Hurricane warnings not heeded, study says

[LaPlaceFF]

Hurricane warnings not heeded, study says
Florida evacuation order misunderstood
Thursday, March 24, 2005
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
Leaders still have a long way to go in persuading residents to evacuate in advance of a major hurricane, even after a mandatory evacuation order is issued, according to new research conducted in the aftermath of Florida's busy 2004 hurricane season.

Jay Baker, a geography professor and evacuation-planning researcher at Florida State University, told the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans on Wednesday that a preliminary survey of Florida residents hit by one of the four hurricanes and one tropical storm indicates that most stayed put.

Only 53 percent of people living in the Tampa Bay area who were most vulnerable to hurricane storm surge evacuated as Category 4 Hurricane Charley bore down on them in August, despite a mandatory evacuation order.

And the proportion of evacuees was even smaller -- about 28 percent -- along stretches of coastline north and south of Tampa Bay, including around Charlotte Harbor, where the hurricane veered ashore. Baker has completed about 1,000 of 9,000 surveys for the study, with the first batch focused on Hurricane Charley.

Though projected to hit Tampa, Charley strengthened rapidly just before striking far south of the city with winds of 150 mph on Aug. 13 at 3:45 p.m. It was the strongest hurricane to hit the United States since Andrew, a Category 5 storm, cut across south Florida in 1992.

Baker's surveys, which eventually will include about 9,000 affected Florida residents, are aimed at helping federal, state and local officials better understand what drives residents' evacuation decisions.

Baker conducted surveys in the 1990s to assist the Army Corps of Engineers in developing early evacuation plans for the New Orleans area, focusing on how early people might leave in advance of a storm.

In December, the University of New Orleans Survey Research Center, in a poll of 400 residents in each of Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes, found that about 43 percent said they evacuated for Hurricane Georges in 1998, and that 69 percent said they would evacuate if public officials recommended it.

However, most of the poll was taken before Hurricane Ivan, which forced a major evacuation of the area in September. Estimates by public officials immediately after that storm indicated half the seven-parish area's population evacuated, similar to Baker's finding for Tampa Bay.


Getting the word out

The good news, Baker said, is that when people understand that they've been ordered to evacuate, they are more likely to do so.

But not everybody hears -- or understands -- the evacuation orders, he said.

"In Tampa, 60 percent heard the notice to evacuate," Baker said. "In southwestern Florida (to the north), less than 40 percent knew that an evacuation was recommended, and even fewer heard that it was mandatory, that someone was telling them they absolutely had leave.

"For some reason, people either didn't hear the evacuation order, or didn't understand it applied to them," he said.

New methods are needed to reach individuals in areas where evacuations are declared, he said, including emergency personnel riding through neighborhoods making the announcement over bullhorns, or installing a system through which an automatic message is telephoned to people in evacuation zones.

"It would be nice one of these days if NOAA Radio was integrated into every TV set, so it would turn the radio on in the middle of the night to get the word of an evacuation to people," he said.


The skinny black line

Baker said residents' reasons for not leaving varied, but rarely included "hurricane fatigue," or getting tired of evacuating repeatedly in a season.

Baker said he also has not seen proof of what emergency planners call the "skinny line scenario," in which people focus only on the black line included in forecasts to mark the predicted path of a hurricane's eye.

Most people remembered seeing both the line and the wider cone that it cut through, which meteorologists use to show the risk of the pathway veering from their forecast.

National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield told conference participants on Wednesday that although he jokes that he's afraid the epitaph on his tombstone will read, "Don't focus on the skinny black line," forecasters have decided to continue using it.

That's the result of a separate survey of members of the public, media and state and local emergency preparedness officials conducted after the Hurricane Charley forecasts renewed concerns about focusing on the line.

Scott Kiser, tropical cyclone program manager with the National Weather Service, said 67 percent of the 1,000 people who responded by e-mail to the survey said the line should be used, and only 14 percent wanted the forecast map printed without the line.

The line still will be packaged inside a cone-shaped area of risk, with a warning that hurricane effects could occur anywhere within the area.

Mayfield said there will be other changes in hurricane forecasts, beginning this summer, including a better explanation of the uncertainty inherent in the forecast path, new information about wind speeds and an explanation of the potential for damage that might be caused by winds and storm surge.

The National Hurricane Conference continues through Friday.

. . . . . . .

[Scorpion]

I have to admit that I was in an evacuation zone for both Frances and Jeanne. When Frances was a Cat 4 we thought about leaving but then had nowhere to go. Im unsure what would have happened if Frances would have come in south of us as a Cat 4 or 5.

[Persepone]

From what I read on S2K last summer, it appears as if there are a lot of "human" reasons for not evacuating &/or delaying evacuation until you probably can't do it.

There are a whole bunch of people who cannot organize their own evacuation for a variety of reasons: they are elderly, they don't have a car, a dependable car, etc. &/or they share the car with someone who needs to stay (e.g., a nurse or other hospital worker, other "essential" person). There needs to be a system to identify these people, and have these people evacuated, perhaps by bus or specially equipped vehicles, to some specific out of danger location.

There are people who probably can't afford to evacuate &/or don't have anywhere to go... I'll bet that is a much bigger problem than people know. It's not those identified as "poor" but probably working middle class who just are "broke." Public transportation to some place might work here too. Buses come to mind...

There seem to be an awful lot of people who do not evacuate because of worry over pets, etc. and this is exacerbated if they are elderly, poor, broke, etc. Yet I think it would be possible to organize something in advance so that people who evacuated to other areas could do so knowing their pets would be able to evacuate too.

It looks as if sometimes evacuations are from one part of the state to the other, as well as "north." Well, I'll bet there are pet owners all over the state who would help out a fellow pet owner during an evacuation--so all you need is some animal lovers' registry for volunteers...

My experience with "northern" hurricanes was with some specific elderly people and also with foreign students. The foreign students "heard the words" but they were meaningless. They had no clue what a hurricane was. When I went down to the dorms at UB (on the beach in Bridgeport, CT) and said the word "Typhoon" the whole dorm cleared out really quickly. But apparently the translation for "hurricane" in dictionaries is not what it should be. It probably says "windstorm" or something. And by the way, where are they supposed to evacuate to? I ended up with a bunch at my house and I called and got a bunch of them to school shelters, other friends' houses off the beach, etc. The school didn't think about its foreign students. I'll bet there are people in Florida who don't know what a hurricane is or what the danger is until they are actually in one so they don't understand an evacuation order. For that matter, hurricane warnings assume you watch a lot of TV! Many Foreign students don't watch TV. I wonder if older foreign residents watch a lot of TV &/or understand the true meanings of the warnings.

The elderly are a different story. We're talking crotchety elderly people with pets, people who don't like being herded, etc. And, realistically, by the time the local "mandatory evacuation" is declared, it is usually too late for them to figure out how to get out anyway. They need someone to get them and their pets, etc. and the police won't let you through to pick them up and they can't drive themselves, and it becomes a Mexican standoff.... (We did eventually win our fight with Milford police to collect an elderly resident but by then she needed to be carried through flood water...) And again, you have all the problems of no money, where to go, who will take the pets, etc. etc. magnified by limited mobility, special health needs, etc.

There are certainly people who hear and totally ignore the warnings because they are idiots. Fine. There will always be a bunch of those. But I think that there were probably a bunch of people who would have evacuated if they had had a way to do so that seemed to make sense for them. I think it would be possible, feasible, etc. to have people sign up in advance for a "bus" or for "special needs elderly/medical" etc. evacuations etc. Also, the question of "where to go" needs to be solved--not everyone can afford a motel room and many don't have relatives, etc. to go to.

The final question is what happens to many people's paychecks/jobs when they evacuate? Obviously if you try to leave in a timely fashion, you're using vacation time &/or not getting paid because that means you are leaving before the evacuation is "mandatory." And if you wait until it is "mandatory," can you get away or are you likely to be stuck on some highway in a hurricane? At that point you might be less vulnerable in your house... How does the law handle "hurricane pay" down there? Evacuation is VERY expensive, apparently...

[depotoo]

unfortunately palm beach didn't even issue evacuation orders until the morning of jeanne thus many couldn't have gotten out if they'd wanted to!

[HurricaneBill]

Hell those tards at NHC cant even get a intensity or forecast path right 6 hours. out. Why listen to them? Yet the private sector can forecast a storm a couple weeks out.

Bye bye Greatpain.

[T'Bonz]

We really don't get enough lead time to get out safely. I'm in Ft. Lauderdale. To get far away takes hours and hours. Who wants to get stuck on the road when the hurricane takes an unexpected jog north?

Many people have pets and don't want to leave them.

Of course, this year, with the cost of gas that might stop some from leaving.

If it's a cat 3 or above heading my way, auf wiedersehen. I'm outta here.

[vbhoutex]

Iunderstand some of what you are saying Tbonz.

Unless one is in the Panhandle area of FL there isn't muc of anywhere to go to really escape the Hurricane.

I have animals and I love them deeply, but to save my life they would be left behind if it had to be.