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Because no one knows *where* the storm will actually make landfall. Then can evacuate an entire coastal area, then the storm shifts and will land somewhere else.
So you should evacuate entire states? And have people go ... where?
Add in all the HYPE HYPE HYPE, the weather channels drag coverage on and on and on, usually only presenting worst-case scenario, 1 in a billion, if the stars align destruction, and most people in hurricane prone areas don't listen to them anymore. They really don't. They make their own assessments generally depending on experience.
The news does everyone a disservice. But it won't change.
The other problem, as my FIL (who lives in Coastal NC, but isn't in a county or area with an evacuation order) pointed out, "you don't know when you'll be allowed to go back in, or if you'll be able to get from where you are to home based on roads."
He figures his house is brick, and even with a record surge, he'd have nothing but his garage and crawlspace get wet. He has a generator, coolers, freezers full of ice/water...
He's also commented that if he lived in other houses even on his same street or block, he'd be gone. But his place he built up an extra foot after Floyd (right before they were due to break down,) and he's at the highest point on his block. Others are lower and the houses aren't built up quite as much.
Some area seem to have a challenge of roadways out, when everyone is trying to leave people are not the best drivers.
Its amazing how traffic jams up.
I'm thinking it may be wise to leave early but for sure to look at routes and try and determine the route with the least traffic.
I would not want to be faced with that challenge.
Quote:
I do want to buy a Sea Container, and have it partially buried maybe 4 feet of it in the ground, but I want the hole to be wider than the unit with a cement wall, and the container bolted to the cement flooring. and have it customized as a storm shelter with generator, water supply and propane for cooking. I see some on the Internet for less than $2500... don't want it would cost to customize it.
My area is not in a flood plane.... which is a good thing, but I also don't have any high hills on my lot. I've wanted to make one of these since being a kid, and remembering "hurricane warning", and some very frightening storms.
Back them, there was nowhere to evacuate to, we would all gather in one room and keep very quiet. It was not a physical guard in a real sense, but my mother was able to make us feel mentally secure, considering we had little options to do anything else. Growing up poor in a small rural town... There was none of the safety shelter programming that exist today.
In many storm ravaged areas, we rarely see imagery of what happens in the very poor sections of locations.
I do wonder if one day as a society we will figure out how to build the right shelters or re-enforce facilities for people in care homes and such facilities. (We may need this country to focus upon a new building boom to create these safer facilities); because we will always have an aging population that in some case are very difficult to evacuate.
I do wonder why in areas prone to such challenges do people rebuild replica's of exactly what was destroyed, rather than to build 'better homes" and "better facilities"? Some areas should have a basic standard of building "storm shelters, or places with basements have them build for "sustaining life", even if the top portion of the house is blown away. Yes, "Cost" is a matter, but cost can be reduced if the "safe building is done in bulk volumes of communities".
Either way, with or without such safe shelter, I would not want to be faced with the challenge.
I have a neighbor with likely 20 or more Huge!!! trees in their yard, bordering my property and all his trees are within striking distance of my home. I have one large tree, at the back of my lot.... and hope to have it cut down, but there is nothing I can do about the neighbor. (I would never buy a house in the future next door to someone who has so many trees, and I'd never buy a home that had so many trees surrounding the house on a personal lot in such ways as what my neighbor has.)
As to flooding, I'm not located in a designated flood plane, but I certainly bought flood insurance after I saw what happened in Houston Areas..
I built some flood barriers, but I have to rebuild them, because the material was not thick enough to withstand the forces that water can generate. I need to research, "water proof garage doors"....
Last edited by Chance and Change; 09-12-2018 at 06:31 AM..
Rich people have better access to education, experts and know how to listen to them. They are the first ones to leave. They don't care about material things left behind, that's what their wealth and insurance is for.
Could you provide any source for what appears to be pure conjecture? I grew up in coastal SC. Rich people stay, poor people stay, and middle class people stay.
A lot of the issue surrounds the "cry wolf" syndrome. Too often the weather industry tries to make things more dramatic to sell advertising time. Now they are saying the Florence is possibly the worst ever. Drama.
Id be curious about the difference between reaction and evacuation rates in the South and East US coastline vs evacuation in the Far east cities of Asia or the recent evacuations for Hurricane Lane in Hawaii as well as Pacific Islands.
It appears a far smaller percentage of the population are evacuated in the later two case.
Remember a much much larger denser population reside in the affected area in the far east. So the percentage is much lower and its usually fisherman, poor and often aboriginal villagers or farmers or low lying farm lands often in the floodplains of a river downstream of a dam and in a storm surge flood zone that are affected and rarely mass scale of tourists or normal residents except on those small vacation home destination outer islands. We don't here much of monster traffic jams due to hurricane evacuations even though normally the high density population is notorious for causing traffic jams everyday and especially in advance of major holidays and Golden weeks. Remember the 50 lane jam in Beijing that lasted more than a week? So in theory a mass scale evacuation would strain roadways and train lines in a much worse manner than the above situation. Major coastline cities/metro areas in the Far East that lyes in the Typhoon ally includes heavily populated Tokyo, Osaka, Tianjin, Shanghai, Wenzhou or Zhejiang province as a whole, Coastal portions of Metropolitan or suburbs of Taipei, Hong kong and surrounding Guangdong province, Ho Chi Ming City in Vietnam.
So if they state that 1 million are evacuated out of these areas its normally one million out of 20-50 million+ people in the path of the storm.
Though one thing I notice is that in the Far East(Asia and China) and Hawaii people/developers don't build large amounts of single story "beach houses" within a storm surge zone, or low lying areas next to a shoreline, beach, or barrier island(i.e Miami beach, Galveston) where monster waves would tear through them easily should the storm pushes the waves past the beach which happens fairly common even in non hurricane storms. Most of the population live much higher away from the storm surge and often live in multi story concrete buildings where its just likely to be a trickle of water on the streets and at worst into the lobby of the building where no one lives in.
Interestingly Hurricane Lane miraculously weakened over water from a Category 5 to a category 1 over warm waters before making land fall. I would not be surprised if those Hawaiian residents said they prepared or evacuated for nothing. Don't know if the same miracle would happen with Hurricane Florence this time.
One advice I heard about contraflow lanes is to resist the temptation to get on them should they ever be implemented for any type of evacuation of all possible as it would always be worse in delays at the end as the contraflow which is the wrong way of the freeway would eventually come to an end and it comes to a point everyone on the wrong side would need to exit resulting in massive girdlock. The right side would always flow better in the end.
Last edited by citizensadvocate; 09-12-2018 at 10:37 AM..
I wanted to mention another thing employers also telling people they must report to work even when the state says stay off the roads and a lot of my relatives work for companies like that .
We didn't evacuate for Charlie, but it wasn't forecast to hit us.
After the devastation, 3 more storms were destined to strike Florida that year.
The second was Frances, and the evacuation was a mess b/c it was new; plans were flawed for the simple reason it had never been done before(like Rita in Houston after Katrina). And then the storm hardly caused any damage. After that, hardly anyone would consider evacuating. Most stayed for Wilma the following year; despite it reaching cat 5 status.
It isn't just poor people who choose to remain, but also those who know their homes can withstand 140mph wind load; and are not located in surge areas.
We just came back from our E. NC home this past Sunday. If we were living there full time we would not evacuate either. Our home is on high enough ground that we would not be concerned about flooding. Now wind is a different story. Shingles and roofs are in immediate danger. The people that are close to the Tar and Neuse Rivers have to be aware of flooding, especially if this Hurricane stalls as predicted. This is a very dangerous storm.
Our friends are living in the Outer Banks. They are not leaving. There isn't anywhere for them to go to. The nearest shelter is in Knightdale, 4 hrs. away & most do not accept pets. NC is very pet friendly but not when there are a lot of people in shelters. It costs a lot to evacuate & hotels usually charge top dollar because they can in a crisis. Food, gas, etc. It adds up & people are expected to go back to work as soon as possible.
These are some of the reasons why ppl do not evacuate.
Could you provide any source for what appears to be pure conjecture? I grew up in coastal SC. Rich people stay, poor people stay, and middle class people stay.
A lot of the issue surrounds the "cry wolf" syndrome. Too often the weather industry tries to make things more dramatic to sell advertising time. Now they are saying the Florence is possibly the worst ever. Drama.
But don't people have common sense. 130 mph winds isn't " drama".
Its something that can kill you.
I understand the tv over the top thing but serioisly people can't process information and figure out what's serious and what is junk
Last edited by eliza61nyc; 09-12-2018 at 02:37 PM..
I wanted to mention another thing employers also telling people they must report to work even when the state says stay off the roads and a lot of my relatives work for companies like that .
Yes my old boss used to try that. "Tell them you're essential personnel" BS. Sorry, nurses are essential personnel in an emergency, therapists are not.
After Sandy, they wanted me to come into work but I couldn't then because they wouldn't have let me back on the island (it was over a week before they would).
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