Hurricane Preparedness Blog

Hillsborough County, FL - home to Tampa - has issued its hurricane evacuation routes for 2007, in partnership with HART (Hillsborough Area Regional Transit). The system features 10 routes that essentially run from the edge of the bay right up to, but not far beyond, the nearest non-evacuation zone. You can view the map here.

I have a few questions about the plan:

1. “Evacuation buses will operate during daylight hours only.” What if a storm changes course at dusk, and by morning the winds will be too strong to evacuate? Many cities operate buses into the late hours of the morning. Wouldn’t this be more important during an evacuation?
2. “The EOC will advise HART when buses and other high-profile vehicles need to get off the roads, and evacuation service will be suspended.” In Miami-Dade County at least, this is typically at 39mph+ (tropical storm force winds). Won’t the “Oh shit, I better evacuate” moment come after that point? What then?
3. How is this being promoted (other than where I caught it on Bay News 9, available through my $100/mo cable service)? How are current bus riders - and those who commute by car - being informed of this plan?
4. The plan mentions nothing about pets. “Why can’t fluffy come too?”

There are a number of things I like about the plan, including HART’s recommendation to “Contact relatives, friends, faith based groups or other groups for assistance with shelter and evacuation” and a suggested list of items to keep on board.

Let’s just hope the bus drivers have a personal hurricane plan in place before getting paged to fill those buses with stressed out passengers and their suitcases. That is, unless the buses can drive themselves - in which case we may have a bigger problem than hurricanes on our hands.

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