The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.
A lot of this “state or emergency” law came from places like Florida, from lessons learned through years of hurricane evacuations. The problem here is that what most people think of, when you say hurricane, is wind and that is how they are classified. The real risk in a hurricane is not from wind damage though, its from “tidal surge”.
People would often ignore the evacuation orders because it was only a level 1-2 hurricane, go to the beach to watch the waves, and get cut off from the mainland because they didn't realize how quickly the tidal surge came in through the bays/rivers/etc behind them, and cut off their escape routes. Once they were cut off from escape, yet the water kept coming in, they would eventually end up in a life and death situation. Others, for example, would go out immediately after the storm, to see the damage, and end up dead because they would get out of their car, into a puddle, only to find out that somewhere there was also a downed electric line in the same puddle.
Florida got into a bad scenario of over reporting storms (and scaring a bunch of folks over nothing), then under-reporting them (and causing a batch of deaths), and now are back to being over cautious with them. They discovered that its best to scare people into leaving as each situation is unique, has many variables, and can change in seconds leaving folks trapped. So they are going to always err on the side of caution now, especially after Katrina.
As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.
