Posted 07/25/2007

One in three southern coastal residents
would ignore hurricane evacuation orders
 

But one in four South Carolina residents would not leave
in the event of a major hurricane.

About one in three people living in southern coastal areas said they would ignore hurricane evacuation orders if a storm threatened their community, up from about one in four last year, according to a new poll.

The survey was conducted from June 18-July 10 among 5,000 residents who lived within 20 miles of the coast in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

While the overall numbers were up for the eight states, 26 percent of the South Carolina residents polled this year said they would elect to evacuate in the event of a major hurricane. That compares with 28 percent who said they would leave during a similar poll last summer.

This year pollsters from the Harvard School of Public Health interviewed 504 South Carolina adults in Horry, Georgetown, Charleston, Colleton, Berkeley, Dorchester, Beaufort and Jasper Counties

According to the poll, most of the residents who said they would refuse to evacuate said their homes are safe and well-built, roads would be too crowded, and fleeing would be dangerous.

Harvard's Robert Blendon, a coordinator of the survey, said he is worried that the lack of hurricanes hitting the United States last year contributed to the more lackadaisical response by residents. There were no landfalls of major hurricanes on the U.S. coast in 2006 -- a far cry from 2004 and 2005, when several major hurricanes struck the coast.

"Public officials need to be concerned that the further we get from the severe hurricanes of 2005, the less willing people are to evacuate," Blendon said. "Officials need to remind people that many homes are vulnerable to major storms.

"They also need to ensure safe evacuation routes are available and the public is aware of them."

It did not question inland residents, but public safety officials have said they also are concerned about the willingness of people who live in the western Carolinas to evacuate.

In 2004, several hurricanes which made landfall in Florida moved across the western Carolinas, causing severe flooding in the mountains and spawning dozens of tornadoes across the Piedmont and coastal plains of the Carolinas.

The main reasons given by residents for not wanting to evacuate:

• 75 percent (South Carolina, 61percent) say their house is well-built, and they would be safe there.

• 56 percent (South Carolina, 50 percent) said roads would be too crowded. 

• 36 percent (South Carolina, 26 percent) said evacuating would be dangerous.

• 33 percent (South Carolina, 26 percent) said their possessions would be stolen or damaged while they were evacuated.

• 27 percent (South Carolina, 21 percent) said they would not want to leave their pets.

There were also differences along racial lines for the eight states, with whites most reluctant to evacuate. The survey found 73 percent of African Americans said they would obey an evacuation order, compared to 71 percent of Latinos and 59 percent of whites.

Concerns about evacuation shelters also seemed to be a problem:

• 68 percent (South Carolina, 66 percent) said they were concerned that shelters would be unsanitary.

• 65 percent (South Carolina, 63 percent) said they worried that shelters would be overcrowded.

And 66 percent (South Carolina, 61 percent) said they have no agreed-upon place to meet after a hurricane.

For more information:

• South Carolina survey

• South Carolina at-a-glance (Powerpoint)

• Southern Coastal survey news release