Adding to this, Hurricanes can and WILL shift at the last minute and so an area that was SUPPOSED to be hit is no longer in the danger zone, but they had already evacuated. But now the new area has to be evacuated, sometimes in less that 12 hours and that means shelters have to be opened up, emergency services need to be in place, people who were off now have to be on call, it is honestly a logistical nightmare.
This time also has a disaster within a disaster because apparently there was a HUGE fuel contamination issue, and a lot of gas got contaminated with diesel so now people CAN’T evacuate because their cards are dead/at risk of dying due to getting the contaminated gas. Also going to be a big issue with generators. (Source: https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2023/08/27/florida-gas-contamination-idalia/)
And before anyone says “Well, that’s what they get for living there/why don’t they just move?”:
Moving costs more than evacuating, and evacuating is expensive enough as it is for some people.
There is not a single place in this country, or in any country, that is not at risk of natural disaster in some form or another. Wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards … we can’t all just move to places which won’t get hit with this shit because those places *don’t fucking exist.*
