Every storm is a new situation.

In the case of Irma, it's enormous expanse (hurricane-force winds wider that the Florida peninsula, tropical force to near 400 miles) and the fact it was going to run north up the peninsula both made people like my brother in Naples think: 1) may need to evacuate; 2) could get stuck on a highway - no gas -- and be forced to ride out the storm in the car.

Irma ended up impacting Alabama, Georgia (Atlanta's first-ever tropical storm warning) and South Carolina.

Evacuate several days before a weather forecast predicts landfall? Maybe, if you won't be fired for leaving work so long. Maybe, if you can afford it. That many days in a hotel is prohibitively expensive for many people.

Some folks couldn't even afford the gas.


Can any modern city be evacuated?

Sure, eventually. Quickly enough to do any good? Depends on the scenario.

Nearly 40% of the residents of my city -- Washington, D.C. -- don't own a car. The subway system will transport many to outside the Beltway but what then? Capital Bikeshare bicycles currently number 3,700 so those would quickly disappear.

We had a bit of a run-through here on September 11, 2001. Hundreds of thousands of workers evacuated to the suburbs that day by car, subway and walking. I thought about leaving but I live here and there is a strong tendency to hunker down at home.

I've posted many times in ETS on this subject. The prospect of having to quickly evacuate is grim. On a normal day, our roads are gridlocked for several hours. And that's just the commuters.

How far would we have to go?

I long ago came to the conclusion that if I had to evacuate "quickly" I'd have to do so by bicycle, or motorcycle if I had one.

It's a bleak scenario.


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