Why was New Orleans not Evacuated for Andrew?

[micktooth]

I've often wondered this question. I was living in NOLA at the time. We saw the terrible destruction to Florida and yet there was no mention of an evacuation. Most mets thought Andrew would turn to Louisiana but didn't know where. This was 16 yrs. ago and modeling and technology is not what it is today. In fact, I went to bed that night, and the tv mets said the worst was over for us....until about 2am when I thought my house was going to blow away!

[Frank2]

I can't recall - I was one of those glassy-eyed evacuees from South Dade who suddenly found himself without a permanent place to live when he tried to return home...

But, from what I do remember, the NHC staff was being severly tested in the days immediately following Andrew's passage down here, to the point that the NMC (Washington) had to assist them with the forecasting, though that's not to say that Dr. Sheets and his staff left their posts before Andrew made it's final landfall...

However, the NHC was dealing with communication outages (damage to their dishes), and, that did lessen their forecasting ability a bit, again, to the point that NMC had to assist them (again, the staff having lost most of their homes must have put a tremendous strain on them, for sure)...

So, not exactly sure why it wasn't, but, I believe it's because Andrew was forecast to make landfall west of New Orleans, and, the confidence was high enough that the Mayor and Governor at that time decided it wasn't necessary based on the track - fortunately, it wasn't, though as you said there were problems - it was a terrible time for everyone, to the point that OCM Brian Norcross no longer wished to speak about those painful days...

Frank

[jinftl]

Boy oh boy.....it was a close call though....i would think today, the same storm set-up would result in an evacuation of new orleans...a cat 4 storm 85 miles sw of new orleans with a 70-mile hurricane force wind radius....scary thought



HURRICANE ANDREW ADVISORY NUMBER 40
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MIAMI FL
10 PM CDT TUE AUG 25 1992

....ANDREW LASHING THE LOUSIANA COAST...

HURRICANE WARNINGS REMAIN IN EFFECT FROM PASCAGOULA MISSISSIPPI
WESTWARD THROUGH THE BOLIVAR PENINSULA OF TEXAS.

THE HURRICANE WATCH EXTENDS FROM WEST OF THE BOLIVAR PENINSULA
TO FREEPORT TEXAS.

THE EYE OF ANDREW IS NOW MOVING ALONG THE SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA COAST.
ALL RESIDENTS IN SOUTHERN LOUISIANA SHOULD HAVE COMPLETED ALL
PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY FROM THIS EXTREMELY
DANGEROUS HURRICANE.

AT 10 PM CDT...0300Z...THE CENTER OF ANDREW WAS LOCATED NEAR
LATITUDE 29.0 NORTH...LONGITUDE 91.1 WEST OR ABOUT 85 MILES
SOUTHWEST OF NEW ORLEANS AND ABOUT 100 MILES SOUTHEAST OF LAFAYETTE
LOUSIANA.

ANDREW IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 13 MPH AND THIS GENERAL
MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE ON WEDNESDAY.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 140 MPH...AND LITTLE CHANGE IN
INTENSITY IS EXPECTED BEFORE LANDFALL.

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 70 MILES FROM THE
CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 175
MILES.

[Jake8898]

Having lived in N.O. my whole life until 2000, I can say I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. It just wasn't something that happened. Georges, in 1998, was the first mass evacuation of the area that I know of. It was gridlock and prompted the design of the contraflow evacuation plan. Since that time there have been 3 mass evacuations of the area: Ivan, Katrina and Gustav.

On other reason for why the evacs are more frequently called for might be secondary to a computer simulation of a fictional hurricane Pam which hits the city and causes damage worse than Katrina eventually did. After Betsy flooded a major portion of N.O. You'd think we'd have had several evacs since then, especially for Camille and Andrew.

[MGC]

My Mom was still living in New Orleans back in 1992 and she did evacuate for Andrew. I was living outside Jackson Miss at the time and she came and spend a few days visiting. As I recall Andrew was downgraded to a TD when he passed just to my north. There were plenty of tornado warning that evening and the wind blew down a big tree behind my house......MGC

[Steve]

There hadn't been any real threats since Camille and no real tests since Betsy up to that point. Sure, we had the occasional tropical storm, and we had low-end Hurricanes Florence '88 and Juan '85, but Andrew was the first time in a generation that "a big one" [tm] threatened the city. A lot of my friends took it seriously. Many of them went to a buddy's house. He had control of a commercial building in Metairie with an apartment that was a fortress. His bank had repossessed the property and was too flush with cash to liquidate all their holdings. So about 20 of them went there. We went to my dad's house in Kenilworth which had never flooded. I had an 11 month old and the old lady was 5 months pregnant. We felt like it was a more substantial place to weather that storm as his house never flooded in any of the mega-rain events (e.g. May 3rd 1978, May 8th/9th 1995, etc.) - until of course Katrina in 2005 when he got 8'10" due to floodwalls breaking. Turned out everything was okay but for a few gusts into the 40's and 50's and some transformers blowing out. We ended up getting a couple of days off.

I think people got more serious even though the next real mega-threat wasn't really until Georges in 1998. Thing with Georges was that we had just dealt with Frances a couple of weeks before as it sat off the S Texas Coast and pumped a bunch of flooding rain all over the city. And Hermine had passed very close though with all its energy from points near Mobile Bay and east. So people were serious. And obviously were serious again for Ivan and Dennis. What happened was the more studies they did, the more they realized how at risk we truly were. Before the advent of levees, yeah, there might be some areas flooded, but that water washes out as soon as the winds turn. Once you have levees, there isn't anywhere for that water to go unless you blow some of them downstream. Once they had slosh models and started warning us how bad we were sinking and that we were losing 2 football fields of land (= coastal protection) every hour of every day, people realized the vulnerabilities we faced. Evacation rate for Katrina was astounding. Evacuation for Gustav (1.9 million) was nearly incredible. People take storms seriously. And those storms that used to not cause any problems do now because of the loss of wetlands protection. Rest assured that people in New Orleans and in South Louisiana in general will tend to take serious threats with careful consideration.

JMO

Steve

[Jinkers]

I never thought about it,,I was living in Homestead at the time, and was in Homestead during Andrew, my whole world blew away, I had no idea for weeks where Andrew went after it left here, and it wasn't at the top of my priorities at the time.

[CrazyC83]

Undoubtedly, if Andrew happened today, there would be a full evacuation of New Orleans.

[gentillysupertiger]

With all due respect to Andrew and to the original poster's experience with Andrew. I was in Gentilly for Andrew, did not evacuate and did not lose cable much less power. I know we know much more about track and intensity now than in my youth. ( I was 4 for Betsy) but evacuation wasn't part of our hurricane plan when I was young. Veinna sausage however was as important as a radio and flashlight. I think we may blow the evacuation whistle early now because we have so much information. Think about it, this board is packed 5 to 7 days before landfall. Nash wouldn't have included it in his weathercast at that time. I guess my answer to the original question is N.O. wasn't evacuated because it really wasn't needed. The leeves were expected to hold for a cat 3.
$.02
KK

[jinftl]

Not sure if this is something that has changed..but it seems nowadays, a hurricane watch or warning being posted for an area is often the trigger for full storm-prep mode, and in a vulnerable area like new orleans, that would include evacuations. This is particularly true when you consider that local officials have to allow enough time for evacuations....and this can be 2 or 3 days in advance of landfall. Officials would rather be in a position of being overly cautious than having to explain why they waited to begin evacuations, etc......politics for good or for bad does factor into things, esp in post-katrina new orleans.

A Cat 4 storm approaching the SE LA coast in 2008 like Andrew was in '92.....this would be a no-brainer....you would see Gustav-type preparation (or more if the storm was stronger).

I agree with what some have said regarding the very different world we live in now because of technology.....boards like this did not exist in '92. Now, once a model run even hints at a SE LA landfall, this board...and even media...would be lit up. There is a much higher awareness of storms by the population overall, and people are watching storms much further out now than they would have even 10 or 15 years ago.

[gentillysupertiger]

I guess the flipside of this would be why wasn't New Orleans evacuated for Ike (when you look at Friday's radar pic) techonology. I have to admit when I woke up Friday morning I was very nervous even knowing that all of the experts said TX. That was a nervous sat image.
KK

[micktooth]

So I guess in a way NOLA was "lucky" that no major storms impacted the area after Betsy for several years. Without any evac plans in place it could have been a total disaster worse than Katrina.

[O Town]

sorry, mods please delete a quad. I guess I'l figure it out one day. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

LOL, you can delete your own posts. If you look at the bottom of the box your post is in there should be an exclamation mark(!) and a X. Click the X and it will ask you are you sure you want to delete this post, and then hit yes.

[CoCo2]

We evacuated for Andrew. We went to Baton Rouge. So did most of Southeast Louisiana. Crazy. Baton Rouge got hammered during Andrew. But it was kind of cool because we stayed on the same floor as The Weather Channel team. When the electricity went out, we got lots of information directly from them about lower Plaquemines and the Houma area. We said we would never evacuate to Baton Rouge again, but then we went to Baton Rouge for Katrina. We said never again and this time, we meant it. Thankfully we didn't end up in Baton Rouge for Gustav.

I don't ever remember New Orleans evacuating on such a large scale before Georges. In fact, being from lower Plaquemines Parish we would always evacuate TO New Orleans. Stayed in New Orleans for Betsy and Camille.

[CoCo2]

Interesting article about staying in New Orleans during Hurricane Gustav

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/garde ... odayspaper

[UptownMary]

Interesting article about staying in New Orleans during Hurricane Gustav

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/garde ... odayspaper

I enjoyed that read! Thanks for the link. I see alot in there that explains why so many natives just didn't even consider leaving until the RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! WE ALL GON' DIE! hysteria of the Katrina evac.

I'm another New Orleanian who never evacuated until Katrina, and i still can't quite believe I actually did. Evacuating was a foreign concept for us, living in a part of town that got through Betsy just fine and history tells us "never floods", and it didn't in katrina, either. I remember I was 9 or 10 for Camille, and no one ever suggested evacuating, even though Camille came scarily close to NOLA. But I recall that Andrew was the first hurricane that actually made me real nervous. I think because Andrew did such terrible damage in Florida, people freaked in LA when it headed this way. And it's the first storm where people I knew, people at work and on my block, actually left town. So I went to bed the night before with a real sense of dread that what was coming might be very nasty, and that maybe I should get out of its way. As it turned out, I stayed and my neighborhood did ok, and I spent the next night as Andrew came ashore to the west, sitting inside my front screen door in a lawn chair getting rained on occasionally and watching and listening to the winds.

I did evac for Gustav once others in the family decided they were getting out, and I didn't want to be in NOLA by myself. Else I would've stayed.

[Steve]

>>I'm another New Orleanian who never evacuated until Katrina, and i still can't quite believe I actually did.

Myself. It was the first time and almost by accident that I ended up having to when one of my kids left to go hang out with friends who were staying after my other two blew out of town. No way the ex-wife who worked a 12 hour shift the night before was going to be able to drive him out of harm's way. So it just worked out that way. For Gustav, it was my weekend having all 3 kids, so we just went and had fun in Austin. Hopefully those are my first and last 2 evacuations.