how do mandatory evacuations work?

[cellio]

We sometimes hear about mandatory evacuations because of storms (hurricanes, winter storms, etc). Hearing about one a couple of years ago that was announced on a Saturday morning prompted me to ask this question about evacuations on Shabbat. Now the question of timing has come up.

I've been fortunate to never have to evacuate my home or city. (Buildings yes, but that's different.) I have this impression, perhaps informed by Hollywood rather than reality, that announcements get broadcast far and wide and then police or National Guard or whoever start going through the area making sure people clear out, and you maybe have an hour or two to get underway at best. But then I thought about the logistics of that, and I'm wondering if you really have several hours, maybe the better part of a day, to do your prep and get out.

I'm not talking about cases where the problem is immediate (there's just been an earthquake, the missile will strike in half an hour, etc), but about other cases where the threat is dire enough that there is an evacuation but it might not be "drop everything and go right now" -- the storm is making landfall tonight, cases where you have (or think you have) time to get everybody home from work/school so you can leave together, pack your car, contact people outside the affected area to arrange for shelter, etc. I realize it's a good idea to get out as soon as you can, if nothing else because of traffic, but we know people don't always do that (and can't always, if not everybody is together to start with).

So for those of you who've been through these kinds of evacuations, or who know more about it than I do, what's the timeline usually like? How long do people take to clear out?

Comments

[alienor.livejournal.com]

When we prepared for Hurricane Hugo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Hugo) the evacuation announcements were on TVs and radio. We lived about 20 miles inland, so there were no bullhorns or door-to-door knocking. We evacuated another 10-15 miles inland (my father was on deployment, so we stayed with another military family who's husband was ALSO on deployment).

The problem when you think "I have several hours to evacuate" is that you and everyone else thinks that and you have scenes like the pictures on this page from Hurricane Rita (http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/2000s/rita/).

In Texas, the interstate highways often have 1-3 lane frontage roads, so from the left, 3-4 lane frontage road (headed inland), 6 lane interstate headed inland (with additional cars on shoulder, probably out of gas or overheated), 6 lane interstate running contraflow (opposite of normal) to attempt to accommodate the traffic (headed inland), and finally, the coast-bound frontage road.

It's common for cars in these situations to run out of gas and/or breakdown, so emergency services has to direct traffic in weird ways, AND assist the breakdowns, AND make sure everyone is out of their homes in the super dangerous areas (I believe that's mainly the first couple of streets facing the water, usually). Then they have to answer calls DURING the storm from folks whose homes collapsed or flooded or got ripped away by a tornado. Afterwards, they have to help get people out of ruined buildings AND protect property from looting. Oh, and they get to worry about not being with their own family during all of this.

So, pretty much what I'm saying is that emergency services are stretched pretty thin, so make the decision to get out early, do it, and get out of the way.

Also, about school/work - once the decision is made by officials to evacuate, everything starts closing. Definitely schools and office work. Groceries/gas will stay open as long as they can usually, but it depends on their personal plans.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

What I should also add is that with hurricanes (in the States, I have family in the Caribbean where it's different) it's very rarely that you would wake up suddenly one morning and be told to evacuate. I believe we knew that Hugo would be a major storm and would hit the lower east coast for several days before it did. You would likely have warning to pack the car (documents, extra clothing, food, etc) before Shabbat so that all you would have to do is drive. I have no idea if that's permissible, but there would likely be enough warning.

[cellio]

Thanks for this information. I knew that traffic would be jammed in an evacuation, but hadn't considered the "out of gas" and "broke down" complications.

It must be really rough to be an emergency responder or police or hospital worker in situations like this -- you have your own family (and house) to worry about, but you can't do that because you have to tend to the public good. And I don't imagine that they get any extra compensation in times like this.

Also, about school/work - once the decision is made by officials to evacuate, everything starts closing. Definitely schools and office work.

Agreed -- but I was thinking that it can still take a while to round everybody up. Suppose you've got a kid in day care and a kid who needs to be picked up from a different school, and both parents are at work when things start shutting down, and traffic's already a mess... I think back to 9/11, when for a while there were planes still in the air (I think Jennerstown hadn't happened yet, plus others) and news reports were saying "Pittsburgh". I was thinking about what it would take for me and my husband (working in different parts of town and one of us using public transit) to get home, collect the cats, collect essentials like medicine, and get out, and even without any kids in the mix, that was going to take a couple hours most likely.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

The difference between 9/11 and a hurricane (which is my experience) is that there's warning. If there's a chance you may need to evacuate that afternoon you probably didn't send your kids to school and called out of work. If you live in an area where this sort of stuff is common (hurricanes were pretty frequent when I was growing up, though we only evacuated once we did shelter in place a BUNCH) you keep your supplies at hand during the relevant season.

[cellio]

Oh that's a good point -- if I lived in a place at high risk for seasonal disasters, I'd have stuff packed and ready to go.

[mortuus.livejournal.com]

I was a Red Cross volunteer in Utah for a few years and helped out once when there was an evacuation of a large part of a town due to a fire on the mountain. They got about half an hour of notice to pack up and head out. I don't know how they were notified, though. It was at night (I got the phone call at midnight to head to the Red Cross building to join the contingent to set up the shelter, so that was probably quite soon after the residents were notified, or around the same time), so I'm guessing door to door, since I know that is done.

So, really, not much time at all!

(They got the fire under control the next day and no homes were damaged.)

[mortuus.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the traffic discussion above, yeah, that would be a nightmare. In my fire example, it was a small town, so traffic wasn't an issue. Cities amplify everything, though!

[spiritdancer]

They probably used an emergency phone notification system - that way you can "call" large numbers of phones to get the word out.

My husband's office has such a system to notify their 8000+ employees of things such as a weather-related shutdown. It's a good system, if a bit alarming when the house phone and both cell phones start ringing at the exact same time :-). It definitely gets your attention. Oh, and their particular setup requires pushing a key after you hear the message; if you just hang up, you immediately get another call.

[spiritdancer]

Drat, this was _supposed_ to be a reply to a comment above about how a town could be notified to evacuate in under 30 minutes.

[cellio]

My previous employer had a system like that. It didn't call back immediately, but it cycled among cell phone, house phone, and email addresses (work and home) until it got an "I heard you".

[cellio]

Thanks for sharing your experience. Yikes -- on one hand half an hour is almost no time, and on the other taking that long can be deadly when the threat is fire.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

On a not quite as serious note: We've been talking about how various cities are getting rid of their snow. Buffalo essentially makes mountains out of parking lots. Does Pittsburgh dump their snow in the rivers, or is there a reason they don't.
-- Dagonell

[eub.livejournal.com]

It would crush the grocery store shopping carts!

[cellio]

Pittsburgh doesn't routinely dump it into the rivers so far as I know. In 2010 when we got about five feet of snow over about a week, I recall them dumping it in the rivers then -- it got talked about, which makes me think that was unusual.

I suspect the main reason is that making piles along the sides of the roads is usually good enough so why pay drivers to haul it down to the river? But I wonder if there are also concerns about adding to the water volume when spring thaw will already bring flooding in some places.

On a related note, today I looked out the window at work (from the 43rd floor) down at an expanse of snow nearby, idly wondered why that parking lot hadn't been cleared so cars could use it, and then realized that was a river. :-) Yeah, covered, though probably not all that deep.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

But I wonder if there are also concerns about adding to the water volume when spring thaw will already bring flooding in some places.

I believe the concern is actually untreated road chemicals/debris going into the river as pollutants, instead of being treated through the stormwater system. I think it's actually illegal in Maryland to dump snow in the river.