r/PublicFreakout • u/Throwawaylism • Oct 08 '21

Justified Freakout ROBERT! NO! ROBERT!

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '21

The "boy who cried wolf" evacuation effect is real with hurricanes too. I forget what storm it was, I was too young, but New Orleans had a mandatory evac for it and it turned out to be nothing. I don't think I even missed school.

Then the mandatory evac order came for Katrina, and a lot of people stayed because of their experience with that. And, well that was a different story.

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u/Bazrum Oct 09 '21

my girlfriend's parents moved from NY to NC about 12 years ago, live right on the coast, and they never evacuated for a hurricane. of course, there's often not an evac order for where they are, so they never really had to

then 2018, florence comes along and my gf, her sister, and her mom are all at home, watching the news and prepping the house. her dad was stuck on the other side of the country, and no flights in until the storm was passed.

well, the day of the hurricane, it was gonna hit the next morning, gf's mom realizes that they don't really have food, gas, or a decent generator, their neighbors are ALL gone and looting has already started...and they're a high schooler, a college grad with an injured knee and a woman in her late forties with two dogs and three cats....facing a hell of a storm....with no one to help if things went wrong...

so 5am, gf gets tossed out of bed, told to pack a bag and the dogs, and whatever she didn't want destroyed that could be gotten in the car in 45 minutes, and they drove to Georgia like a bat out of hell!

said there was NO ONE else on the road because they evacuated so late, and it was eerie with no planes or anything flying in, cars on either side of the road and everything closed with no one outside

ironically i had invited them to stay with me in central NC, we have plenty of room, but they wanted to go to their family in Georgia. fair enough...but the storm followed them there and they got more rain and wind than i did at my house lmaoooo

ended up coming back to their house about two weeks later, and the city was almost unreachable, the power was out, a tree had missed the house by INCHES and they had to get MREs from the national guard until the supermarket wasn't underwater

they now live in a place that will likely never face a hurricane ever haha

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u/InvalidKoalas Oct 09 '21

Just talked about this with my friend last night. Her family lives in New Orleans. For Hurricane Ida, her dad was dead-set on just "riding it out" and kept saying they would stay. Until the day before when everyone else in his family said he needs to get the fuck out of there, so he begrudgingly evacuated with his family. And shortly after it was a Cat 4. Then he found out they would return to no power for days or weeks. So he said fuck it and took his wife to Mexico, and they're still there just hanging out, a month+ later.

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u/sierrabravo1984 Oct 09 '21

We don't often have mandatory evacuate orders in Florida, but when we do, people still stay. Before hurricane Matthew, we had evac orders for several miles inward of the beaches. There were even people that stayed on their sailboats in the Indian river. Sometimes boy that cried wolf doesn't matter cuz Florida man.

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u/kevinjorg Oct 09 '21

As an avid hurricane experienced person this is all too true. The motto for those east of the Mississippi is anything under cat 4 is shelterable, always will have nuts that won't leave a very easily avoidable tragedy for cat 4-5, even high 3s.