Transportation Evacuation
Hurricane Evacuation of Myrtle Beach
Hurricanes often require people to evacuate from coastal regions. In the past, such evacuations have
resulted in major delays and failed to remove people from the zone of danger before the storm’s arrival.
South Carolina’s emergency planning commission is updating the guidelines for the Governor to use for
determining how long before landfall (hurricane’s arrival) a mandatory evacuation should be ordered.
You are a transportation engineer and have been hired to help establish the evacuation guidelines.
How much time will it take to get all evacuees
out of Myrtle Beach under a mandatory evacuation?
Answer: ________________________ hours
To help answer this main question, please complete the following:
a. List all of the factors that need to be considered to determine the evacuation time.
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Transportation Evacuation
b. Which three pieces of information (factors) do you think are the most important? Why?
c. Suppose that the evacuation time is exactly right and the evacuation is successful. Do you think that
the actual evacuation time observed during the next hurricane would be the same? Why?
d. What would you consider to be a failure of the evacuation plan? Give reasons for why it might fail.
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