How and why we evacuate for hurricanes

We’d been watching the weather channel all week. Back then the predictions for the path of the storm were general at best, and came far less frequently than they do today. I didn’t do any of the packing, but my parents made it evident we were only bringing the essentials for the evacuation. They wanted me to understand what hurricane season meant for the Southeast United States; uncertainty and fear were palpable from June to November 1st — hurricane season, and Hurricane Floyd was the most powerful hurricane South Carolinians had directly dealt with since Hurricane Hugo ravaged the shores of the SE USA in 1989. Until 2017, likely, Hugo was the costliest Hurricane in the US in terms of reconstruction, and produced storm surges of over 20 ft. in Bull’s Bay — the highest storm surges ever recorded on the east coast. Hugo produced nightmarish damage that resembled warzone more than natural disaster, and in the days leading up to Floyd’s landfall in 1999 many families feared the long period of reconstruction from 10 years ago would be undone.

It was in these treacherous environments that weather channel personalities like Jim Cantore were created. Few expected, however, this evolution of tracking hurricanes would produce an industry perceived by the public as less interested in reporting the weather, and more interested in creating fear and increasing their own ratings. “Where did this mistrust of the media come from?” I thought to myself, knowing fully well the source of that agenda, but I believed the Weather Channel to be a world apart from the scrutiny of the CNN’s, Fox’s, and MSNBC’s of the world. My counterargument to this does not lie in a defense of media — I wouldn’t touch that if I was paid to — but in facts supporting the efficacy of proper hurricane preparation.

So, if Hugo was so destructive, a largely unchanged, if rehabilitated, Charleston population wasn’t going to take any chances with Floyd, and the rest of the southeast felt similarly. 21 people had been killed in the U.S. as a direct result of Hugo, and some states had actually evacuated. Less than 36 hours leading up to impact from Floyd, ten states had implored President Bill Clinton to declare a federal state of emergency, leaving very little time for the massive evacuation, which materialized into a costly investigation of a failing infrastructure, rather than the actual evacuation process we know today — the same process I’ve heard so much criticism of. Traffic was gridlocked all along I-95, I-26, and I-20 — I need not remind you that ten states were evacuating simultaneously. With the storm less than 24 hours from landfall, and having only traveled 4 miles in the past 4 hours, it became clear that any idea of a standard evacuation of our coastal city of Charleston, SC was idealistic at best. We packed it in and returned home, hoping to leave early enough the next morning to have waited long enough for the traffic to subside, but with sufficient time to beat the storm. With some good luck, and a decent road map, we were able to make it to Columbia, SC in time for the bad weather to roll through. Others weren’t so lucky. People ran out of gas, forcing them to abandon their cars on the interstate, while others abandoned the cause entirely and waited the storm out in their cars.
Fast-forward to 2017. In lieu of Hurricane Harvey, an inundated Houston had every set of eyes in the southeast glued to the weather channel. Ignoring the argument to be made that climate change is likely contributing to the frequency of these storms, it would be difficult and inadvisable to deny that these storms have not become more powerful over the past 30 years — Harvey was no exception. The category 4 hurricane which crashed into the Texas Gulf Coast on August 25th unleashed winds topping over 130 mph, caused storm surges as high as 6.7 feet, and only got more destructive after landfall. Over 27 trillion gallons of water fell over Texas and Louisiana in 6 days, with some estimated rainfall exceeding 4 feet — keep in mind rainfall and storm surge are separate statistics.

The devastation left over 30,000 people displaced from their homes and 14 people dead. So why didn’t they evacuate? Some organizations find the ultimate decision to evacuate is difficult, having to account for a lot variables: direction of the hurricane, what type of damage the hurricane will actually cause, severity of the storm, the amount of time needed to evacuate a city (Houston needs 60 hours), etc. While this is true, the decision to evacuate should be first a personal one, and only second governmental one. 3,500 people were rescued from the areas affected by Harvey simply because there wasn’t a mandated evacuation for the strongest storm to hit the coast of Texas in almost 20 years. Full disclosure, I respect the difficulty of the decision to be made regarding evacuation, acknowledging the magnitude of an effort it would take to move that many people, but I respect the severity and perils of a major hurricane significantly more.

Hurricane Irma was the next test, but thankfully not for the Gulf of Mexico. As of September 7th, Governor Rick Scott of Florida had issued a mandatory evacuation of South Florida (Miami-Dade) and the Florida Keys for Hurricane Irma, which as a Category 5 Hurricane had torn through the island of Barbuda and other Caribbean islands. Florida is no stranger to the perils of hurricanes, having been on the receiving end of 69 tropical storms and hurricanes since 2000, and 3 of their most powerful storms have hit in the past 25 years. Floyd, and a number of other storms since 2000, had illuminated the infrastructural woes the southeast faces when a storm of this caliber forces an evacuation. Nearly on the same day as Florida, South Carolina had also declared a state of emergency and southern counties were encouraged to evacuate, particularly those that lived on barrier islands.

The storm ripped through the Caribbean, ravaging the smaller islands therein. Puerto Rico, Cuba, the US Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and the Florida Keys to a certain extent, were leveled, flooded, and in the case of Barbuda, deserted. Although there’s been scrutiny given to the delay in evacuating Florida, a measure of prudence is needed to account for how quickly and how often the path of this storm, and other storms, changed.

What I find hard to fathom is the outrage a number my peers have expressed towards the weather channel for their coverage of the hurricane, objectively the most powerful storm in history. When did people become so flippant with the value of their lives, with other people’s lives? There were people concerned, perhaps rightfully, with the safety of storm reporters, but there were also people shooting guns at Irma from the tip of Florida. There was a radio host suggesting that hurricanes today were now exaggerated to support climate change. From personal experience, I heard people complaining about the evacuation of South Carolina, where the storm surge overtook the seawall in Charleston and put 2 feet of water in my dad’s house.

Of course there is good intent in the assertion that storm chasers may be unnecessarily risking their lives in these powerful storms. Without these people, though, Rush Limbaugh will not see the raw power of these natural phenomena, these veritable forces of nature, of destruction. Without storm chasers, more people will shoot guns at hurricanes instead of fleeing from their paths. Further, for those people I know who are criticizing the government and the coverage of this storm, the southeast evacuated so early and so often in the past decade years as a result of the chaos that ensued from Floyd, from the destruction of Hugo, from recognizing how quickly a hurricane can change trajectory and strength. Sound weather coverage, both preemptively and in the middle of hurricane, prevents people dying from cardiac arrest in the middle of a category 4 hurricane, from blunt force trauma, from carbon monoxide poisoning from running generators in their house, and from dying of dehydration while waiting in traffic during a poorly executed evacuation… *sigh*. To take a line from Governor Rick Scott of Florida, “we can rebuild your home, but we cannot rebuild your life.” Tune into your weather channel, use common sense, and prepare for hurricanes understanding the possibly fatal consequences of refusing to do so.

— Written by Brantley Michael

Edited by Maryam Elahi