Should I evacuate if asked to do so?
July 25, 2007 (Wednesday) – Today’s newspapers are telling the story of a new poll that shows one in three coastal residents in the U.S.A. do not plan to evacuate in case of a hurricane threat. It remains to be seen what people will do when actually faced with the decision as a powerful hurricane approaches.
I recall Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, the most intense hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic basin, until Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Gilbert was watched carefully from its birth September 3 as it slammed into Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and the Yucatan Peninsula, leaving death and destruction in its wake. It was predicted to turn north into Texas, and residents were urged to evacuate. Wanda and I decided to stay here. Most people left. I will never forget driving on old Highway 35 through the heart of town, viewing all the boarded-up buildings and never seeing another car on the road. The silence was deafening and frightening. It was the eeeriest experience we had ever had, and we began to wonder if we had made the mistake of our lives in choosing to stay. The hurricane did not make the predicted northerly turn and made landfall in Monterry, Nuevo Leon, Mexico September 17. The next day it lost its fury because of a cold front in Texas. It killed 318 people, and did $5.5 billion damage.
If you are not in a mandatory evacuation zone, and you are asked to evacuate anyway, I hope your decision will be a wise one. I am sharing my own personal experience. When we were sitting alone in our boarded-up house, and a squall line came through, making the wires sing and the walls creak, my thoughts were, “We’ve made a mistake.” As it turned out, we were O.K. and the storm never came to Rockport, but, if it had followed the predicted track, a Category 5 hurricane named Gilbert would most surely have done untold damage to this fair city. The destruction and loss of life in the areas where it actually went were horrendous. Eighteen years before Gilbert, we were hesitant to leave when Hurricane Celia came, and while we were trying to decide about leaving or not, the storm came in. We had not even tried to board up a window, or anything. It was horrible, and not an experience anyone would really want to have. My thoughts throughout the ordeal was, “I should have left with my wife and five children. If anything happens to any of them, I will be the one to blame.”
So, for what it’s worth, I share with you what goes through people’s minds if they decide to stay. There is also a real possiblity that it could be the kind of hurricane you do not survive. It is also true that there are more people nowadays and when all those cars hit the road at the same time, traffic does not move. So, if you think you are going to leave, you need to do it before the roads are clogged.
I wrote, on June 1, a blog about hurricanes, and it included links you may want to see again, so you might like to take a peek at it.