Risk of death in a hurricane or other reasons to evacuate
-
Wind damage resulting in death of occupants. For
regular houses built to code in the Miami area this risk is minimal.
In Hurricane Andrew over 60,000 homes were considered destroyed
though most had people in them during the storm. In them there
were only a handful of deaths directly caused by wind effects.
Andrew wind was cat 5 ground level in south Dade (=F2 tornado) but
almost all major hurricanes have actual ground wind less when they
reach an urban area. Almost
all houses in El Portal should be safe refuges from wind if they
have window and door protection. No one wants to go through the
experience of sheltering in the strongest part of a house in the
noise and wind shaking of a major hurricane but the chance of
surviving will be better there than a risky last-minute evacuation
out of the area.
-
Drowning. This is the main cause of
death from hurricanes. Homes in El Portal at low elevation are
at risk for this and occupants of them should have an
evacuation plan ready to put into effect 48 hours or more before
expected hurricane landfall if advised to evacuate.
What is most important to emphasize about risk from flood
water in El Portal is that is more likely to be from flood water
backing up in a major rainfall event than from storm surge only.
This means a slow moving category 1 or 2 hurricane could produce
life-threatening flooding in El Portal even if not much storm surge
is forecast.
-
Death or injury resulting from events during
evacuation. This is minimal for evacuation to homes of
friends or family in the local south Florida area.
Evacuation by car out of this area always has had risks
due to limited road capacity resulting in traffic
gridlock. In Hurricane Irma we were very lucky it shifted west at the last minute
and did not expose cars
stranded on highways to extreme winds.
Need medical devices for life support that would not
work in power outage or other major health problems.
Should register with
Miami-Dade Emergency & Evacuation Assistance
305-513-7700.
Not wanting to be in the area for the horribleness of it
all including the aftermath. Understandable, but it means having to evacuate
early even if it winds up being a false alarm.
Hurricane preparation and timing
At this point in the hurricane season everyone living in
El Portal should have their hurricane plan ready. This means all the
usual things: having window and door protection ready to install if
needed, non-perishable food and other supplies ready for at least ten
days without power and access to stores, cash and fuel supplies topped
off, etc. Homes with low base elevation should have a way to seal
door openings from water coming in.
Most all, as discussed above, everyone has to decide now
whether or not they will need to evacuate for a major
hurricane. In some cases it may because their house is
not strong enough to withstand hurricane force winds but in most cases
it will be due to flood risk for low elevation homes. If they will
need to evacuate they need to have a plan
now for where they will go, what it will
take to get there, and have quickly packable what they will need to
bring. The best option is to go to the home of a friend, family
member, or neighbor living in a safe location, the nearer the better.
People with no other option should
go to a county shelter. There will be
shelters for people with pets.
When to evacuate: if people needing to evacuate are prepared and know what they
are going to do they should simply go when there is enough time
to get safely where they are going to go. In El Portal people will
not need to wait for an evacuation order because they will know what
to do. People at major flood risk in the Village will have to
evacuate for a major hurricane or a lesser one if it is predicted to
bring heavy rainfall.
An advantage of planning to evacuate locally is that one is less
likely to evacuate and then find out the hurricane went elsewhere. 48
hours before the predicted arrival time of a hurricane we will have a
good idea of how bad it will be here and that leaves enough time to
get to a local destination in Miami-Dade or Broward. For a destination
elsewhere in Florida or out of state 48 hours ahead has always been
too late.
|