Evacuations with cars are a bottleneck
Evacuations with cars are a bottleneck
A highway camera photo shows traffic in FortMcMurray jammed in the southbound lane of Highway 63 on the north side of the Athabasca River. The image was captured at 3:11 p.m. MT, about an hour after an evacuation order was issued for four neighbourhoods. (511 Alberta)
Evacuation order issued as wildfire threatening Fort McMurray draws closer https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-wildfire-grande-prairie-fort-mcmurray-1.7203695
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I was leaving on a car trip a few years back, and unbeknownst to me, about 20miles up the road, a huge thunderstorm had brought down some trees and power lines, blocking one part of the northbound highway, during early rush hour. We got stuck for 3 hours trying to get past it. No matter which side road, turn, whatever we took, it was jammed. We waited for an hour on one small side road only to get sent back because a line was down at an intersection. This wasn’t a major natural disaster, things went back to normal in a couple hours. But it really drove home to me how pointless it would be relying on escaping/evacuating from a real disaster if you didn’t get out early. I don’t say this to suggest that people shouldn’t follow evacuation orders, they absolutely should; an evacuation order is early warning. I’m saying this to suggest that none of us should assume that we’ll just be able to get out in an emergency, particularly in a car. It just doesn’t take that many people on the road to completely seize the system.
This makes me think of movies, the scenes when like Godzilla or the stay puft marshmallow man or something shows up and everyone just gets out of their cars and runs away on foot. Movies are silly but in a panic scenario the car could easily become more of a hindrance than anything.
Yeah absolutely. This is one of the things that movies seem to get right. Also in post apocalyptic disaster type movies, you often see freeways with just huge empty traffic pileups.
We go to Cape Cod every year, and this has really hit me each time. The Cape is a good sized peninsula, but connected to the mainland by only two bridges. It’s already enough of a bottleneck to be backed up by tens of miles on summer weekends: an actual evacuation attempt would be so much worse
Shore Traffic is bad no matter where you go, but I’ve never seen any as bad as Cape Cod
Oh yeah, I’ll bet. It hasn’t happened as far as I know, but that’s the kind of situation where things like really strong storm surge or tsunamis would be pretty rough to evacuate from. I assume there are some ferry’s, maybe the region could mobilize a personal craft flotilla for a evac rescue, like dunkirk…
That would be an adventure!
- there’s a train, but summer only and might be once a day so won’t help much
- there’s a small airport, but I Don’t know if there is any scheduled service, so won’t help much
- yep, several ferries but might be summer, I don’t know. That would help a little if they’re running
Yeah, I can picture hundreds of small boats