mental and emotional health is a sense of control and leadership, which partly explains why people were so enraged after Katrina."

Younger understood the dangers; he and his wife, Sandra, lost several friends and almost died themselves when the 2003 fires burned their previous house to the ground. They rebuilt immediately--on the same patch of land--a choice they stood behind even as the latest fires blazed around them. "We're near the top of the mountain, so we have an almost-360-degree view," he says. "At night we can see the lights from Mexico. This is our home, and it's still a spectacular place to live."

The ability to rationalize risky choices comes down to what experts call "the personal fable. "People say, 'I know it can happen, but it won't happen to me'," explains Jacobs. That explains why millions of New Yorkers stayed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and why, before Katrina, residents of New Orleans managed to live with the threat from their fragile levees.

After the 2003 fire, the Youngers had no such fables. Instead, when they rebuilt, they did everything they could to take control, including a garage that could double as a fire shelter--all steel, no windows. They also cleared brush with religious devotion and stocked their house with fire helmets, gas masks and heavy fireproof coats. But even that may not be enough if there is a next time. "If we were to lose our house again, we might have to pack it in," he says. Everyone has a limit.

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