After Florence: Should Young Children See Flooded Homes?

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Now that Hurricane Florence has passed the Carolinas, evacuation orders have been lifted in many places. Residents who had evacuated before the storm are now returning to their flooded homes. Parents need to consider whether or not they should expose their young children to these disaster scenes.

In 2003, I began a research study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health to assess very young children (3 through 6 years of age) following exposure to a variety of traumatic events. I work at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, so when Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005, we were in the middle of this study. Through this coincidence, the study eventually included the largest sample of very young children who had been exposed to a disaster.

Within this sample was a subgroup of families who had evacuated the city safely before the storm and then returned after authorities allowed citizens back into their homes. These children who had evacuated before the storm had not been in harm’s way during the storm. Because the children had evacuated before the storm, I thought these children would not have experienced any life-threatening events and therefore would not develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To my surprise, 44% of this evacuated group eventually met the full diagnosis of PTSD (Scheeringa and Zeanah, 2008).

When we interviewed the parents about when the PTSD symptoms first appeared in these evacuated children, we found the answer clearly. Nearly all of the parents of the evacuated children stated that the symptoms started when the children returned to see their devastated homes.

As the young children got out of their cars and stood on their old sidewalks for the first time, or what was left of their sidewalks, and saw their homes, or what was left of their homes, those were clearly the times when symptoms of PTSD started. The homes were barely recognizable. The yards were cluttered with debris. Hardly any possessions were salvageable. And all the homes around them for blocks and blocks were similarly ravaged.

Still, why should this cause PTSD? The development of PTSD requires a moment of panic when individuals fear for their lives. For those young children standing on sidewalks and seeing their homes for the first time, what went through their minds, and what caused their moments of panic? Something caused panic in their minds when they stood on those sidewalks, and it was different than adults because we did not see the same development of PTSD for the parents when they visited their homes. Trauma is in the eye of the beholder. It is probable that when the young children could see the devastation firsthand, the danger finally became real to them, and they realized for the first time just how close to harm they had come. If their parents had not gotten them out of there before the storm, they now fully realized that they could have died.

These results from Hurricane Katrina may not be the same as what will happen following Hurricane Florence. The Katrina disaster had some unique features. Cars were on rooftops. Entire homes were moved from their foundations. Returning after evacuation had been delayed for a month, so walls of the houses were caked with smelly, black mold. These were scenes of end-of-civilization destruction that you might only see in movies.

As families return to their devastated homes and neighborhoods following Hurricane Florence, parents ought to keep in mind that young children may not have the cognitive and emotional capacities yet to handle these scenes. Some things parents can do include the following:

• Parents ought to consider making the first trips home to clean-up without their young children.
• Bring young children back only after some of the cleanup has occurred.
• Consider making a clean space in the homes with toys for the children to feel safe.
• If these steps are impossible for parents without childcare options, parents ought to at least prepare their children ahead of time for what they are going to experience.

Excerpted from the book They’ll Never Be The Same, by Michael S. Scheeringa, MD.