Where do you evacuate to during natural disasters?

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WingedSeven@reddit

i don't. this'll sound either edgy or depressing, but i've made my peace with death and i'll let it take me no hassle if that's how it is.

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During a tornado outbreak, you get about 5 minutes notice so just shelter in place. For a hurricane, I work on power plants and my wife works for the hospital, so we have to stay in town no matter what happens unless we have a previously planned vacation. A lot of people leave town and go see family or friends. Maybe go to a bigger town and stay in a hotel for a few days. They set shelters up, but those are generally for lower income and elderly. Most people in my neighborhood have a generator and we just rough it for week until power comes back on.

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lannistersstark@reddit

Shelters? Out of affected area? Really depends.

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holytriplem@reddit

Will you have to prove you're from the affected area somehow to get into a shelter, or will they just admit you regardless as they would a homeless person?

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shelwood46@reddit

"Shelters" are often just local buildings that have generators and a lot of floor space -- firehouses, community halls. There's a local golf club that lets my town use their banquet hall as a shelter during bad storms, usually blizzards but the occasional thunderstorm/tornado type thing that takes power out for days. They'll set up cots and/or air mattresses. Some don't have sleeping accommodations but people can stop by to charge their devices, warm up, maybe get some hot food, get a shower if they have those facilities. They don't usually care if you're local or not, but they seldom are set up for more than a week.

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Odd-Help-4293@reddit

Some don't have sleeping accommodations but people can stop by to charge their devices, warm up, maybe get some hot food, get a shower if they have those facilities.

Oh yeah, this. Where I live, we sometimes get heat waves of 100F+ and the local government will set up cooling shelters like this for people who don't have AC. It's not a place to sleep, but just a space where people can cool off, get some water, etc during the day.

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1000thusername@reddit

These shelters are not the same as homeless shelters. These are emergency shelters that did not exist yesterday, are assembled tomorrow, and close back down as soon as feasible afterwards. So for example, people living right on the coast where there is high chance of flooding and having their home destroyed and being physically unsafe to remain might go to the nearby school where they set up cots, have facilities to make hot meals and hygiene facilities. Maybe they will sleep there only during the storm and can go home the next day if things aren’t bad. Maybe they stay a few days or a week while longer term alternative housing is made available to them if their home cannot be returned to.

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RolandDeepson@reddit

Depends on a lot of circumstances, but generally speaking the evacuation order implies an effort to clear the public population from publicly accessible spaces, which includes roadways. I.e., it's just as much of a safety calculus on behalf of emergency workers anticipated to be tasked with restoration and recovery.

Individuals who refuse to evacuate are socially culpable (and sometimes also legally culpable) for actively endangering emergency responders and utility repair crews.

Following that same logic, passersby in need of shelter in a relevant evacuation zone, I would surmise, would generally be allowed to join those already sheltered.

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q0vneob@reddit

Individuals who refuse to evacuate are socially culpable (and sometimes also legally culpable) for actively endangering emergency responders and utility repair crews.

Semi related, I used to get a yearly driving waiver from my job as "critical personnel" for when the governor declared a state of emergency. Idk what the penalties were for cruising around in that scenario but I was exempt which was neat - though only for the purpose of getting to/from work.

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hoochiscrazy_@reddit (OP)

Oh there are shelters? That makes sense. I'm totally ignorant on this but we see in the news thousands of people being told to evacuate and I was just wondering where they all go. Out of the affected area, I obviously figured was the case lol

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danhm@reddit

Schools and libraries often become shelters. Sometimes churches and even stadiums too.

And you might also be surprised to learn people rarely have to evacuate very far. For example for Hurricane Milton, residents only had to go a few miles. Mostly away from the immediate coast and riverbanks, or other areas prone to floods.

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hoochiscrazy_@reddit (OP)

Yeah I am surprised actually, I was thinking people were travelling really far to get out of the way. And you know, THOUSANDS of people doing that

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WingedLady@reddit

Sometimes millions. If my city were called to evacuate that would be 5 million people. The city has evacuation routes that you take depending on where you live. There's also special lanes that open up on the highway to facilitate the extra traffic.

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hoochiscrazy_@reddit (OP)

Wow! Interesting. Movies always show gridlocked highways with thousands of cars beeping their horns lol

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WingedLady@reddit

Oh they'd probably still gridlock. Extra lanes only help so much. But otherwise those lanes exist as a wide shoulder where you pull over if your car breaks down or something, so still pretty useful.

I'll be honest I've never seen the city (Houston) evacuate since moving here. But I've also never seen a cat 5 come down the barrel at us. Beryl was a 1 or a 2 when it landed earlier this year? I think the derecho got up to cat 3 wind speeds but no one saw that coming.

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chtrace@reddit

I was living in Houston when they evacuated for hurricane Rita. It was an absolute train wreck. Just too many people trying to get out of town in too short of time. I live in a northwest suburb and am 75+ miles from the coast. We have never evacuated and probably never will. We have a portable generator and keep stocked with food and water to last 7-10 days at all times. But I see the need for shelters and we have a county library around the corner from us that was a cooling center for both Beryl and the Derecho earlier this year.

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theshortlady@reddit

They'll sometimes open lanes on the reverse side of the highway to allow more traffic.

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sweet_hedgehog_23@reddit

I think Harvey was a cat 3 when it made landfall, but I don't know what it was when it reached Houston.

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WingedLady@reddit

That was before I moved here, but I don't think the city evacuated for it. Katy, one of the smaller cities more inland, evacuated, and Houstonians tend to rag on them for it since Katy didn't even really get hit.

I think by the time it reached Houston it was downgraded to a tropical storm. Which only means the wind speeds had slowed down. Sucker just kept dumping water on the city, then going back to the gulf to pick up more water, then coming back to sit on Houston and keep dumping.

Turns out hurrican categories only really measure sustained wind speeds in the eye wall, iirc. So they don't give a full picture on things like how fast the storm is moving through, how much water it's dumping, or how much area it's affecting at once.

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MortimerDongle@reddit

The biggest concern with most hurricanes is flooding/storm surge. The areas that are prone to flooding can be pretty small, so many people don't need to go particularly far.

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RunFromTheIlluminati@reddit

A lot of the ones traveling far are those going to stay with family.

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

You honestly think there aren’t shelters? Seriously?

God, foreigners can’t help but assume we don’t know what we’re doing just because they’re ignorant of how we do things. 🙄

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iamcarlgauss@reddit

I didn't know you could just go to the school down the street either, and I've lived here my whole life.

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theshortlady@reddit

I'm in Louisiana. I have no idea where people go to get away from wildfires.

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

I walked to my elementary school. It was three blocks.

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hoochiscrazy_@reddit (OP)

Did I assume anything, or did I come and ask?

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

I don’t see shelters on your list of guesses.

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hoochiscrazy_@reddit (OP)

Does that mean I presumed there aren't shelters, or just that I didn't think of it?

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MrLongWalk@reddit

Given your responses it’s likely you assumed we didn’t have them

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

If you didn’t think of the obvious, that’s on you.

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hoochiscrazy_@reddit (OP)

Yeah but I didn't assume you DONT have shelters, there's a clear difference. And that's exactly why I came here to ask, because I wanted to know. This is a weird conversation we're having

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

How am I supposed to infer that from the examples you gave which did NOT include shelters?

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drumzandice@reddit

Why so defensive?

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

First day here?

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Low-Cat4360@reddit

Often those shelters are just public buildings with large open spaces, not buildings built specifically as a shelter. For example a local high school may be designated as a shelter and there will be aid workers there with supplies. It'll be buildings large enough to hold several thousand people. During the most recent hurricane, Florida set up enough shelters across the state to hold 200,000 people

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theshortlady@reddit

In Lafayette, Louisiana, they open the stadium/performance space as a shelter as well as high school gymnasiums. The Cajun Dome had people after Katrina for quite a while.

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RolandDeepson@reddit

Part of the reason that such public buildings are so expensive to build or renovate / maintain...

...is because they're designed to act as emergency shelters.

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XelaNiba@reddit

Yep, both my middle school and high school got hit by tornadoes and only lost some roof tiles and some windows.

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47-30-23N_122-0-22W@reddit

Just about every office building, school, and somewhat newer church has some sort of tornado shelter.

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secondmoosekiteer@reddit

All we have on Alabama are tornadoes, so we're not really traveling more than fifteen minutes away from home if at all. I guess if there was a wildfire but i have never heard of one that required evacuation. Only heard of one in my corner of alabama in my lifetime, anyway.

For tornadoes, it's the lowest floor of your house. A space near the center of the home with no windows and a closing door. That's where you keep your emergency supplies. Or if you live in a tiny apartment like me, you keep them in the closet directly beside the bathroom in a basket you can grab on the way in.

You turn on James Spann's fb live and grab your helmet and pray. Why, what do you do, u/hoochiscrazy_ ??

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Odd-Help-4293@reddit

Where I live, we don't really have the kind of disasters that require evacuation. When I was a teenager, though, we had a bad ice storm that knocked out the power for an extended period. My dad's work had a generator and a kitchen, so they let the employees & their families camp out there to keep warm and fed. That was just for a couple of days though.

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GothWitchOfBrooklyn@reddit

I was on the very edge of the evac zone (C/3) in NYC during hurricane Sandy. I had nowhere to go, so I stayed put. Thankfully, my apartment was fine. My friends in Rockaway Beach evacuated to the same area I was (stayed with another friend) and were also fine.

However another set of friends stayed put in coney island (right by the water evac zone A/1) and barely escaped with their lives when the 13 ft storm surge hit. They lost everything.

If I had lived in zone A1, not sure where I would have gone. I had no family or elsewhere to go at the time and had 2 cats, no transportation.

Those post sandy days were insane.

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EloquentBacon@reddit

I’m in NJ and live very close to the beach. We were here for Sandy, too, and it was wild here. It looked like a some post apocalyptic place you’d see in a movie.

We couldn’t evacuate as we couldn’t afford to go to a hotel. All of my family lives around the corner from me so we didn’t go there initially as we were all in the same situation. It was also so much worse than anything we ever could have expected. Many people who were hit really hard hadn’t even considered evacuating. They didn’t expect anything to happen in their neighborhood in a hurricane as it never had before.

People often don’t know or forget that 1 week after Sandy hit, we were hit again on top of Sandy with a huge Nor’easter blizzard. That would have knocked out power for days here if it wasn’t already out from Sandy. It dropped the temperature to freezing and created a whole different level of problems for many with no heat like us.

We had no power for 3 weeks. We stayed home week 1 as the temperatures weren’t too low but we had to evacuate at the beginning of week 2 with our cats so all of us didn’t freeze. Everything is electric here so we had no heat, hot water and couldn’t cook anything. We packed in at our family member’s home as they had gas heat, hot water and a gas stove to cook on.

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DistinctJob7494@reddit

Houses having underground shelters or even basements depends on how close you are to sea level. Where I currently live, I'm a mile at most from the beach, and my property sloaps down to an inlet that has low and high tides. It's very rare for anyone here to have a basement, even just a semi underground basement. Lots of people here use wells instead of city water, too.

In the mountains of Tennessee, where my family lives, a much bigger population has basements and even shelters in some cases.

Depending on where you're located, you'll be more prone to certain types of natural disasters, and you'll have different evacuation zoning depending on those disasters. Tornados are mostly shelter in place, whereas hurricanes like the ones that just hit Florida have certain zones within the path that must be evacuated due to high winds and storm surge.

Tornadoes are small enough and fast enough that you can never tell where or how hard they'll hit. Thus no accurate way to evacuate before it hits.

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Current_Poster@reddit

I've volunteered with my county's CERT organization, and helped running a shelter. For ones that haven't been declared a major emergency, a HS gym or even a police station will do. Once there's a bigger event, there are evacuation centers and transportation (school buses, often) to different parts of the state.

In the worst case scenario, there's even interstate agreements. For instance, all fifty states took people in during the aftermath of Katrina.

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Pleasant_Studio9690@reddit

To add to this, I grew up in a rural area of Pennsylvania and there were official plans in place to shelter evacuees/refugees from New York City and/or Philadelphia in the event of a major terrorist attack, like a dirty bomb, in either city. They weren't widely known about, but my dad was on the local red cross leadership board and they came up in discussions. The county received a large federal emergency management grant to build a brand-new county emergency command center. It was fairly large and advanced in a county of just 26k people. It was funded and built after 9/11 and therefore widely believed to have been put in place to assist in a larger regional response to any major disruption to the continuity of life.

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VampireGremlin@reddit

I live in a tornado prone area and had to evacuate or was ready to evacuate a few times since we live in trailer home. We usually just went to a different area like my aunts or friends house and wait it out there until it was safe to return home.

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Far_Silver@reddit

The natural disaster in my area are usually tornadoes, so I go to the basement.

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IOnlyWishIWasRich@reddit

Shelters as mentioned, hotels, with friends, often even with strangers. Quite a lot of Americans will offer up spare bedrooms, guest homes on their property, or cabins they own for other Americans in times of need.

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blueponies1@reddit

I go sit in my tub w a beer and ride that shit out

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link2edition@reddit

Where I live, tornadoes are common, and some folks have little bunkers under their house or in their back hard for it. Just small underground shelters with enough room for your family and provisions.

I dont have one myself, but I used to have neighbors with one.

I realize you dont really evacuate for a tornado, but its the only disaster I have experience with.

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krill482@reddit

I usually stay at my place, ride out most hurricanes. Only evacuated once in the early 2000s.

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TheHolyFritz@reddit

Can't really speak on much since I'm a Midwesterner, the worst we'll get is a tornado in the area but it's typically not something you evacuate for unless it's big and right by you, and usually then, evacuating is essentially just getting tf out of the area for the day.

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cdsbigsby@reddit

Worst case scenario go hang out in the basement for 20 minutes

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dotdedo@reddit

Once we had to take shelter for a tornado at the Detroit Zoo. We had to take shelter in the polar bear exhibit and ironically was probably the safest spot in the zoo for a tornado because it’s underwater and the glass is strong enough to handle that water pressure, plus polar bears. And the staff told us it was literally built as a tornado shelter too

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shelwood46@reddit

I've camped at a number of state parks in Michigan and I've noticed in the last few years they have been upgrading all the shower/rest room facilities at the campgrounds to also be tornado shelters -- above ground but literally brick shithouses.

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dotdedo@reddit

Yeah that kind of thing is common here. Growing up we were always told if we're in public and need a tornado shelter, go to a bathroom because good chance its already built as a shelter. All the bathrooms at the Detroit Zoo are shelters too, we just happened to be closest to the polar bears at the time the warning came out.

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stuck_behind_a_truck@reddit

And only one kid eaten by the bears? /s

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theshortlady@reddit

I'd think worst case would be coming back out to find your house gone.

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RsonW@reddit

During the Trauner Fire when I was a boy, we evacuated to my dad's work and set up our pop up tent trailer in the parking lot.

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MuppetManiac@reddit

I’m in Texas, and have family in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Minnesota. So the answer is get on i35 and head north until you are out of the disaster, then look for the nearest family.

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androidbear04@reddit

You don't evacuate ahead of earthquakes because you can't predict when they will happen.

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GingerMarquis@reddit

Depends on where you have to go and why. Different states have shelters set up and places that can function as shelters. If the disaster is bad enough and the Governor appeals to the President, they may use military bases and assets. If Wales flooded, where in England would they go?

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hoochiscrazy_@reddit (OP)

They could probably just go higher up all their mountains to be fair. Good point though, I guess the government would provide shelters. Not everyone has family they can go to and not everyone can afford hotels which is kind of what I was wondering.

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PlannedSkinniness@reddit

As a North Carolinian, there’s no guarantee that being on higher ground saves you. Hurricane Helene just destroys the NC mountains.

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pugdaddy78@reddit

Hook up the travel trailer to my giant American truck. Store my documents and medications in my little home away from home. Stock the fridge and pantry. Load up the wife and dogs and head out.

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Hatweed@reddit

Western PA doesn’t really deal with too many disasters. With flooding you go up hill, with tornadoes we’d just head to the basement and blizzards we’d just ride them out indoors.

The only evacuation plan I know about in my area is the one for if the nuke plant goes critical. We’d report to my old high school for shelter and decontamination, then get bussed out of the affected area.

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stuck_behind_a_truck@reddit

Earthquake country here. There is no “getting out” if it’s something big. You shelter in place generally because transportation is disrupted. We’ve been fortunate (knock on wood) not to have the Big One. If we do, I’m just dead. I live on the San Andreas fault.

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HotSteak@reddit

My sister lives in Florida and showed me a post from someone in Georgia that said something like "Plenty of space. Bring yourselves, bring your critters. We'll be grilling in the back yard!"

But I think most people travel to hotels or family.

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Surprise_Fragrant@reddit

I live in FL, and there's multiple subsets of Hurricane Evacuees...

You have people who hear that a storm is coming, pack up the car and drive to Georgia. I feel like these are often people who live in big cities, because they always evacuate using interstates (as if there's no other road options), and always travel to the first metro city (Atlanta) across the border. Some may have family, but many are simply running away as far as they can even if there are no evacuation orders, because they expect the worst (even when models don't support that fear).

You have people who evacuate inland because they run from the water and hide from the wind. 20 miles inland makes a huge difference, because the possibility of storm surge is close to (if not at) zero. They may go to family or friends, or a hotel.

You have people who stay in their area, but evacuate to an emergency shelter, which are typically storm-hardy buildings like schools, libraries, or community centers, that have been reviewed by cities/counties and deemed to be strong enough to be save in these storms.

Something that gets lost in translation in hurricane evacuations is that it's rarely an entire county that is under a mandatory evac; often it's just specific zones or types of housing that are under a mandatory evac. For instance, Hillsborough County (where Tampa is), only had mandatory evacs for Zones A and B, and mobile homes; there was no call for the entirety of the county of 1.5mil people to evacuate.

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theshortlady@reddit

I've never been under a mandatory evacuation order, but I've evacuated plenty of times. When the kids were little we evacuated for anything Cat 3 or over. There are a lot of reasons for the decision and at least the early evacuaters are out of the way, not endangering emergency services.

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DerthOFdata@reddit

While I have experienced some pretty extreme weather I have never had to evacuate.

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Sparky-Malarky@reddit

People don’t evacuate for tornadoes because they don’t have warning.

Hurricanes form in the ocean and move to land. You can see them coming. You have days of warning.

Tornadoes form over land. You can see the storm coming, and you will get warning that a tornado might form, but if you you hid in the basement the whole time every time there was a tornado watch, you’d be a recluse who never got anything done. When a tornado forms, people underneath it have seconds of warning, and people in the area, might have a few minutes. No time to evacuate.

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Git_Off_Me_Lawn@reddit

Our disasters are of the hunker down and wait variety. Probably the worst was Maine's 1998 Ice Storm. School was closed for about a week, we were 15 days without power, spent a lot of time going out and clearing trees to clear roads.

No point in trying to evacuate or shelter somewhere else because you have everything you need to survive at home.

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Mundane-Particular30@reddit

Nowhere to evacuate to when you live on an island. But our homes are steel reinforced concrete with accordion window typhoon shutters as a standard. We just close everything up and wait it out inside our homes.

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BeerJunky@reddit

I haven't had to evacuate anywhere before but I was talking to my wife about this the other day when Milton was nearing Florida and we were watching all the idiots on the news saying they weren't going to leave despite mandatory evacuation orders. My plan if this were to happen would be an impromptu family vacation outside of the effected area. In Florida a lot of folks booked hotels at Disney to escape as Orlando was quite a ways inland. That's still too close for me but for them it was drivable/more affordable. I'd be on a flight out as soon as the storm track showed it was heading towards my house.

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Practical-Ordinary-6@reddit

This is more of a trivia tidbit than an answer to the question, granted, but it is interesting and related. In areas near the coast in Georgia and I assume Florida and other places, they have roads designed and built to be reversible during emergency evacuations. So if a road is normally two lanes in each direction they can deploy some barriers and some gates and things that are already there to make it four lanes leaving the area, maximizing the amount of traffic that can safely move in the direction away from the coast. Some might go to three lanes instead of four. It just depends on the situation.

Some people evacuate a very long way, by their choice. Sometimes to be with family. People from Florida might go up to Atlanta, which is in Northern Georgia, so that's about an 8 or 9 or 10 hour drive (or more) depending on where you're coming from in Florida. It could also be less. Florida is a very long state and there are lots of different distances "to" Florida.

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Practical-Ordinary-6@reddit

I've never had to evacuate anywhere so I don't know.

My aunt used to go to a nearby hotel when a hurricane came through her area because it was a substantial multi-story building. It was only about a mile from her house though.

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Arcaeca2@reddit

What kind of natural disaster? In Kansas where I grew up, the big natural disaster(TM) was tornadoes, and in case of a tornado you're supposed to evacuate to a central room of a building without windows and not directly adjoining the outside, and - ideally - as low in elevation as possible.

For example in my home growing up, our tornado shelter was a closet (windowless) in the basement (low elevation) underneath the stairs, and it was surrounded by hallway (centrally-located).

This would absolutely not work as a shelter for, say, a hurricane.

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AtheneSchmidt@reddit

Fires can be a problem in Colorado where I live, there have been where we offered friends space to stay with us, and a couple occasions where friends offered us space at their houses.

I also have family in Florida, when it becomes a worry, they usually evacuate to friends homes or hotels outside of the hurricane's path.

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Drew707@reddit

Generally speaking it's a large public venue. For the last few fires, it's been our county fairgrounds which is pretty centrally located, generally safe from any fire threats, and has facilities to support a large number of people and animals. It also serves as the HQ for relief efforts. The only time I've personally needed to evacuate, we headed to my SO's grandma's house. Back when the Tubbs fire happened, Guy Fieri brought his mobile BBQ setup to the evacuation center to cook free meals for the affected, and people decided to go online and criticize him for "creating more smoke". The AQI is like 750; I don't think some burgers are going to add much.

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Libertas_@reddit

I'm in earthquake country so I'd probably evacuate to my front yard if the home is damaged.

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Tiny_Ear_61@reddit

I'm in Michigan, state with few natural disasters and very good drainage. We don't have many problems from storms, earthquakes, etc. Every now and then we have blizzards which cause us to stay indoors. Other than that, our biggest concerns are chemical releases from nearby factories. In that case I can evacuate to my sister's house at the opposite end of the state, five hours away from me.

Of course Michigan is in the Midwest, which makes tornadoes a possibility. However, we're not really in tornado alley and we only hear the sirens maybe three times a year.

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SavannahInChicago@reddit

We just get tornado here. We don’t evacuate we shelter in place.

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TorturedChaos@reddit

I don't have hurcaines in my area. Natural disaster for my area are wild fires and blizzards. Occasionally river flooding.

For wild fire most people would go to a family's house away from the danger area or a hotel. School gymnasiums are often marked as a shelter / emergency evacuation gather point, if the school is in a safe area. Similar for churches or other locations designed to hold a large amount of people.

Flooding is similar to wild fires.

Blizzards and snow storms are normally shelter in place. Don't drive unless it's an emergency. Just wait it out and stay at home if possible.

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Tommy_Wisseau_burner@reddit

I’ve only evacuated once in the 4 years I’ve lived in Florida. I went to Orlando. Funny enough the hurricane, which was projected to hit Tampa/St Pete yeeted itself and missed entirely. Orlando ended up being worse in Orlando lmao. I didn’t leave to escape Milton. I just got internet 2 hours ago lmao. Only lost power for like 30 seconds twice. 83% of my county doesn’t have power though so we got pretty lucky, including most of my neighbors

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anneofgraygardens@reddit

I live in a wildfire prone area but I've never had to evacuate - it's more likely that people evacuate to my town. In 2017 a LARGE number of people ended up sheltering in my town, they set up shelters in several larger buildings. I donated some extra hygiene products (like we had a box of soap from Costco) because many of these people had to flee in the night with no preparation.

some people will go to stay with friends or family. Some people stay in motels. My family's closest family friends had to evacuate once and came to our house, but our dogs weren't getting along so they ended up going camping until the evacuation order was lifted.

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manicpixidreamgirl04@reddit

idk I've never had to evacuate

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GothWitchOfBrooklyn@reddit

NYC definitely had some evacuation zones during Sandy, that's the only time in recent memory I can think of mandatory evacs there

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manicpixidreamgirl04@reddit

Only certain neighborhoods. I was like an hour away from those areas.

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hoochiscrazy_@reddit (OP)

Thank you for taking the time to answer regardless :'D

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ViewtifulGene@reddit

Evacuation orders are a pretty extreme disaster response. Typically, residents are first advised to shelter in place. Workplaces will usually tell their employees where to go if a weather event happens while you're on site. At my office, we'd go to the basement in event of a tornado.

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1000thusername@reddit

Friends. Family in another area. Hotel. If you have a camper, drive it somewhere and use it. In some cases, people might not go far like if they’re in a flood zone but their brother 5 miles away isn’t, go only 5 miles.

Others who can’t go too far for whatever reason might access a public shelter which are set up in stronger buildings like schools and sports arenas since they’re generally very solid construction and have facilities for large numbers of people (group cooking, many bathrooms, etc.)

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limbodog@reddit

Most of our public schools and government buildings are designated emergency shelters.

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qu33nof5pad35@reddit

I’ve never been in this situation.

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palmettoswoosh@reddit

So hurricane helene for example ppl in coastal cities and towns would normally have evacuated to the areas that just got wrecked by hurricane helene hundreds of miles inland.

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Mouse-Direct@reddit

I live in Tornado Alley. The church across the street has a shelter we are welcome to use. We are too far inland to be affected by hurricanes, but we have had to stay at hotels during severe ice storms and loss of power.

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BigPapaJava@reddit

Depends on the disaster…

If it’s a hurricane, you want to get out of town—ideally hundreds of miles out of town—and stay wherever you can.

If you don’t have time for that or the roads are already impassable, you get away to whatever you can. Many local buildings like churches and schools get turned into temporary emergency shelters for people who are displaced, too.

We just got devastated by Hurricane Helene here in the Appalachian mountains, 300 miles inland from the coast. This is where a lot of people evacuating from hurricanes in coastal areas would go to be safe… but this storm was so incredibly wide that it reached here, too and caused horrific, deadly flooding.

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Redbubble89@reddit

Virginia doesn't really have disasters. Every 10 years we get one tornado, one hurricane, and one blizzard or really bad snow. We're too far north to really get Florida, Gulf, or Carolina hurricanes or they turn to New York or Boston who are on the water. DelMarVa slows them down so it's just the Virginia Beach.

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DoublePostedBroski@reddit

What kind of disaster? It depends.

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theothermeisnothere@reddit

I live on top of a really big hill. If something knocked out power for days, especially in the winter, I would go to a family member's place to crash or one of the many hotels. There are many hotels around here. Schools would open their gyms too.

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happyburger25@reddit

Any hurricanes that start down in Florida or Gulf of Mexico just become a ton of rain and some strongish winds

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adoptedmom@reddit

I don't have to evacuate, like ever. We get hurricanes and floods where I am but I'm in the northeast so the hurricanes usually have lost their power before they get here. I'm also a half hour inland which makes for lesser winds, and I live on a good sized hill so do not face flooding. When a powerful enough hurricane or nor'easter makes its way here they do open the local schools as shelters. They're used by people in flood zones, who live in trailers, of from more rural areas that might lose power for extended periods.

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rawbface@reddit

I would like to point out that this is extremely rare. The vast majority of people have never had to evacuate their homes, ever in their entire life.

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Zephyrific@reddit

I grew up living next to a national forest and had to be evacuated a few times for wildfires. Cafeterias or gyms of nearby schools were turned into shelters. Often school was cancelled due to so many students being displaced, so using those spaces was an obvious choice. Other people opted to go out of town to stay with friends or family, or they might opt to rent a hotel room.

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That_Weird_Mom81@reddit

Basement for tornados (you're lucky to have a few minutes of warning), away from a source of water for flash floods (like get in the car and go if were in the bath), my parents for regional flooding because we get a couples days notice if not more that the river is rising so enough time to grab the valuables that can't be replaced and leave. Hurricanes in my area (150 miles from the coast in the northeast) cause flash and regional flooding so there's no real concern about wind damage or storm surge and those aren't common. The last ones that caused an issue were Irene and tropical storm Lee in 2011 and before that I think it was 06.

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dumbandconcerned@reddit

I went to undergrad in a coastal city often hit by hurricanes. I would typically evacuate 3 hours inland to my parents’ place. The crazy part is that hurricane Helene hit that area drastically harder this time around than it did the coast

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emartinoo@reddit

We don't get many natural disasters where I live. Tornadoes aren't unheard of, but they're extremely infrequent, especially in the part of the state/country where I live. In the case of tornadoss, most houses here have basements, so that would be the go-to shelter area. You wouldn't want to leave your house to go to a shelter in the event of a tornado anyway, since you generally only have a few minutes between when the warning is issued, to a tornado is on the ground. If you don't have a basement, the innermost room of your house/apartment. The bathroom is a particularly good choice if it's near the center of your house.

The biggest things we have to worry about on a regular basis, and are probably statistically more dangerous, are blizzards/heavy snow that can make the roads impassable, and severely cold temps (it can get as cold as -30F here which can cause frostbite in seconds).

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Kindergoat@reddit

I’ve lived in Florida for 35 years and never had to evacuate, but I live pretty far inland. Most of the public high schools double as shelters, as well as the exhibition buildings at the fairgrounds.

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kshucker@reddit

No real natural disasters here. The worst we’ll get is snow. I think it was 2014 or 2015 where we got 3 feet of snow. The last time we got anything close to that was in the 90’s. We deal with a bunch of rain from hurricanes but by the time it hits us, it is no longer a hurricane.

If there was something big coming that we knew ahead of time, nearly everybody here would shelter in place and wait it out.

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JudgeWhoOverrules@reddit

I live in Phoenix, we don't get those kind of natural disasters. At most it's slightly hotter. Sometimes microburt in a monsoon storm damages a house, usually by a tree falling on it.

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Mata187@reddit

Closest thing that could lead to people evacuating would be an emergency at the Palo Verde nuclear plant. If you go to the rest area in Tonopah (just outside Buckeye) you will see warning signs and an evacuation route to take, radio station to tune to, warning sirens to listen to, along with zones that are within immediate danger.

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JudgeWhoOverrules@reddit

Only the farthest west portions of the Phoenix area are within the evacuation zone due to both distance and prevailing winds. The part I'm in is over 50 miles away from it.

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Nightmare_Gerbil@reddit

When I was a Red Cross volunteer in Phoenix we opened shelters when multiple families were displaced. It could be due to apartment building fires, roads washed out by floods, or electrical outages in summer. If a single family couldn’t stay in their home, we’d put them up in a motel. If it was multiple families, we’d open a shelter.

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DOMSdeluise@reddit

I would go to a hotel in Austin, San Antonio, or Dallas.

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BreakfastBeerz@reddit

Only natural disasters we have are blizzards and tornadoes. The blizzards, we just stay at home and wait for the plows to come by in a day or two. We have a gas fireplace for heat, a gas stove to cook and a small generator to keep the lights on. For a tornado, we just go into the basement

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tcrhs@reddit

We usually go to a hotel. We’ve occasionally stayed with friends and family, but if there is a mandatory evacuation, my insurance pays for hotels. I prefer having our own space and not overstaying our welcome.

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Frank_chevelle@reddit

Live in Michigan and I never had to evacuate for anything. Worst we get is bad winter storms, where you are supposed to stay home and rarely tornados which again, I would just go into by basement at home for.

Sometime in the winter areas around me will open up warming shelters if there has been a bad winter storm or if it really cold out for people who may have lost power or the homeless.

My parents live in central Florida and they have never had to evacuate as they are not in an area that would flood and are in an area where people would evacuate to. They have had hurricanes pass over the house but the only damage were some small leaks by some windows.

Some areas of country will have shelters set up in public buildings for shelter.

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notthegoatseguy@reddit

Tornados are the danger in my area and they don't appear in a way that an evacuation makes any sense. If anything an evacuation can put way more people in danger.

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Evil_Weevill@reddit

The worst natural disaster we get is a blizzard once in a while.

So there's never really been any threat of possible evacuation here.

I suspect that's something more specific to the Gulf Coast area, hurricane Alley as it were.

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Livvylove@reddit

Most of Florida tends to come to Georgia, some go to Alabama. I-75 goes straight to Atlanta from Tampa so a lot are here

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Loud_Insect_7119@reddit

I've done a couple things when I've evacuated for wildfires. Sometimes I was able to stay with family, sometimes I essentially camped out at the fairgrounds where I was also temporarily boarding my horses (usually they open fairgrounds or other venues like that for people to evacuate with livestock; you don't have to stay there but I did because I had enough gear to be comfortable and wanted to keep an eye on my critters).

There are always shelters set up as others have noted, and also people open their homes sometimes to those in need. I've had random friends-of-friends that I've never met come stay with me during wildfire evacuations I wasn't affected by, too, for example.

I'd say most people probably stay in shelters or with friends/family, though. I also have seen some people stay in hotels or campgrounds outside of the affected area.

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sluttypidge@reddit

Like tornado or wildfires in my area, it depends where they happen. I've gone to my aunt and uncle's house, my grandmother's house.

During the fires in February, the family was all over my house.

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cathedralproject@reddit

In the early 80s when I was like 8 or 9 we had to evacuate from a brush fire in Southern California. My parents packed up the car with photo albums and some clothes, and hey told me and my 4 year old sister to stay in the car while they hose the back yard and roof down as the flames were approaching. Me and my sister sat in the car in the garage for 2 hours waiting. finally we were like, what the hell, and got out of the car and found my dad, mom and our neighbor getting drunk in the back yard! The flames came right at our back fence burning everything just up to a few feet of the house. After fighting off the flames my parents made margaritas and forgot about me and my sister.

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HotButteredPoptart@reddit

I've never had to evacuate. Been in my house for over 30 years. Worst we get is snowed in for a day or 2.

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JimBones31@reddit

If my wife and I were told to evacuate, we would head to a family members house that was even farther inland. If they wasn't an option, we would go to a hotel.

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MostlyChaoticNeutral@reddit

I have family in the midwest that I stay with if there's a bad enough hurricane coming. It's an 8 - to 9-hour drive, but once I'm there, the lodging is free, the company is excellent, and I'm not competing for space with everyone else who had to evacuate.

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Apocalyptic0n3@reddit

For what it's worth, it's extremely rare Americans have to evacuate. For most of the country, the worst they'll ever deal with is a Tornado warning and they'll hunker down in a basement or bathtub or reinforced stairwell or something for an hour. Most areas don't get hurricanes, floods, or wildfires. As such, I genuinely have no idea how far they have to go. Phoenix is extremely stable and gets no real natural disasters beyond a bad flood once every 20 years or so, and even those have been mitigated for most of the Valley.

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WCowgirl@reddit

Hotels, family, shelters. It depends on the person and how far they need to get away and how much time they have to get out.

I'm from Wisconsin, where we don't have to worry about hurricanes, however, my mom and father-in-law relocated to Florida a few years ago. They live on the Gulf Coast, literally less than a mile from shore, so they tend to need to evacuate a couple of times a year. They evacuated for Helene and now Milton, for example. Where they evacuate to varies. Sometimes they leave the state, though they actually went inland to Orlando for Milton. But sometimes they come up back to Wisconsin and stay with family, sometimes they just get out and go anywhere else, lol.

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Dunamivora@reddit

In Utah, we would have earthquakes, so.... more or less just hope you're not near a weak building when shaking starts. 😅

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Mata187@reddit

I have an ex who lives in Miami. When she evacuates, she and her family will go further inland to her brother’s house that has hurricane resistant windows and is above the water line.

In LA, after major earthquakes, if your house is too damaged to enter or live in, the first place to go to would be either nearby family members or friends that can shelter you. Otherwise it would be emergency shelters

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JustJake1985@reddit

Most of where I live will be royally screwed when the big earthquake hits, and I honestly haven't made a decent earthquake preparedness kit since probably middle school 25+ years ago. If I somehow survived, I'm pretty sure I'd drop dead from the surprise of survival. We do technically have a tsunami evacuation route, but the stretch of where I live is protected by a string of islands that will bear the brunt of the damage so I would theoretically be okay.

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Dramatic-Blueberry98@reddit

As far as I know, none of my family in Florida (I live up in North Georgia though far enough South to not be affected by the stuff up in Eastern Tennessee and Western NC) had to evacuate for either Helene or Milton despite residing mostly within the Central Florida region around Orlando.

It weakened somewhat on the pass over from West to East and only lost local power briefly according to my Dad (I called him yesterday to check up).

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Current_Poster@reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/s/MXLudTFZXq

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Current_Poster@reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/s/MXLudTFZXq

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Lulusgirl@reddit

Michigan has been pretty lucky so far knocks on wood

The few tornadoes that actually do damage, we have retreated to the basement. There have been a few major floods, more recently, Hamburg Township in 2021. My friends family was affected, and water damage can seriously mess everything up, but it wasn't a major hurricane or tsunami levels of water. They didn't have to climb stories to escape 9 feet of water.

We aren't on a major fault line, but there have been some small earthquakes - nothing devastating. No mudslides, no volcanoes, wildfires aren't a major concern because. Well. There's a crapton of water. Fun fact about our state: at any given location, you're no more than 6 miles away from a body of water.

The snow has been bad in the past, but we always seem to pull through. Drive slow, get snowtires, only go out for necessities and emergencies, stockpile blankets, and candles for power outages. My family lived in our family room for three days during a blizzard when I was a kid. We hung blankets over the windows and created a fort. It wasn't horrible, but I was also 7.

I truly think this is one of the better states to live in. Despite our lack of mountains, it's still gorgeous, and the wooded areas are stunning.

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PPKA2757@reddit

We don’t have natural disasters where I live, at least none so severe that would require an evacuation.

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La_croix_addict@reddit

I live in Miami and I go to my sisters in Austin Tx, or my parents in GA.

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LordofDD93@reddit

Either shelter in place, find a relative, or potentially go spend the night at an actual shelter designated as such during emergencies.

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Dinocop1234@reddit

It depends on where one is. In western Colorado we don’t really get much in the way of big natural disasters that call for evacuations. Forest fires and floods are possible and the only natural disasters that I can think of that could cause evacuations around here. The people that evacuate just go to a different town or area that’s not affected. County, state, and or federal governments will often organize shelters and the like when needed. In contrast I’ve been in Oklahoma where there are tornado shelters built into many buildings because they are common there.

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Head_Razzmatazz7174@reddit

Generally people will go as far as they need to get out of the worst of the disaster. With hurricanes, it's fairly predictable about where they will be and how strong during the during of the storm. In those cases, they just need to find a place that is outside the predicted path.

Sometimes that place will be a hotel, and many churches and schools will open shelters for those who evacuated.

With wildfires, they are not nearly as easy to predict, so getting to a 'safe' area is a guessing game. You travel as far as the authorities say is safe, but if the wildfire suddenly takes off in a new direction, that safe spot may now be in the path of the fire and you have to find a new safe area.

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WildBoy-72@reddit

Someplace away from the natural disasters is a good place. And considering there are tens of thousands of square miles of land in this country, that's not too difficult.

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allaboutwanderlust@reddit

I’ve never evacuated. We have had some bad forest fires but never close enough to evacuate

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toomanyracistshere@reddit

I evacuated to my girlfriend’s uncle’s house in a nearby town when there were wildfires in my area. After a day of that I realized that my homeowner’s insurance would cover a hotel, but there were no hotels available anymore, so we ended up getting a fairly expensive vacation rental on the coast an hour or two to the north of where I live. Coincidentally, some of my friends and their families had also gone up there, so it was actually kind of a fun group vacation. We kept joking about how we were pretty much the most first world refugees you could imagine.

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