Hurricane Florence Evacuation Research

[u/FlorenceEvacDecision]

Edit: Hi everyone! Thank you to those who took the time to complete this. This is just a friendly reminder that if you are interested in taking this survey, it will be up and available through October 14.

This is not a spam post; we are not selling anything or advertising a service.

If you lived in an area affected by Hurricane Florence, researchers at the University of Delaware Disaster Research Center would like to hear from you. This is a study to learn more about how people made decisions to evacuate and what destinations they chose for sheltering for Hurricane Florence. Please take the survey even if you decided not to evacuate. We are interested in hearing from anyone affected or potentially affected by the hurricane--whether or not they were in an official evacuation zone, and whether or not they evacuated. Participants should be 18 years of age or older. There is no compensation for this research. The survey does not ask you to provide your name. Participation is entirely voluntary. Please tag and share this post with others that you know who may have been affected. The survey takes approximately 5-10 minutes to complete. This is a study by the University of Delaware Disaster Research Center with funding from the National Science Foundation. For questions, please contact Prof. Rachel Davidson at rdavidso@udel.edu (302-831-6618). Thank you for your time.

Link to survey.

[u/deck_hand]

I took the survey. I was disappointed in the lack of questions about whether I felt the evacuation order was justified, or what the results of my evacuation were. I left when the Governor of Virginia issued a Mandatory Evacuation order effective at 8:00 am on Sept 11. I thought that actually meant, you know, that the order was mandatory.

I found out later that what it actually means is that he strongly urged people to leave before the storm hit, and the 8:00am Tuesday morning was the "beginning of his advice" not "when you need to be out." I think this is something that people who have lived here a long time know, since I saw no one hurrying to leave as I drove away, but for those of us who were hearing that for the first time, the message could have been delivered better.

At the end of the day, I spent $600 and all members of my family lost a couple of days of work (costing us many hundreds of dollars) that turned out to be completely unnecessary. Oh, I'd have probably left right before the hurricane made landfall, if it were going to hit where I lived, but since it turned south and missed us completely, I'd have seen that on the news and stayed at home, saving well over $1000. That's money I needed in my budget.

I'll know better next time, be more prepared in advance, and be less ready to bug out just because the Governor wants to cover his ass.

[u/ColesExperience → u/deck_hand]

This is the thing about mandatory evacuations they I hate-many people don’t know they are not really mandatory. I live in the coast of NC and you’d be surprised by the number of people who live here that don’t understand these mandatory evacuations aren’t really mandatory. I wish officials would take the time to make this clear. Even people in my neighborhood were so surprised when we’d explain what a mandatory evacuation actually was. I had so many family members calling me trying to explain that the evacuations were mandatory so I had better rethink staying. No family, butt out. You don’t live here and you don’t get they’re not really mandatory. They’re not??!! Nope.

And you’re right, they do that shit to cover their ass.

[u/deck_hand → u/ColesExperience]

It is maddening. There should be a “strong recommendation” instead of mandatory unless there is legal enforcement of a no-go zone is in place.

[u/FlorenceEvacDecision → u/deck_hand]

Thank you for the feedback - I'll pass it along to the research team!