On 9/11, Washington, D.C. experienced a spontaneous, voluntary mass evacuation of the hundreds of thousands who work but don't live in the city. Some who live here also left. The President, who was in Florida that morning, was kept away for several hours.

I witnessed a good chunk of the exodus from my front steps. It was remarkably civilized and calm (drivers were more polite than on a normal day), cars stopped for traffic lights, waited their turn at 4-way stops. Drivers, their radios cranked on the news, and pedestrians streaming down the sidewalks toward destinations sometimes miles outside the Beltway, asked me and my neighbors what we were seeing on television. I welcomed into my home for a couple hours a hyperventilating stranger and her friends who had been forced to abandon their cars in their parking garage when police screamed at them to run away from the Capitol.

All the while the news was reporting that the State Department had been bombed, a plane had flown into the Pentagon, the White House had been hit and several 747s were unaccounted for and inbound over the Atlantic Ocean.

Meanwhile, the President was flying to a secure bunker in Nebraska.

In a few hours the city streets were pretty empty. By mid-afternoon it was eerily quiet (airports closed, trains stopped) as a police officer told me that he'd just come off the Southwest Freeway (part of I-395) and it was deserted.

How an evac would go in the event something like a dirty nuke went off or a chem-bio attack and residents had to also leave, I would not venture a guess. I'm afraid now that security officials have an evac plan it would be a massive screwup (such as everyone north of Pennsylvania Ave -- including Virginia residents -- would have to evac north into Maryland and everyone south would have to evac to Virginia). Theoretically Pennsylvania Avenue then would be clear for emergency vehicles to drive east and west across the city. I'd be forced to evacuate through some always dangerous neighborhoods. Scary.

From Wikipedia (for what that's worth)

Washington, D.C. has the second highest percentage of public transit commuters in the United States, behind only New York City.

Commuters have a major influence on travel patterns in Washington, D.C. 671,678 people are employed in Washington, D.C., with only 28% commuting from within the city.

After Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans experience, this DC stat has concerned me:

35.4% of households in Washington, D.C. do not own a car.

DC car ownership is less than New Orleans' was.

"The Capitol was evacuated. And for the first time ever, the Secret Service executed the emergency plan to ensure the presidential line of succession.

At 9:57 a.m., Air Force One thundered down the runway, blasting smoke and dust in a full-thrust take off. Communications Director Dan Bartlett was on board: “It was like a rocket. For a good 10 minutes, the plane was going almost straight up.”

By 10:30 a.m., America’s largest city was devastated, its military headquarters were burning. Air Force One turned west along the Gulf Coast.

Air Force One set course for an underground command center in Nebraska. Back in Washington, the president’s closest advisor, Karen Hughes, heard about the threat to the plane and placed a call to Mr. Bush.

“And the military operator came back to me and in a voice that, to me, sounded very shaken said, ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry, we can’t reach Air Force One.’” recalls Hughes, who was out of the White House during the attacks.


It was disconcerting to be in DC when it wasn't deemed safe for the President to be there.

I don't think actual evacuation is part of it, but there are big mobilization exercises every year in Japan preparing for an earthquake. I learned about these in an international relations class; that was in the early 90's. I have a Japanese friend who said they used to be really serious but now it's more of a joke.

I agree whole heartedly. When there is time for a warning (hurricane for example), there is no excuse for anything but a safe evacuation.

If you have an hour or less like the bad old days, time to kiss the wife and kiddies goodbye.

One must remember that the Interstate highways are properly called The National Defense Interstate Highway System, as established by then President Eisenhower. As they are such vital arteries of national defense and the I-40/I-35 interchange is located 2 miles from one of the USAF's largest logistics and repair bases that also is HQ for all AWACS, I really had nowhere to run.

Now then, being prepared as my family currently is (and more so each day), if there was a chemical accident we could be gone within an hour from DFW area. That hour includes getting kids from school and getting the 5th wheel trailer hooked up to the truck.

Yeah I remember the friendly drivers and empty streets even here in Dallas/Ft.Worth. I-20 is an absolute raceway (80-90 mph average in a 60 mph zone) normally. I found myself moving along at 45 mph just listening to the radio news. Everyone seemed to be doing like me. We live just south of the final pattern for DFW Airport when ops. are to the south. The sky was so quiet.

I just cannot imagine what a mass, G.O.O.D ASAP situation would be like.

Depends on what you mean by "successful".

As messy as it seemed by many good standards the 'evacuation' of NOLA after Katrina was a success. Many were inconvenienced, some percentage were sickened or injured, and a few, fewer than most expected, died. Actual numbers of deaths were not out of line for any long weekend. Many pets and a few people were left behind but other than a few hundred everyone left and lived to tell about it.

Any major evolution of large numbers during wartime is, as a rule of thumb, expected to have a casualty rate of one percent. Most will be just injured but almost one in ten of these will be seriously injured or die.

Humans are difficult to move neatly, in many ways we herd like cats, and large migrations, particularly those done in haste, tend to get confused and messy.

Generally speaking any evacuation that gets 98% of the people out with only 2% of those moved getting injured and 0.5% dieing (mostly the very old, very young and sick) is about as good as it gets without a massive organizational effort and a lot of prepositioning of resources.

Cuba does a very good job during hurricanes. They have the entire population organized by block. Everyone is accounted for by block captains and most steps in the evacuation are planned and have been practiced.

I think I was in King County, WA's preparedness website or on one of their links about Mt. Rainier. I remember that they said that volcanoes always give warning. Somehow I doubt that is true if an (unpredicted) earthquake sets it off. Hope I'm home at the time.

Sue

I found a few different websites. The first website echoes Art's post of overall success rate in the evacuation of NOLA.

The second website paints a much darker picture of how difficult it will be to evacuate large population centers.

The third website is along the same lines as the above second website.

Finally. this Google search will provide plenty of reading on evacuating large cities.

Thats the best idea for an emergency ringtone I've heard yet. Hearing them live must've made your hair stand on end.

On 9-11 I was on Kirriemuir Golf Course, virtually all day, mapping out the golf course using GPS for the course guide with a colleague. It was a beautiful day much like in the photos on the website course guide.

http://www.kirriemuirgolfclub.co.uk/course.php

Strange thing was I could tell afterwards a few days later where I was standing exactly on the course as the GPS was time stamping my position as the events unfolded in the US. The first trade tower fell about the same time as where the photo on the Hole No 4 - Muirhouses photo was taken in virtually the same weather conditions.



We didn't finish mapping the course until well into the evening and had no idea of the events of 9-11 until we got back to the club house, which was virtually deserted accept for the bar tender. The bizarre thing was, that the TV in the bar was switched on and by then, constant news coverage was being shown, and yet even after watching the first tower being hit and the towers collapsing, it went completely ignored by myself, thinking it was some new bad Hollywood disaster Movie that was being shown. Only after my colleague returned from the bar after about 5-10 minutes with a couple of well deserved cold beers, that he had been informed by the bar tender of the terror attacks. The penny then dropped as to what I had been watching for the last 5-10 minutes.

Sometimes it can take a little while to absorb bad news or even realise it is bad news especially if you've just had a pleasant day walking a beautiful golf course.

One point to consider is that the system of emergency management are coming to a tipping point as more professionals realize that in a number of disasters and specific locations large scale evacuation is simply not practical.

Look for a slow shift toward an increasing number of plans to resort to 'sheltering in place'; targeted local evacuations, hardening of homes, and shelters, both purpose built and within select buildings (reminiscent of the old CD fallout shelter program) as a coping strategy.

The shift may not be easily seen as evacuation is still part of it. The general plan may be to evacuate the smallest practical area of direct impact. In a wider zone critical need cases and the sick and infirm would be evacuated while the remainder of the population use some combination of hardening their homes and laying in supplies or shifting to local shelters if their residences are unsuitable.

If and when the situation develops and more people need to be moved out of danger then your dealing with people who are forewarned, prepared, mobile and relatively healthy.