Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society - Climate Science ...

6 HURRICANES: THEIR NATURE AND IMPACT ON SOCIETY
is ...a slight change of 3 to 5 degrees in direction can mean the difference
between the southern part of the watch area <strong>and</strong> the northern part of the watch
area. ..Do not focus on the exact track. (Discussion Number 24)
Decision-makers along the entire Florida coast were advised to focus on
Andrew's steady approach.
At 11 :00 pm Saturday night Andrew was a Category 3 storm 520 miles east
of Miami, <strong>and</strong> moving almost due west at 14 miles per hour. If Andrew
continued west at that rate, it would make l<strong>and</strong>fall somewhere in south
Florida in a little over 37 hours, or at about noon on Monday. Dade County
officials scheduled a 6:00 am meeting for Sunday morning to discuss evacuation
plans. Kate Hale, Dade County's Emergency Management Director,
advised that "Everyone from Washington on down is watching this very
closely. It's a matter of get ready, set, <strong>and</strong> in the morning, if we have to, GO!"
(Hancock <strong>and</strong> Faiola 1992). Officials in Broward County, immediately to the
north of Dade County, scheduled a similar meeting for 7:00 am. At the
meetings evacuation orders were issued based upon the NHC's issuance of
hurricane warnings for all of south Florida. Later Sunday afternoon hurricane
warnings were issued for portions of Florida's west coast as well as Lake
Okeechobee resulting in evacuation orders (Discussion Number 29).
In total, about 700 000 people of the one million who were ordered to
evacuate from Andrew's path did so. That left 300 000 people who were
ordered to evacuate, but did not.
People chose to stay in the evacuation zones for various reasons. For
instance, at 10:00 pm Sunday night, 23 August, 300 American <strong>and</strong> European
tourists were having a hurricane party in several beachfront Fort Lauderdale
hotels (Haner <strong>and</strong> Rafinski 1992). Fort Lauderdale City Manager George
Hanbury called the hotels <strong>and</strong> dem<strong>and</strong>ed to know why they had not yet
evacuated. With the majority of the evacuation completed by that time
through the use of private transportation contractors, city officials had to
recruit volunteers to drive school buses to evacuate the partiers. The next day,
Broward County Administrator Jack Osterholt blamed the tourists for poor
judgment: "There's no accounting for stupidity. That kind of behavior is
reprehensible. They obviously thought all of this was amusing -<strong>and</strong> they
risked the lives of some very brave people as a result" (quoted in Haner <strong>and</strong>
Rafinski 1992). A representative of the hotel chain observed that "It's hard to
force people out" who do not want to leave.
When asked before the storm why they refused to evacuate, many individuals
expressed disdain for the storm, their machismo <strong>and</strong> stubbornness,
their ignorance of a hurricane's impacts, or concern about weathering the
storm in an unfamiliar location (Getter 1 992a). One 81-year-old man refused
to leave his home near the beach: "This is the safest building on the Beach.
I've been here 24 years <strong>and</strong> been through 3 or 4 big ones. I'm staying right
here. I've got a wife that's strong <strong>and</strong> I'm strong" -an irony being that the