Was it really better to not evacuate for Hurricane Harvey due to the chaos that creates?
I know the Houston mayor stated that past evacuations have not worked well for Houston but could there have been a smaller voluntary evacuation order that would have helped? I’m only really looking for experts who have some expertise in this area of massive evacuations and disasters with fact based information. I do believe its very very hard to evacuate a huge city like Houston and some people do not have the money to evacuate anyway.
Hi, I have survived hurricanes Irma, Wilma and Charlie while living in Southwest Florida. For Irma, I evacuated for the first time, in part because I did not want my elderly mom to be afraid or to suffer with no air conditioning for days after the storm.
After the storm, I found that people who stayed said they’d never do it again, it was horrible. Those of us who evacuated seemed to feel we would have been OK at home, and regret the money spent and the inconvenience of the evacuation. But that is just hindsight.
After Charlie, we still had a home. We had no power for four days and it was miserably hot. Everyone I know saw me in my undies sooner or later.
After Irma, I fully expected to have nowhere to live. Instead, our house was untouched. We stayed away one extra day, and the power came back eight hours after we got home.
The real answer is, “Know Thyself”. Check your gut. Have a plan in place. And the bottom line is, evacuate, and do it before the roads become a parking lot.
Not evaculating was the risk many took and actually wasnt wise to do because the storm killed many who chose not to leave and to stay behind. Those who didnt have the means to leave had the option of going to a shelter to escape the dangerous winds and flooding that Hurricane Harvey had brought to the area. If I were you I would research on Google as to dealing with massive evacuations and disasters.