美国国家公共电台 NPR Lessons From Hurricane Irma: When To Evacuate And When To Shelter In Place

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It's hurricane season in the Atlantic. And people who live along coastal¹ areas throughout the southeastern U.S. are once again being urged to have a plan ready in case they have to evacuate². After last year, it's a message that carries some new weight. In the days before Hurricane Irma struck Florida, nearly 7 million residents left their homes, seeking safety elsewhere. NPR's Greg Allen reports that officials and researchers have been studying the lessons of the largest hurricane evacuation in U.S. history.

GREG ALLEN, BYLINE³: As hurricanes go, Irma was unusual, taking a path up the entire Florida peninsula. The storm, shifting track, first projected up the East Coast then later forecast to pummel Florida's Gulf⁴ Coast, left most of the state's 21 million people in its path.

(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS BROADCAST)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Tonight, heavy traffic clogging⁵ major Florida highways...

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: We're just trying to get out of harm's way, get ahead of the storm.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: ...As more than a million Floridians are asked to evacuate.

ALLEN: Mandatory⁶ evacuations were ordered first in the Florida Keys. As the storm approached, emergency managers in nearly every coastal county followed. Richard Olson, director of the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University, says as mass evacuations go, it was successful.

RICHARD OLSON: Pretty much everybody who wanted to get out got out, although I've heard anywhere from 20 to 30 hours not being uncommon⁷ at all.

ALLEN: Lines were long, but gas remained available for those heading north. It wasn't the nightmare scenario⁸ Texans experienced in 2005 as millions fled the advance of Hurricane Rita. Thousands were stranded⁹ in a 100-mile long traffic jam after they ran out of gas. Twenty-four people died in a bus fire. In that case, as in Irma, the damage ultimately done by the hurricane didn't justify¹⁰ the massive evacuation beforehand.

The director of emergency management in Palm Beach County, Bill Johnson, says last year in Hurricane Irma, nearly half of those who fled their homes were from areas where evacuations had not been ordered.

BILL JOHNSON: So we have an over-evacuation problem.

ALLEN: Emergency managers mostly order hurricane evacuations for water, not wind. In Florida, the biggest concern is storm surge. Disaster experts say rapidly rising water poses a much greater threat to property and lives than high winds. But in Hurricane Irma, researcher Jason Senkbeil says many evacuees¹¹ held a different view.

JASON SENKBEIL: The Irma evacuees were terrified of wind.

ALLEN: Days before it approached Florida, while it was still in the Caribbean, news reports focused on Irma's intensity¹² and high wind speeds.

(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS BROADCAST)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Today, Irma, at 155 mph, is among the strongest hurricanes ever recorded.

ALLEN: Senkbeil, a meteorologist at the University of Alabama, studies how emergency managers communicate risk in hurricanes. During the Irma evacuation, he interviewed people at rest stops on Florida's interstates. Many said when they made the decision to evacuate, Irma was a Category 4 or 5 hurricane.

SENKBEIL: There was an idea there that at least 145-mile-per-hour winds were going to come across Florida, and that's clearly not what happened.

ALLEN: Irma hit the Florida mainland as a Category 3 storm but quickly lost intensity, bringing tropical storm force winds to much of the state. Clearly, it could've been worse. But Palm Beach County emergency manager Bill Johnson worries that unclear messaging led people in safe areas to evacuate their homes. Evacuations carry their own danger of traffic accidents and health problems related to increased stress. They're costly¹³ - on average, Johnson says, $1,000 for a typical family. And unnecessary evacuations tie up scarce resources.

JOHNSON: You saw the lines at the fuel. You saw, you know, hotel rooms - many hotel rooms, that people had to just keep going further up the road because hotels' rooms are taken.

ALLEN: The National Hurricane Center is introducing new ways to show when and where strong winds will arrive for specific areas within a forecast cone¹⁴. Johnson says those tools will help emergency managers encourage those who need to evacuate to do so early and to tell those who don't need to evacuate that their best course is to stay put and shelter in place.

Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.

1 coastal   

adj.海岸的，沿海的，沿岸的

参考例句：

• The ocean waves are slowly eating away the coastal rocks.大海的波浪慢慢地侵蚀着岸边的岩石。
• This country will fortify the coastal areas.该国将加强沿海地区的防御。

2 evacuate   

v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便

参考例句：

• We must evacuate those soldiers at once!我们必须立即撤出这些士兵！
• They were planning to evacuate the seventy American officials still in the country.他们正计划转移仍滞留在该国的70名美国官员。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。

5 clogging   

堵塞，闭合

参考例句：

• This process suffers mainly from clogging the membrane. 这种过程的主要问题是滤膜的堵塞。
• And you know that eyewitness that's been clogging up the airwaves? 你知道那个充斥着电视广播的目击证人？

6 mandatory   

adj.命令的；强制的；义务的；n.受托者

参考例句：

• It's mandatory to pay taxes.缴税是义务性的。
• There is no mandatory paid annual leave in the U.S.美国没有强制带薪年假。

7 uncommon   

adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的

参考例句：

• Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
• Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。

8 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

9 stranded   

a.搁浅的，进退两难的

参考例句：

• He was stranded in a strange city without money. 他流落在一个陌生的城市里， 身无分文，一筹莫展。
• I was stranded in the strange town without money or friends. 我困在那陌生的城市，既没有钱，又没有朋友。

10 justify   

vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护

参考例句：

• He tried to justify his absence with lame excuses.他想用站不住脚的借口为自己的缺席辩解。
• Can you justify your rude behavior to me?你能向我证明你的粗野行为是有道理的吗？

11 evacuees   

n.被疏散者( evacuee的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Moreover, for multi-exits, evacuees select a exit based on game theory. 在有多个出口时，疏散人员根据对策论选择出口。 来自互联网
• Evacuees wade through flooded area following heavy monsoon rains in Peshawar on Saturday, July 31, 2010. 撤离灾区涉水通过后在白沙瓦沉重的季风降雨在周六，2010年7月31日。 来自互联网

12 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。

13 costly   

adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的

参考例句：

• It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
• This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用，左不过贵了些。

14 cone   

n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果

参考例句：

• Saw-dust piled up in a great cone.锯屑堆积如山。
• The police have sectioned off part of the road with traffic cone.警察用锥形路标把部分路面分隔开来。