Yeah, if it wasn't the test day/time (Sundays @ Noon) and really nice weather you tended to take notice.

Twice I can remember there were errors in the CD/EBS system. The local broadcaster hit the Attack button instead of the "This Is A TEST" button. Half of the OKC viewing area thought TSHTF for real. The other time was a National Guard emergency mobilization drill. The genius at the state level sent the real (instead of test) code down the "phone tree". I made it from my house to the armory in record time. We actually were issuing weapons and NBC gear and waiting for the ammo to arrive before the snafu was caught.

Oddly, there was a retirement ceremony for the state AG less than a month latter.

NOLA probably would have gone much smoother if the city hadn't used their school busses for submarines and folks would have left instead of thinking "it can't happen to me".

There has been a very recent re-evaluation in the Southern California region of the system used in parts of Australia regarding wildfires--the stay-or-go policy. Either evacuate early, or stay and defend your homes. Although an evacuation-only policy has been spectacularly successful historically in terms of lives saved, considering the utter devastation of rather large swaths of some communities as we recently saw, authorities are considering ways that residents can help protect their homes. Although Southern California has huge fire fighting resources available by any measure, sometimes these fires move so quickly that they are stretched too thin in many instances.

Anyways, that topic could be a whole 'nother thread of its own.

Those were interesting, and I am finding out a lot from this thread.
I am changing my opinions rapidly here.

The big thing that still seems missing is refugee sites.

I visited a friend in Dallas in Thanksgiving of that year. At one point, I counted over 50 aircraft visible at night (landing/anti-collision lights on ). We were at one of the malls that is under the approach for DFW. Every 30 seconds a plan passed over head, either for the left or the right runway ( 1 minute separation each runway).

I honestly cannot imagine what it would sound like quiet, but I'm sure _a lot_ of people didn't sleep for the 3 days there was no air traffic.

There are really very few places in the U.S. that need to completely evacuate for hurricanes. If you're in a sturdy home outside of the flood zone you're almost certainly better off staying put than evacuating to an undetermined location.

If you have a place to go, the means to get there, and can leave early enough, evacuating isn't a horrible idea. But most people fail on most of those counts, especially with not having a plan of where to go. They end up shopping madly for a hotel and squeezing into packed shelters where they bitterly complain about only getting cold sandwiches and no cots to sleep on.

Too true Ratbert.
I doubt if most people are able to afford a month away from home without camping on a relative's place or something.
If they are told to evacuate they are likely out of a job at least until it is over (if not longer) and renting a new place to live would likely break them.

Some of the earlier comments given show that the actual evacuations are possible, with a bit of luck and a decent time frame.
But the problem of where to herd the people to seems to be missing.
Doesn't it?

Even the evacuation planners for Naples Italy, where they are living on the sides of an active volcano, gave up on that part.

Hi all - first post. Nice to meet everyone.

It depends on whether the population wants to and can evacuate, as well. Right now in Gaza, the residents can neither leave nor do they have shelters. In Israel, they have shelters but literally have no more than 10 seconds to get to them when the siren blows.

I hope that New Orleans is not the best we can do when we really do want to evacuate.

I don't have references handy but I believe China has evacuated well over a million people on several occasions for typhoons.

The major advantages they have are not so much "at gunpoint" but rather top-down organization, execution and responsibility, as well as a function railroad transport system for moving people. Also, the Lunar New Year festivities can see upwards of *100 million* people traveling - with many individual train stations used to dealing with over a million departures over a few days - so a million or two is no big deal other than inconvenient timing.

In the US evacuation planning and execution is entirely the individual state's responsibility. The federal government will provide as much help as the state will put up with, but the final decisions all rest with the state government. This can yield situations such as Katrina, where the governor did not even know she had an emergency plan, which pointed out such minor details as the fact that assisted-living facilities would need help evacuating patients.

The Katrina evacuation implemented by Louisianana amounted to asking people to figure out a way to leave on their own, which really isn't that different from how it's done anywhere else on the US coast. There simply aren't any systems here for moving large numbers of people inland other than private cars. In China they mass enormous numbers of trains in a short period, and top-down planning means the tracks will be clear and trains won't be hoarded elsewhere (here's where "at gunpoint" helps). Local organization means they know how many need transport, where they are, there's someone to count and make sure they all go, etc. And there is no arguing over individual rights when the Big Cheese says Go!

A few of the factors that have to be taken into account:

People are injured and die. The number of people injured or dead during an evacuation has to be compared to the numbers that normally die or get injured every day in your average large city.

Moving the old, very young and the sick, mental or physical, eats up a huge amount of resources and even done with utmost care will lead to suffering and some percentage dying. Losses are unavoidable.

Some percentage, usually calculated as roughly 2% to 5%, will not leave willingly the threat of fire, flood, nuclear devastation, or certain death will not shift some people. What you do with or about these people remains an open question. Do you order the police or army to go house to house removing people? Can you afford the time and manpower? Even when it means getting into possible shootouts? Even when the end result will be to put you police at risk and the end result will still that some avoid the sweeps and remain behind?

A commonly used estimate of how many people can be moved in what time is that a single open lane will carry 1000 cars per hour and each will on average carry 2.5 people:

2500 people/lane/hour.

Under near ideal conditions ten lanes will move one million people in forty hours. Toss in a few flat tires, wrecks, cars running out of gas and your numbers go down from there.

Assuming you get your million people out, where do you put them. Providing even minimum levels of food, water, shelter, sanitation, security, and medical care for one million people is a serious challenge. Evacuate NYC and you have roughly 8.3 million people on your hands.