The 2009 made-for-television film Storm Seekers, starring 1980s sex symbol Darryl Hannah, centers on a team of Florida meteorologists' disastrous data-collecting mission into the eye of a hurricane. Although this film says so little about the hurricane supposedly at the center of its plot, one of Hannah's character Leah Kaplan's main conflicts is with a National Hurricane Center director. Despite Kaplan's observations that "Hurricane Josephine" is heading straight for Jacksonville, Florida, and has rapidly strengthened to a Category 5 storm, the director refuses to order an evocation because he is more concerned that Houston, Texas will be hit by "Hurricane Ike". Eventually, after one death and several near-deaths aboard the aircraft, the director needs Kaplan's warnings and orders an evacuation of Jacksonville, and the city is saved. While this plot point is highly unlikely to occur in the actual National Hurricane Center, it is true that failure to evacuate when faced with strong hurricanes can cause staggering death tolls. This tragic occurrence was seen in 1900 in Galveston, Texas, when a Category 4 hurricane landed in the Texas port city and killed at least 6,000 (the most victims of any hurricane in U. S. History). The cause of these deaths was the failure to evacuate the town, as residents assumed that since no news had come in from New Orleans (where the hurricane had taken out telegraph lines) that the hurricane was now out of their way. For the safety of the film's fictional citizens of Jacksonville, it was integral that the evacuation was ordered, and this mirrors the the real life importance of evacuations in severe hurricane events.
Review of Storm Seekers
