Hurricane Elena, Gulf Coast August 29 - September 2, 1985 (1991) / Chapter Skim
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3 Preparedness and Response
3 Preparedness and Response
Pages 27-40
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. Source: Wilson Schaffer, National Weather Service Headquarters.
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The following discussion describes the hurricane warning process in general, the information on the hurricane threat that was available to public officials during Elena, the actions taken by officials, and public response to those actions. The adequacy of prior hurricane preparedness activities and the appropriateness of actions taken during Elena are then evaluated.
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The principal decision makers during a hurricane threat are local and state emergency management professionals who advise elected officials in their respective jurisdictions. In most states the legal authority to order evacuation of residents is shared by the governor and local officials, such as boards of county commissioners.
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will issue local statements repeating part of the public advisory information, pointing out its significance for the local area, reporting local conditions such as roadway flooding, and advising appropriate actions by the public. State and local emergency management professionals receive the above information and decide what responses are appropriate, usually after consulting directly with NHC or local NWS representatives.
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Evacuation notices soon extended through Sarasota County, and evacuees west of Panama City began to return home.
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The Florida governor's office issued a mandatory evacuation order for all of the panhandle area of the state, and similar actions were taken by state and local officials in Alabama, Mississippi, and southeast Louisiana later in the day. Notices were generally more emphatic and urgent than those issued during the earlier evacuation.
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How useful and accurate were the comprehensive, quantitative hurricane evacuation studies that had been prepared for the threatened areas? Emergency Response Decision Making The driving force behind most decisions to advise or order evacuation was the posting of hurricane warnings by the NHC.
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In fairness to Pinellas County, its emergency management office has been recognized as a national leader in addressing this kind of decision dilemma, that is, the problem of making evacuation decisions while fully availing themselves of all the relevant information at their disposal. Pinellas officials, for example, used probability ellipses to interpret the 6 p.m.
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Given the wind profile detected by the aircraft, would 93 mph gusts 35 miles from the center at ground level imply 125 mph sustained winds on the ground at the storm center? Multiple Evacuations Studies of past evacuations using sample surveys conducted after hurricane threats indicate that if local officials are successful in reaching the public with evacuation notices, response is excellent (Baker, 1986~.
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Vacationer Response When warnings were lifted for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the western part of the Florida Panhandle on Friday, August 30, vacationers poured into resort communities late Friday and on Saturday morning for Labor Day weekend. Vacationers increase the population at risk dramatically in some communities, and there is an additional concern about whether vacationers will evacuate during a hurricane threat as willingly as residents.
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From page 38... ...
In the Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee, and Sarasota counties area, the entire region has little experience with major hurricanes, because almost all major hurricane activity in the 25 years before Elena had been in the northern and western Gulf of Mexico. Telephone sample surveys indicated, however, that in the dangerous Pinellas County beach areas, more that 90 percent of the residents evacuated (Baker, 19871.
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Behavioral Analyses Behavioral studies estimate the percentage of residents who would be likely to evacuate during a hurricane, the time period over which various percentages of evacuees would be expected to leave, what percentage of evacuees would use public shelters, and so forth. In the Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida Panhandle, such estimates were made from analysis of past hurricane evacuations, establishing rules of thumb for anticipating different responses in different risk areas and in different threat scenarios.
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From page 40... ...
More generally, there is a need for behavioral analyses to recognize that public response will vary from threat to threat, to identify what will occur in various circumstances and situations, and to not make use of hypothetical response data without major adjustments. In an update of the Tampa Bay evacuation study subsequent to Elena, behavioral assumptions were revised by qualified consultants.
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