 |
General Hurricane Evacuation Study Tasks | |||||||||||||
|
 The
primary Purpose of a Hurricane
Evacuation Study (HES) is to develop tools and information that will
assist the State and County Emergency Management Offices decide
who should evacuate during a hurricane threat and when the evacuation
order should be given to insure all evacuees have enough time to get to
safety.
|
|||||||||||||
|
Click on picture above to see larger version.
|
Hurricane Surge
- Hurricane storm surge is an abnormal rise in
sea level accompanying a hurricane or other intense storm.
Along the coastline a hurricane will cause waves on top of the
surge. The picture below may have a surge height of 10
feet with 8 foot waves resulting in water elevations of 18 feet above
mean sea level.
Hurricane Surge is estimated with the use of computer model called SLOSH. SLOSH stands for Sea Lake and Overland Surge from Hurricanes. The SLOSH models are created and run by the National Hurricane Center. There are about 40 SLOSH models from Maine to Texas. The SLOSH model results are merged with ground elevation data to determine areas that will be subject to flooding from various Categories of hurricanes. Hurricane Categories are defined by the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Surge areas for the five Hurricane storm Categories are plotted on maps and used to determine evacuation areas.
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
Vulnerability
Analysis - The primary purpose of the vulnerability analysis
is to identify the areas, populations, and facilities that are
vulnerable to storm surge and to wind damage.
The number of mobile
home units throughout  the counties are important because their residents
are usually asked to evacuate due to the wind hazards. In
many areas tourist population is a key factor in computing times
for evacuation and usually impacted by even minimal hurricanes.
|
|||||||||||||
  Return
to Top |
Hurricane Shelter Studies - The general purpose of the shelter analysis is to estimate the number of evacuees that will seek public shelter and determine the number of shelter spaces available. This information is used by County and State emergency management offices to develop a management plan for shelter operation to insure that the evacuees seeking public shelter will have adequate and safe shelter space. | |||||||||||||
|
Behavioral
Studies - Behavioral studies are
conducted to provide estimates of public response to a variety of
hurricane threats. The primary information obtained from
these studies are as follows:
All of these items are very important in estimating the total number of vehicles that will be on the roadways. This is one of the key factors in determining how long it will take to evacuate these people before they are threatened by gale force winds.
|
|||||||||||||
 Return
to Top |
Transportation Studies - The overall goal of the transportation analysis is to estimate the time it takes to get all evacuees to safety and off the roads before they are hit with gale force winds. This effort basically calculates the time it takes to move and clear all evacuating traffic off available major evacuation roadways. This time is called a clearance time. Clearance times vary depending upon; roadway capacities, storm intensity, tourist occupancy and a number of other variables. | |||||||||||||
 Return
to Top
Click picture ^ |
Decision
Tools - One
of the most used decision tools we have developed for the emergency
management community is the new HURREVAC computer program.
The program downloads hurricane advisory data provided by the National
Hurricane Center and puts it in a user friendly graphical interface to
help decide when and if an evacuation should be ordered. The
program operates with specific clearance time data files and surge map
files for each coastal county. The model is only
available to the emergency management community. Click on
the HURREVAC sample on the left to see a larger view.
|
