Hurricane Evacuees Cooperative, For Now

The incredible outpouring of public cooperation that recent hurricane evacuation orders have enjoyed can’t possibly last. Not that I am opposed to the publc doing what their elected officials recommend, it’s just that reality has a bad way of interfering with even the best-laid (and intended) plans.

How so?

First, there is the not inconsiderable number of people who pre-Katrina never left their homes when hurricanes threatened, but left for Gustav and Ike. It will doubtless occur to at least some of these folks that they could have stayed home just as safely during Gus and Ike as they did during previous storms. Especially if they don’t live in New Orleans. What happened there can’t happen in very many other places.

As their Katrina-fueled sense of emergency diminishes, these folks will start staying put. I am not saying they should, just making a bet that they will.

Another possibility is that should public safety fail to protect property, people will decide the best—if not necessarily the safest—place to be during a hurricane is sitting in their dens with a sawed-off shotgun and a box of shells in their lap.

The way this happens is like so: If people continue to evacuate in the numbers we’ve seen here lately, the bad guys will figure it out and stay around to loot and plunder empty neighborhoods. Maybe this won’t become an epidemic, but lacking a big military presence (and shoot-on-sight rules of engagement), I don’t see how the authorities can protect large, vacant areas of town.

Evacuation is also not without its risks. Have the right bus or train wreack and the evacuation could kill more people than the storm the evacuees were trying to flee.

I think that no matter what you do in emergency management the decks are stacked against you. Head or tails, you probably lose in one way or another. No good deed ever seems to go unpunished.