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...Evacuation ordinance a
recipe for disaster
Planning for evacuation
of the Keys had been — until May 18 — based on the "conservative"
assumption that a strong hurricane could arrive with inadequate time to
evacuate tourists early. A 24-hour limit for evacuation of all
inhabitants had prudently restricted the amount of new development in
the Keys.
When we have the luxury
of extra time, tourists are evacuated early as part of a "phased
evacuation," starting 36 hours prior to expected landfall of tropical
storm force winds. This has been called the "best case" scenario.
The difference between
the "conservative" and "best case" scenarios was our safety margin. On
May 18, a new ordinance was approved by the [Board Of County
Commissioners] eliminated our safety margin. "Phased evacuation" was
adopted as the official policy, for the sole purpose of increasing
development.
Evacuation of the Keys
has a strong similarity to evacuation of aircraft. The number of seats
allowed and emergency exits required on a commercial aircraft are
defined — in part — by a requirement for manufacturers to demonstrate
the ability to evacuate a full airplane on the ground within 90 seconds.
The new ordinance is the equivalent of relaxing the requirement to 180
seconds, sending half of the passengers out of the aircraft early
(during the additional time), declaring that the remaining half will
take less than 90 seconds to evacuate, and then using this "reduced"
evacuation time as justification for adding more seats on the airplane.
In Monroe County's case,
what used to be a 24-hour evacuation requirement for all inhabitants has
been relaxed to 48 hours. The tourists and mobile home residents are now
being evacuated 48 hours and 36 hours prior, respectively. It is argued
that the remaining population can now evacuate in much less than 24
hours and the "reduced" evacuation time is being used as justification
for increased development.
The "official" clearance
time is derived from the Florida Keys Hurricane Evacuation Study, and
its hurricane-evacuation clearance time model:
"For the purposes of this
study, traffic generated by hotels and other tourist units were included
in determining clearance times, rather than discounted because they will
be required to evacuate early. ... According to the director of
Emergency Management Operations for Monroe County (Billy Wagner) and
others, not all hurricanes approaching the Keys will be considerate
enough to provide ample warning for advanced tourist evacuation."
Proponents have been
elusive about the number of extra units permitted by this deception. The
ordinance states that new development is limited to the current rate
"... except workforce housing." Amazingly, there is no definition of,
and no limit to the amount of "workforce" housing that could be built.
Based on calculations from the model, this ordinance allows a potential
20,000 new "workforce" units and an evacuating population increase of up
to 40,000.
This is a recipe for
disaster.
While there may be other
constraints that preclude the extreme, the public-safety risks
associated with this ploy were considered by most observers to be
inviolate, and they have been casually dismissed.
John Hammerstrom
Key Largo
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