NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla. — Why do people choose to either evacuate or stay? Why do some get prepared, while others choose to ride it out? Those questions get asked a lot after major storms.
Fox 4 Meteorologist Andrew Shipley spoke with a researcher at the University of South Florida who is looking closely at those questions as we get ready for hurricane season.
“If you take a storm that could be a Cat 1, people really let their guard down and they are not going to evacuate, and then there could be significant loss of life and destruction from a Cat1,” said Dr. Jennifer Collins, Professor of Geosciences at University of South Florida.
Dr. Collins has been studying social sciences around hurricanes for the past 10 years. She says her research has shown that people rely too much on the Saffir Simpson scale.
“People are making their decision to evacuate or not based on that category, that is just based on the wind. But we know a hurricane causes other hazards, particularly the storm surge flooding or rainfall flooding.”
And as we saw with Hurricane Helene, a storm off the coast can still cause significant storm surge, well away from the forecast cone.
“First of all, they focus on the center of it. Which they shouldn’t. And sometimes they think if their residence is outside of that cone, that they are completely safe.”
Dr. Collins says people’s neighbors can also really influence someone’s decision to stay or go.
“And sometimes if people’s neighbors are not evacuating, people feel more comfortable staying if that is their neighbor's decision.”
Past experience can also play a factor, especially if you were directly impacted.
“Because they said never again, having experienced what they experienced, would they ever stay again for something that could potentially be as bad.”
But problems arise when people do evacuate, and the storm never comes.
“The problem is if you get that miss, even though it was forecast to come to you, then that makes you little bit vulnerable because you kind of get this over confidence.”
Dr. Collins wants to hear from you; about the decisions you made regarding Helene and Milton. That survey can be found be here: https://tinyurl.com/HurricaneEvacuationSurvey
