Givernor Scott: ALL Florida residents should be prepared to evacuate...

[brooklynite]

Agence France-Presse @AFP:

#BREAKING All Florida residents 'should be prepared to evacuate': governor #HurricaineIrma

[recovering_democrat]

1. Voluntary now change soon.

Our area on west coast near beaches under voluntary now. They say give people who want to go ahead and leave time before becomes mandatory. Expect it couple of days if forecast stays same. Shelters now open, etc. Looks bad for whole state. Irma is wider than Fl orida. Storm surges possible on both coasts. Stay safe.

[cwydro]

18. A couple days?

This storm is gonna be on you in another day.

I just saw the Tampa mayor saying folks should get away from certain zones, but he didn't call for evacuation.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

2. Umm...how?

Considering tomorrow afternoon the wind's going to pick up

[mcar]

3. That is simply impossible

[Baitball Blogger]

10. He's just covering his bases.

In practical terms, it is impossible for all of Florida to evacuate.

[Thrill]

4. He's just now telling them that?

[ExciteBike66]

5. It's a little late for the total evac scenario...

Maybe Dick Scott is saying that we will need to evac AFTER the storm due to rampant zombie virus outbreaks?

[drray23]

6. a little late for that.

I also read somewhere (i could be wrong) that they dont have a solid plan for evacuations such as reversing highway traffic to double the capacity. We had that in the tidewater area of virginia for years.

[GoCubsGo]

20. I can't believe Scott still hasn't reversed the southbound Interstate lanes.

What the hell??? They have already done so in Georgia, which has far more time to evacuate. Even my state (South Carolina) learned its lesson on that years ago. It took Hurricane Hugo to do it, but at least they they learned from it.

[QC]

7. I have a water filter, a gas stove, and plenty of coffee.

Things will be ok.

[snooper2]

16. You'll do better if you have a couple bottles of rum

[QC]

17. There's a liquor store close by that I can loot if it comes to that ;-)

[MineralMan]

8. Even if they are unable to do so.

Very helpful, Governor Scott. Very helpful, indeed. Evacuate how? Evacuate to what safe place?

I wonder where Governor Scott will be on Sunday?

[mcar]

11. Probably following Limbaugh out of dodge

[MineralMan]

12. I'll bet he has a plane, too, just like Rush.

Or, maybe he can hitch a ride with Limbaugh. Yeah...save fuel.

[mcar]

14. He does, actually

It was one of his big campaign things - he'd get rid of the "costly" state plane and use his own.

[drray23]

9. interesting data about carrying capacity of highways.

http://www.mikeontraffic.com/numbers-every-traffic-engineer-should-know/


So, in the best of cases they estimate 1900 per lane and per hour. So, reversing a 3 lane gives you 6×1900 which is slighly less than 12000 vehicles per hour. If you optimistically assume 4 ppls per vehicle you end up with moving roughly 50k/hour at best.

So 6 million people would take 6 days or so...

Not possible. As soon as there is one accident, traffic clogs.. Not to mention that many of the assumptions I made are very optimistic (everybody has access to a vehicle and pack 4 to a car, they can get gas, they can manage to get on that highway using secondary roads, etc.. )

Mass evacuation is probably only possible if we had a good train system or things like that. Mass transportation instead of private cars.

More realistic is a solid plan for targeted evacs ( like the keys) where you deal with much smaller numbers.

[NurseJackie]

13. 21 Million! How? Are there enough state-roads and back-roads leading out of the state?

Where would they go? Where would they stay?

[drray23]

19. indeed. i did a quick estimate. (post #9)

i estimated for 6 millions and one major highway (i95).

no way we could do 21 millions. would take weeks.

[woodsprite]

15. I was overhearing a convo at lunch today.

The guy worked for a big package shipping company, but I'm not sure which one. AND I'm assuming he means employees and their families, but they said they were allowing anyone to hitch a ride with their airplanes, train cars, or other fleet units and evac to NY free of charge. That was where they were moving their equipment. Apparently they were originally moving the equipment to Atlanta, but changed to NY because of the uncertainty of the path and the number of people already heading to Atlanta.

He had a sister whose family was catching a flight that he had set up for her, but it wasn't scheduled to leave until tomorrow morning.

[MichaelSoE]

21. that's a lot of people ... a great migration to the north

Actually my spouse and are in SW FL and are fortunate enough to be in a structure that is not in surge or flood danger areas. Windows have been shuttered and we are hunkered down. We organized a neighborhood 'buddy system' with others that are remaining.