Many reasons impact a family’s decision to stay or go in the face of a storm. These reasons include the economic situation (evacuations are expensive for the family), the community (I need to stay so I can help my elderly neighbors), the family situation (I need to leave because I have a 2-year-old daughter and I’m not going to risk it) and so on. One thing that many people who have never lived in a Hurricane-frequented area do not realize is that all of these factors, as well as the forecast, go into a family’s decision to stay or go.
The question remains: Hurricane Katrina, forecasted to make landfall as a Category 3 or higher hurricane, was enough for most parish (in other states, called a county) presidents issuing mandatory evacuation orders. Why did they stay?
To put in a personal anecdote: My family’s rule of thumb was that we evacuated for anything stronger than Category 1. The factors that went into this decision included: we lived very close to a canal levee, we would be able to stay with family a few hours away to minimize expenses, and (at the time) my parents had an 11-year-old to take care of. We boarded up our house and packed our essentials and irreplaceable items, as we’d done for countless storms before, a process which takes 5+ hours with all of the family working together, and made the (normally) 2 hour drive to my grandparents’ house. The drive took 7 hours, because of traffic.
It is easy to see that evacuating is not an easy task, and if the storm is weaker than predicted, can feel like a giant waste of time. Some families did not own a car – for them, the process is even harder.
Still, for a storm that big, with mandatory evacuations, one would think people would get the message and leave. Many of the older generations remembered Hurricane Andrew, in 1992. They had survived that one, and surely this one couldn’t be any worse. Besides, it seemed like every year the meteorologists just said the same thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew
In 2002, it was Hurricane Lili, at one point a Category 4 hurricane, that weather forecasters warned New Orleans residents about. They claimed that it could be as bad as Andrew. They told everyone that they needed to get out. It made landfall as a weakening Category 1 hurricane and did relatively little damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Lili
In 2004, it was Hurricane Ivan. This one hit the Category 5 benchmark, and again forecasters predicted that it would be “the big one,” and severely impact New Orleans. Again, they strongly advised evacuation. Again, its impact was hardly felt in New Orleans. It’s track moved east, and made landfall as a Category 3 storm in Alabama. Since New Orleans was on the west side of Ivan, even the storm surge was barely felt. Again, little impact in the New Orleans area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ivan
These are only 2 examples of storms that were supposed to be “the big one” to impact New Orleans. Is it any surprise, then, that many people thought that Katrina may just be another example of the meteorologists making it sound worse than it was?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina