Belongings are one thing. The biggest problem I see with rail evacuation is the same problem a lot of existing bus-based government evac options have. They don’t let you bring your pets. A lot of people refuse to evacuate because they can’t afford many nights in a hotel, and the government-provided evac options prohibit people from bringing their pets along. Even if you’re lucky and your own home survives, who’s going to look after your cats or dogs while you’re away for who knows how long? Then when it comes time to return, often people aren’t let back in for prolonged periods of time until authorities decide things are safe. Imagine being in that situation, knowing that your pet is dying of dehydration while the cops sit there and decide whether it’s time to let you return home or not.
I don’t really think it’s about saving the TV. I think the biggest reason people would insist on using private transport for evac is they don’t want to condemn their pets to death.
A car is a passable temporary shelter. You’re protected from the elements (in non storm areas, where you fled to previously), you have heating and power (at least for your phone), you have radio, maybe even a screen.
I’m pretty sure that every time we evacuated to a relative’s house, we over-packed. But most of that “overpacking” wasn’t just all the clothes, it was often food in the fridge going into ice chests, lots of water, extra fuel.
It would be common to get stuck in traffic trying to leave, and it even happened a couple of times that the highway was down to a complete stop.
I guess the unfortunate thing there is that they often “counter flow” the highway as well, meaning that they put all lanes leaving, but people rarely ever knew, so I sometimes saw someone going the “wrong way” on the highway while we were outside of our cars wondering what was happening.
Getting stuck like that was rare, but to avoid it you have to leave a day or two before everyone else.
![[image] Hurricane Milton (Florida) evacuation challenges for car dependency](https://lemmy.vg/pictrs/image/4644251d-ef46-4f5c-8783-510de93c2ee1.png){kind=link}
I guess this is also why many evacuation plans for extreme disasters say to leave your belongings behind.
Belongings are one thing. The biggest problem I see with rail evacuation is the same problem a lot of existing bus-based government evac options have. They don’t let you bring your pets. A lot of people refuse to evacuate because they can’t afford many nights in a hotel, and the government-provided evac options prohibit people from bringing their pets along. Even if you’re lucky and your own home survives, who’s going to look after your cats or dogs while you’re away for who knows how long? Then when it comes time to return, often people aren’t let back in for prolonged periods of time until authorities decide things are safe. Imagine being in that situation, knowing that your pet is dying of dehydration while the cops sit there and decide whether it’s time to let you return home or not.
I don’t really think it’s about saving the TV. I think the biggest reason people would insist on using private transport for evac is they don’t want to condemn their pets to death.
A car is a passable temporary shelter. You’re protected from the elements (in non storm areas, where you fled to previously), you have heating and power (at least for your phone), you have radio, maybe even a screen.
I’m pretty sure that every time we evacuated to a relative’s house, we over-packed. But most of that “overpacking” wasn’t just all the clothes, it was often food in the fridge going into ice chests, lots of water, extra fuel.
It would be common to get stuck in traffic trying to leave, and it even happened a couple of times that the highway was down to a complete stop.
I guess the unfortunate thing there is that they often “counter flow” the highway as well, meaning that they put all lanes leaving, but people rarely ever knew, so I sometimes saw someone going the “wrong way” on the highway while we were outside of our cars wondering what was happening.
Getting stuck like that was rare, but to avoid it you have to leave a day or two before everyone else.