I live between a U.S. highway and a railroad so a hazardous spill would be the most likely scenario to motivate me to leave. Other than that or a terrorist strike, I can't think of a reason to leave given my location.

Jeanette Isabelle

Flee said the fly,
Fly said the flea,
and they both flew away up the flue

Flee said the fly,
Fly said the flea,
and they both flew away up the flue


Spooky! I just clicked on the Natural Disasters section and glanced at the thread titled "Flee", then added wood to the fire, thinking about that little poem.

(insert Twilight Zone music)

Sue

Not much reason to flee here in Central Washington. Brush fires here aren't like SoCal, so even though we get them, they aren't much of a threat. Weather patterns are pretty favorable. Geology not conducive to seismic activity, though if Oregon Cascade volcanos went off we might get some ash. Hanford is too passe to be much of a terrorist target, and they have burnt up most of the chem stockpile at Umatilla now. About the only thing that I would be concerned with is if we lost Priest Rapids dam, it'd flood the USTs at Hanford and send a lot of rad waste etc down to Portland. Fortunately getting to high ground here would be easy enough, and plenty of warnings before the wall o' water got to us to evade safely. I could be 1,000 feet higher than I am right now in less than 5 minutes.

Benjamin, what if a couple million Californians fleeing massive earthquakes were headed your way?

Historically, after major earthquakes in California, U-Haul has done a brisk business for a week or two as some people decide to head for Kansas. Real estate values drop for about three months in the area of the epicenter and then rebound to normal. Large groups moving over any distance is pretty rare, if it has ever happened.

Benjamin, before you answer Dweste could I possibly interest you in a truckload of detour signs?

For anyone evacuating NYC:

The Catskills are beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and you're already used to the water there.

Pennsylvania is also beautiful. I would suggest Pennsylvania as your second choice.

New Jersey is also nice. There are lots of buildings and shopping in the north, and it's pretty in the south. You also have the ocean. It's good to be near the ocean, in the event you need to go out to sea.

If by some chance you become lost, and head north, we'll do our best to direct you to Quebec. Quebec is also beautiful!

There's really nothing to see in this part of NY, nowhere to shop, no decent bagels, and the locals are all heavily armed and distrustful of strangers. A sad lot, really.

New Orleans / Katrina. A *lot* of them have never gone back.

Houston absorbed several tens of thousands of refugees from that and makes a good study, in the small, for the problems that can come up, though you have to allow for the huge medical complex in Houston in comparisons.

Ironically the worst may have been the affect via "No Child Left Behind" - the New Orleans schools were so bad that the refugees managed to drag down the *Houston ISD* scores to the point of losing school funding via penalties. The waivers should have expired by now but I don't know what happened.

*Where* I go is a largely a function of where I could stay for long periods. I have parents 30 miles north of town, friends 150 miles north where I could stay weeks-to-months without burdening their resources, and relatives 1,000 miles north where I can relocate indefinitely.

I have a place on the west coast I can evac to but she's more resource-constrained for prolonged stays (until I can access my savings) and I have no good intermediate evac sites in that direction.

*When* I go is also influenced by this. It's not much more than a long shopping trip to visit the friend 10 miles west of town, and not much more to my parent's. The cost is low, side-benefits high, so a quick-trigger to evac is no big deal. Even running to Dallas & visiting old friends isn't the worst thing in the world if evac turns out to have been unnecessary.

Having "cheap" intermediate stops in the plan is a good thing so you don't need complete information for a go/no-go decision. It lets you "run when the ball is pitched" rather than waiting for complete reports & official instructions before leaving base.