EVACUATE OR NOT TO EVACUATE - THAT IS THE QUESTION

The dawn of a new hurricane season is upon us (2 weeks away), and if you've lived in hurricane country (U.S. east and Gulf coasts) for any amount of time, you know about getting and being prepared for the upcoming season every year. These next few weeks are when you're supposed to be out stocking up on supplies that will be essential in helping you get through a week or two without power and possibly water and food, if you're in the path of a hurricane. You do this now so that you're not in a mad rush to get these supplies when the warnings come out, and risk seeing empty shelves at the store, as people rush to hoard supplies and clean everything out.

Unfortunately, most people do not heed this advice and choose the mad scramble instead. A reason for this may be that an area can go years without a serious threat from a tropical storm or hurricane, and hundreds of thousands of people will have moved to these hurricane prone areas in that time, never having had to experience what goes into getting a direct hit from a hurricane first hand. Of course the main reason is likely that people just aren't moved to do anything until there is a threat. Again, it could be too late by that point.

Getting and stocking up on supplies is one thing, how do you know whether to evacuate or not? A good rule of thumb is that evacuation is not necessary unless you are literlly next to the ocean, gulf, bay, or other low lying coastal areas. Or there's a unique situation as is the case of New Orleans, LA. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina was a powerful category 5 hurricane that took aim on New Orleans. The city of New Orleans is a city that at it's low point, is about 6 feet below sea level, and is basically a bowl that is surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico to it's south and east, a very large lake to it's north, with the Mississippi River running right through the heart of it. The city is protected by a series of levees that hold back all of this water. 

Evacuations for tropical systems are reserved for those who are in imminent danger of storm surge. Storm surge is the most powerful and destructive force of a hurricane, as the high winds and forward motion of these systems push sea water towards land. If you live near the coast, or any large body of water in direct association with the water from the ocean, this is what you want to evacuate from. In the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the island wasn't destroyed by the 145 mph winds of that storm. The deaths and destruction were caused by a storm surge that covered the entire island. In the case of New Orleans, and a system as powerful as Katrina, the entire city was basically an evacuation zone. And, of course, we all saw the devastation that happened to those who did not evacuate, with levees failing all over the city.

About 3 weeks after Katrina, with all of the devastation and destruction fresh on our minds, another very powerful hurricane entered the Gulf and was making a beeline towards the upper Texas coast, the Houston/Galveston area in particular. Hurricane Rita became more powerful than Katrina. At the time Rita had become the 4th most powerful hurricane ever.

This created a mass panic in Texas that blew up into one of, if not the single biggest mass evacuations ever. Every major highway and every back road became bumper to bumper traffic for miles and miles. Trips from Galveston to Houston, that are normally about an hour, took 8 hours or more. The normal 3 hour drive from Houston to Austin was taking anywhere from 18-24 hours or more. It was a nightmare of epic proportions. People moving feet per hour, if that much, on the freeways and running out of gas in traffic. More people died in the evacuations than the actual storm. 

Rita, of course, took a turn towards the Texas/Louisiana border, and the effects of the storm in the Houston area were none. This, of course, made the nightmarish evacuations seem rather pointless. But even if Rita kept barreling towards Houston, a mass evacuation like that was not needed. Houston is a city well inland from the coast, and well elevated. Now Houston has seen it's share of floods from tropical systems before (Allison & Harvey), but those were the results of slow moving systems dropping ungodly amounts of rain. The threat of storm surge, however, is not there. That is limited to the coastal areas and bays.

The only people who needed to evacuate during Rita were those on Galveston Island, along the immediate coast, and those along the shores of Galveston Bay, and any adjacent waters along there. Those were the people in danger from storm surge. People in Katy, Memorial, The Heights, Spring, Humble, and just a majority of the Houston area in general, were not people threatened by storm surge, and did not need to evacuate. But because they did, because of the recency of Katrina and the media driving the hype, thus driving the masses to panic, those near the coastal waters who were threatened by storm surge and needed to evacuate, had a difficult time doing so.

A direct hit from a hurricane can be a pretty scary experience, even far inland where these systems can maintain hurricane strength for 100 miles or more. Powerful, howling winds for long periods of time, uprooting trees that can fall on your house, and once inland these systems can produce dozens of tornadoes. So even if you are that far inland, away from any threat of storm surge, riding one of these things out can be a very harrowing experience. But not nearly as harrowing as the ocean itself, knocking on your front door. The decision of whether to ride it out in that instance, is entirely up to the individual, but there must be an understanding of the dire need for those in dangerous harms way of the sea swallowing them up, who need to evacuate. In most cases, that's a decision they don't casually get to make.

Tornadoes and trees falling on houses can happen in any ol thunderstorm that comes rolling through. We don't evacuate for thunderstorms. So just remember the rule of thumb that people living in coastal areas where the sea levels can rise and destroy everything in it's path, including life, are those who truly have the need to evacuate. That would not include areas like Jersey Village, Cypress or The Woodlands. People living in the purples, greens and yellows in the map above are who should even have to consider evacauting. Everywhere else does not. Be mindful of that and don't clog up the roads, turning it into another Rita catastrophy, where nobody can evacuate. That can cause those people who need to evacuate, to decide not to do so, so as not to have to go through those nightmarish conditions, putting them at extreme risk of the ultimate nightmare.