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I definitely see that an emergency evacuation for ~6.5 million people would have resulted in a similar result as the evacuation for Rita. I feel uncomfortable j

by Yhippa 9y ago

I definitely see that an emergency evacuation for ~6.5 million people would have resulted in a similar result as the evacuation for Rita. I feel uncomfortable just scaling up for the rescue mission while people hang around. It seems way too reactive. I don't know if there's a more progressive evacuation model that works. I assume it's been tried and has possibly failed.

trynewideas 9y ago
The problem with any evacuation plan that requires more than 48 hours of notice is two-fold: 1. Hurricanes are fickle, and prediction models for when and where it will make landfall are historically poor until 24-48 hours ahead. 2. People get tired of evacuating all the time during busy season, watching the hurricane turn 90 degrees off the predicted path 12 hours before landfall to hit an uninhabited stretch, and then quit paying attention. An evacuation isn't just throwing people and valuables in a car and going. It means boarding up windows, moving everyday valuables to higher places, making lodging arrangements, figuring out pets (either finding a place that welcomes them or abandoning them to almost certain death), keeping kids on track with their studies, keeping track of immediate and extended family members elsewhere in the path, and doing all of it with a decent chance that nothing -- not one thing -- worth evacuating happens. And that's just if you own a car, or aren't in a nursing home, or aren't the caretaker for someone with special needs, or disabled, or homeless, or don't work a job that expects to you show up until the last minute and come back to work the moment the order is lifted (or better yet, get exempted from post-disaster curfews and require employees to return to powerless and waterless flooded homes so they can go back to work), or are simply too poor to afford the gas and lodging elsewhere. And that's only if there's one of these in a year. 2005 had two of these in a month (Katrina and Rita). I lived in Lake Charles (near Rita's landfall) and Lafayette (dead center between where Rita made landfall and where Katrina made landfall). I evacuated four times in two years, once for Rita and three times for storms with other names I've long since buried in my memory, and in three of those four evacuations _nothing detrimental happened in my absence_. I lost money from missing work and paying for a hotel, with no means of claiming either from insurance -- insurance that barely covered a quarter of my damages from the one time something bad did happen, when my apartment was looted and vandalized for Rita. My life is more important than my stuff, that's obvious. A disruption in my life is better than the end of it. But not everyone can afford the disruption. During Rita, I was making $10/hour on $400/month rent and had no more than $1,000 in my bank account, most of which went to paying for lodging for myself or family members. The only reason I could cover that last month of rent in the looted apartment that was uninhabitable for a month afterward was because I worked for a company that had an early return permit. During the Rita evacuation, my grandmother slipped and fell in an overcrowded nursing home miles from home. She broke her hip and hit her head. She died a couple of years later in a nursing home, having developed rapidly deteriorating dementia from the head injury; she'd been independent prior to the Rita evacuation, and was never independent or coherent again. If she'd stayed home, nothing would have happened. Her house lost some shingles but was otherwise untouched. Not coincidentally, my parents never evacuated from another storm again. I moved to the west coast after I'd had enough from the 2007 storms, but they stayed in south Louisiana. They didn't ever consider leaving for this one, even when the 48-hour projection had them potentially in the worst northeastern quadrant. Right now, they're sitting under a band of heavy rain and getting online every 4 hours or so to check in, and only when they feel comfortable bringing their computer and router down from the attic. The generator they got a decade ago was flooded in the last storm, which put water up to floor level but didn't get into the house. This one's on pace to flood them. They've watched storm after storm come through with the same hype from forecasters and officials that they've heard for six decades. They just don't care anymore. Leaving is as bad to them as staying. Leaving has killed more of our family than staying. A five-day evacuation plan would be logistically ideal. A three-day-evac for 1 million plus shelters and support for the rest would be better. But nobody who lives there for any significant length of time will buy into any of it. The odds of winning the gamble of staying and weathering an underwhelming rainy day or two instead of the hyped-up disaster are too high. The cost of losing that gamble can be practically indistinguishable from the cost of evacuation, and everybody hears about those stories of loss for what winds up being nothing.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  These are terrible events but you should recognize that statistical odds don't always match up with your individual outcome. Case in point are seat belts. On average they save lives but occasionally to hear of someone getting stuck in a vehicle in such a way that cost them their life. Doesn't change the fact that you should always wear a seat belt...
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    I feel like you ignored the part about the heavy guaranteed cost of evacuation, even when nobody is physically hurt. Imagine if your seat belt caused heavy bruising every use. You wouldn't keep using it.
colechristensen 9y ago
Don't live in a flood plane, leave early when there's even a small chance of getting hit. Or alternatively, legally require flood insurance in at risk areas and let actuaries price the risk, problem solved. If the bad half of global warming predictions happen, this sort of thing is going to be common. If people don't have a motivation to mitigate the risk, everyone is going to have to pay for it collectively.
- taurath 9y ago
  The people who live in flood planes tend to not be the people who can afford insurance.
  - function_seven 9y ago
    True. If the requirement existed the areas were settled, then they wouldn’t be living there. BUT, that’s not the case. So enacting the requirement now, all at once, is probably not the right thing to do. Maybe phase it in? All new construction would require it. Existing residents would get it subsidized for a decade, etc?
    - brewdad 9y ago
      I read that many residents were given subsidized or free flood coverage following Rita. That lasted 3 years and expired almost a decade ago. Few, if any of those policies are still being paid. Still leaves the question of whether we pay for this damage or leave people with nothing. Likely something in between the extremes.
    - lostapathy 9y ago
      This is pretty simple to solve, actually. Once a property is destroyed, pay out the claim as normal, but stop subsidizing insurance on that property. The people who couldn't afford market rate insurance still get paid for the house they lost, but they have to find a safer place to rebuild.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    That’s why you legally require it. Then people who can’t afford it can’t live there and move somewhere else. The expected cost also potentially brings down the price of realestate so people can afford insurance by paying less morgage. Really it comes down to acceptable societal risk. If floods are a 1 in 100 years black swan, do we bail them out and don’t require insurance? What if it’s every 20 years? Once in 5 years? At some point we can all agree that maybe it shouldn’t be treated as unexpected and precautions should be required. Just like we require everyone to have car insurance.
keehun 9y ago
I wonder if it'll be increasingly common to see houses on stilts or of flood-resistant design. Anything from a rudimentary elevated home to a fully adjustable Narita-style hydraulic lift system...
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  Sadly not likely considering Trump just recently (2 weeks ago?) rolled back flood standards regulations to spite Obama.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  I think you're thinking of KIX's hydraulic system?
  - flukus 9y ago
    Probably more like a Queenslander (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queenslander_(architecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queenslander_(architecture) ) house on stilts or something similar. It also helps with cooling which I imagine would be beneficial on the Texas coast. It's remarkably low tech and effective, you can often find 100 year old ones only a meter or two above rivers that regularly flood.
    - rtx 9y ago
      Those are some ugly houses.
      - flukus 9y ago
        I disagree. I'd prefer an ugly house over a destroyed house any day though. There's also nothing stopping you from applying the principal in whatever style you prefer.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  > I wonder if it'll be increasingly common to see houses on stilts... It is happening in areas hit by Sandy. Other flood-resistant features include raising utility equipment (HVAC, water heaters...) off the ground.
flukus 9y ago
Evacuation doesn't have to mean all 6.5 million have to leave, just those in low lying areas. It also doesn't have to mean leaving the city, It looks like the downtown area has plenty of tall buildings that would make for some high density evacuation areas and have rooftop helicopter access for emergencies and food/water drops.
BurningFrog 9y ago
> would have resulted in a similar result as the evacuation for Rita Except that some of the roads people spent 24h on are now deep under water. So you can imagine a real disaster as millions of stuck people were overrun.

by Yhippa 9y ago

trynewideas 9y ago

The problem with any evacuation plan that requires more than 48 hours of notice is two-fold: 1. Hurricanes are fickle, and prediction models for when and where it will make landfall are historically poor until 24-48 hours ahead. 2. People get tired of evacuating all the time during busy season, watching the hurricane turn 90 degrees off the predicted path 12 hours before landfall to hit an uninhabited stretch, and then quit paying attention. An evacuation isn't just throwing people and valuables in a car and going. It means boarding up windows, moving everyday valuables to higher places, making lodging arrangements, figuring out pets (either finding a place that welcomes them or abandoning them to almost certain death), keeping kids on track with their studies, keeping track of immediate and extended family members elsewhere in the path, and doing all of it with a decent chance that nothing -- not one thing -- worth evacuating happens. And that's just if you own a car, or aren't in a nursing home, or aren't the caretaker for someone with special needs, or disabled, or homeless, or don't work a job that expects to you show up until the last minute and come back to work the moment the order is lifted (or better yet, get exempted from post-disaster curfews and require employees to return to powerless and waterless flooded homes so they can go back to work), or are simply too poor to afford the gas and lodging elsewhere. And that's only if there's one of these in a year. 2005 had two of these in a month (Katrina and Rita). I lived in Lake Charles (near Rita's landfall) and Lafayette (dead center between where Rita made landfall and where Katrina made landfall). I evacuated four times in two years, once for Rita and three times for storms with other names I've long since buried in my memory, and in three of those four evacuations _nothing detrimental happened in my absence_. I lost money from missing work and paying for a hotel, with no means of claiming either from insurance -- insurance that barely covered a quarter of my damages from the one time something bad did happen, when my apartment was looted and vandalized for Rita. My life is more important than my stuff, that's obvious. A disruption in my life is better than the end of it. But not everyone can afford the disruption. During Rita, I was making $10/hour on $400/month rent and had no more than $1,000 in my bank account, most of which went to paying for lodging for myself or family members. The only reason I could cover that last month of rent in the looted apartment that was uninhabitable for a month afterward was because I worked for a company that had an early return permit. During the Rita evacuation, my grandmother slipped and fell in an overcrowded nursing home miles from home. She broke her hip and hit her head. She died a couple of years later in a nursing home, having developed rapidly deteriorating dementia from the head injury; she'd been independent prior to the Rita evacuation, and was never independent or coherent again. If she'd stayed home, nothing would have happened. Her house lost some shingles but was otherwise untouched. Not coincidentally, my parents never evacuated from another storm again. I moved to the west coast after I'd had enough from the 2007 storms, but they stayed in south Louisiana. They didn't ever consider leaving for this one, even when the 48-hour projection had them potentially in the worst northeastern quadrant. Right now, they're sitting under a band of heavy rain and getting online every 4 hours or so to check in, and only when they feel comfortable bringing their computer and router down from the attic. The generator they got a decade ago was flooded in the last storm, which put water up to floor level but didn't get into the house. This one's on pace to flood them. They've watched storm after storm come through with the same hype from forecasters and officials that they've heard for six decades. They just don't care anymore. Leaving is as bad to them as staying. Leaving has killed more of our family than staying. A five-day evacuation plan would be logistically ideal. A three-day-evac for 1 million plus shelters and support for the rest would be better. But nobody who lives there for any significant length of time will buy into any of it. The odds of winning the gamble of staying and weathering an underwhelming rainy day or two instead of the hyped-up disaster are too high. The cost of losing that gamble can be practically indistinguishable from the cost of evacuation, and everybody hears about those stories of loss for what winds up being nothing.

chrisco255 9y ago
These are terrible events but you should recognize that statistical odds don't always match up with your individual outcome. Case in point are seat belts. On average they save lives but occasionally to hear of someone getting stuck in a vehicle in such a way that cost them their life. Doesn't change the fact that you should always wear a seat belt...
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  I feel like you ignored the part about the heavy guaranteed cost of evacuation, even when nobody is physically hurt. Imagine if your seat belt caused heavy bruising every use. You wouldn't keep using it.

colechristensen 9y ago

Don't live in a flood plane, leave early when there's even a small chance of getting hit. Or alternatively, legally require flood insurance in at risk areas and let actuaries price the risk, problem solved. If the bad half of global warming predictions happen, this sort of thing is going to be common. If people don't have a motivation to mitigate the risk, everyone is going to have to pay for it collectively.

taurath 9y ago
The people who live in flood planes tend to not be the people who can afford insurance.
- function_seven 9y ago
  True. If the requirement existed the areas were settled, then they wouldn’t be living there. BUT, that’s not the case. So enacting the requirement now, all at once, is probably not the right thing to do. Maybe phase it in? All new construction would require it. Existing residents would get it subsidized for a decade, etc?
  - brewdad 9y ago
    I read that many residents were given subsidized or free flood coverage following Rita. That lasted 3 years and expired almost a decade ago. Few, if any of those policies are still being paid. Still leaves the question of whether we pay for this damage or leave people with nothing. Likely something in between the extremes.
  - lostapathy 9y ago
    This is pretty simple to solve, actually. Once a property is destroyed, pay out the claim as normal, but stop subsidizing insurance on that property. The people who couldn't afford market rate insurance still get paid for the house they lost, but they have to find a safer place to rebuild.
- Swizec 9y ago
  That’s why you legally require it. Then people who can’t afford it can’t live there and move somewhere else. The expected cost also potentially brings down the price of realestate so people can afford insurance by paying less morgage. Really it comes down to acceptable societal risk. If floods are a 1 in 100 years black swan, do we bail them out and don’t require insurance? What if it’s every 20 years? Once in 5 years? At some point we can all agree that maybe it shouldn’t be treated as unexpected and precautions should be required. Just like we require everyone to have car insurance.

keehun 9y ago

I wonder if it'll be increasingly common to see houses on stilts or of flood-resistant design. Anything from a rudimentary elevated home to a fully adjustable Narita-style hydraulic lift system...

RandomInteger4 9y ago
Sadly not likely considering Trump just recently (2 weeks ago?) rolled back flood standards regulations to spite Obama.
hkmurakami 9y ago
I think you're thinking of KIX's hydraulic system?
- flukus 9y ago
  Probably more like a Queenslander (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queenslander_(architecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queenslander_(architecture) ) house on stilts or something similar. It also helps with cooling which I imagine would be beneficial on the Texas coast. It's remarkably low tech and effective, you can often find 100 year old ones only a meter or two above rivers that regularly flood.
  - rtx 9y ago
    Those are some ugly houses.
    - flukus 9y ago
      I disagree. I'd prefer an ugly house over a destroyed house any day though. There's also nothing stopping you from applying the principal in whatever style you prefer.
mannykannot 9y ago
> I wonder if it'll be increasingly common to see houses on stilts... It is happening in areas hit by Sandy. Other flood-resistant features include raising utility equipment (HVAC, water heaters...) off the ground.

flukus 9y ago

Evacuation doesn't have to mean all 6.5 million have to leave, just those in low lying areas. It also doesn't have to mean leaving the city, It looks like the downtown area has plenty of tall buildings that would make for some high density evacuation areas and have rooftop helicopter access for emergencies and food/water drops.

BurningFrog 9y ago

> would have resulted in a similar result as the evacuation for Rita Except that some of the roads people spent 24h on are now deep under water. So you can imagine a real disaster as millions of stuck people were overrun.