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More than 1 million people in the Carolinas were ordered to evacuate days before Hurricane Florence hit landfall.
Government officials order coastal evacuation even when it’s sunny at the beach with not a cloud in the sky and no hint of the ominous threat thousands of miles away other than from satellite images. People who know I study hurricane evacuations have often asked me to explain this curious decision.
In the end, evacuation planning is part science, part skill based on experience, and part luck.
Who makes the call
Evacuations are an example of the precautionary principle: protect people from harm before an event occurs. In the case of hurricanes, the harm is the storm surge – the rise in the sea caused by the hurricane over and above the tides. Storm surge is the cause of most deaths and damages from hurricanes, which is why emergency managers are so concerned about it and go to extreme lengths to get people to evacuate for their own safety.
