Consider This from NPR - Here's What Goes Into a Hurricane Evacuation Order

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

When people find themselves in the path of a hurricane they are faced with the question: should they evacuate or not? Who makes that call and how? NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate about the decision-making process behind evacuation orders and why people should heed them ahead of hurricanes making landfall.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. I'm a to stay. You come back and your neighborhood's bone dry, and you're like, I don't know. I think this time I'm going to hang. I hope it's the right call. On St. Pete Beach in Florida, Steve Sewell filled as many sandbags as he could to protect his house from storm surge.

There's one little layer of sandbags that doesn't seem to do it. I mean, they're calling for that four-foot surge, so I'm at sea level, so I'm trying to get up three or four feet, but, you know, finding bags. There are no bags. Defying a mandatory evacuation order, Sewell chose to stay put before Hurricane Idalia made landfall farther north. I don't let fear make my decisions for me. That is Joshua Keith in Panacea, Florida. He was under a voluntary evacuation order before a dahlia mid-landfall. I study and make an educated choice to go or stay. In this case, I knew we were probably not going to flood because we were on the west side of the storm and it was pulling out. And my dump has been flooded twice, so I know what it takes to get the water in my house, which is a nine-foot surge on a high tide.

Many people, though, did choose to heed evacuation orders, people like Alan Bird. He's from Shell Point. He evacuated to Panama City before returning home on Wednesday. It's just real windy and tidal surge. Edalia moved through his area without leaving much damage. The storm passed through, but luckily we were on the west side of it. And all the guys from the east side that we've talked to, it's really, really bad. They got the bulk of the tidal surge and wind around Keaton Beach. Bird says he is lucky Edalia did not wreak havoc in Shell Point, where he runs Marsh Harbor Marina. That's our livelihood. That's our business. Luckily, everything's okay. If it would have hit us directly, it would have wiped

out the whole marina. Many, of course, evacuate because they know firsthand the risks of staying behind, like Marissa Canuck, who is also from St. Pete Beach. Well, I came from New Jersey. I moved down here about four years ago, and I lived through Superstorm Sandy, so I've seen what water can do, and I'm not taking any chances. Consider this. When people find themselves in the path of a hurricane,

they're faced with this question. Should they evacuate or not? And who makes that call and how? That's just ahead. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Wednesday, August 30th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University drives discovery, innovation, and creative endeavors to solve some of society's greatest challenges. Groundbreaking investments in neuroscience, climate change, Alzheimer's research, and cybersecurity mean IU sets new standards to move the world forward, unlocking cures and solutions that lead to a better future for all. More at iu.edu slash forward.

This message comes from Pushkin. In Revenge of the Tipping Point, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell returns to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points and the dark side of contagious phenomena. Available wherever books are sold and wherever you get your audiobooks. It's Consider This from NPR. Hearing from Florida residents about their decisions prompted me to wonder, how do authorities make the call over weather, over when to issue an evacuation order? To help answer that, let's bring in former FEMA

administrator Craig Fugate. We have caught him in Gainesville, Florida. Mr. Fugate, I hope you are surviving the wind and storm down there. Yeah, we didn't get near to damage. They're seeing in other parts of the state. Yeah. So walk me through the process for people who are in parts of the state where the storm has hit or may be about to hit. How do you decide when to tell people you got to go, you got to go now? Well, it's based upon a lot of work we do outside of hurricane season. The National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA work very closely with states to establish areas that are vulnerable from storm surge. They map out the communities, how many people live there, the road networks, and how long it would take for people to get out of those areas when they say it's time to go.

They use the term clearance time, but it's really from the time they make a decision to the last car is to safety. And they factor in traffic's going to be bad. They're going to factor in, you know, that this is going to take time and how far people need to go. And so that's what they're doing. They have their tables built based upon their population. You know, some of these small towns, they can evacuate in less than 12 hours. You know, some of our communities like the Florida Keys could take two days to evacuate. Each one of these communities have this information that's been provided by FEMA and the Weather Service and Hurricane Center to provide that. So they're watching storms. When they get

that information, they know they have to make a decision. How accurate a science is it? Well, I think there's a tendency when you see all this data, you think there's a lot of precision. And the reality is we have good basic information about populations, evacuation time, what the roads will do. What we have to also factor in is human behavior. People tend not to want to evacuate at three o'clock in the morning. So they do better when they have time, it's daylight. And I think that's one of our challenges because people are saying, hey, the sun's shining. I don't see any problem. Why should I go now? That's what I think the challenge is to communicate. In some of our communities, it takes more than a day to evacuate. And if people don't go when that sun is shining, if they wait for the storm to get there,

it may be too late. It may be too late. I'm looking county by county in Florida, some of them, Pasco County, Gulf County, to name a couple. They have mandatory evacuation orders for some residents, voluntary for others. How do you make that call? Well, they look at what are the likely impacts. So, again, these evacuation zones are not just one. They're based upon different levels of storm surge. And parts of the counties have very distinct geographical I hear the word evacuation, I don't really hear mandatory or voluntary. I hear evacuation in the higher ground. Yesterday on this program, we heard from one guy, a business owner in St. Petersburg Beach. We caught him as he was filling up sandbags. He said, look, in the past, I have heeded

evacuation orders. And when I came back, my neighborhood was fine. It was bone dry. So this time I'm going to stay put. How do you weigh the risk of crying wolf? Well, this is the challenge because the area of impact could be hundreds of miles. Yet we know that the greatest impacts will be where that center of circulation crosses for storm surge. And if you wait too long until you're certain, you run out of time. And in many cases, it's, you know, historically, less than 25% of the areas that are put into evacuation orders actually get the devastating damages.

But if we got to go earlier, there's going to be less precision in the forecast. If we wait till we have certainty, it will be too late. Have you learned anything from your years in this business in terms of helping people to evacuate? I'm thinking there are plenty of people who are in hurricane prone areas who may hear an evacuation order and just be stubborn. No, I'm not going. But a lot of people have reasons not to evacuate.

Maybe they don't have anywhere to go or they don't have money to finance this or they face and just be stubborn. No, I'm not going. But a lot of people have reasons not to evacuate. Maybe they don't have anywhere to go or they don't have money to finance this or they face language barriers, all kinds of things. Yeah, this goes back to what we do before storms. And again, working with local and state agencies to make sure that there are plans in place for people who don't have transportation. You know, people say I don't have money for a hotel or motel. Well, we understand that. That's why we're opening up the public shelters. But I think what we need to understand is it's important that we give them clear information. And I think we sometimes sanitize the terms. We talk about storm surge. Most people, if they haven't been through it, have no earthly idea what that means. They think

it's like a high tide. The way people die in storm surges, they drown or they're crushed by debris like cars and boats and other large objects battering their homes. And that's the risk. This isn't about, you know, we're trying to use all this nice government terminology. It's like we need to tell people you drown or you're crushed if you're in these areas when the storm hits and you didn't get out in time. I'm sure it's such a fine line, though, between being, as you put it, brutally honest and not wanting to so panic. I haven't seen this ever so panicked. I think that's the most overrated risk that people are afraid we're going to panic people. And quite honestly, I'd like to get some people panicked to get them out of these areas so they don't drown. That is former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate speaking with us

from Gainesville, Florida. Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me. It's Consider This. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless

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