If Andrew Was Just a Prelude, What About the Main Event? : Hurricanes: In last 24 years, population of Atlantic and Gulf coasts has increased by a third, putting millions more people at risk.

On a waterfront estate blasted by Hurricane Andrew, James Talbot stares at a notch in a dead palm marking the storm’s 16.5-foot flood mark and thinks uneasily about Willoughby Spit.

Willoughby Spit is a nagging worry for Talbot, deputy coordinator of emergency services for Norfolk, Va. Formed in Hampton Roads Harbor by a 1749 hurricane, the spit now is valuable real estate. About 3,000 homes, condos and businesses sit on the sandy strip.

Talbot’s dread is simple: What one hurricane created in a few hours’ violence, another easily could obliterate. A Category 4 hurricane, the second most severe, would push a 15-foot wall of water over the thin peninsula.

“We get hit with a strong enough storm, Willoughby Spit could go away,” Talbot said during a National Hurricane Center seminar.

He is not alone in his fears. With the start of the hurricane season last Tuesday, the nation’s East and Gulf coasts are crowded with potential horror stories.

New Orleans officials worry about residents trapped in floodwaters as high as 20 feet. On barrier island resorts from Padre Island, Tex., to Atlantic City, N.J., fingers are crossed about plans to evacuate hundreds of thousands of tourists across narrow bridges.

Even on New York’s Long Island, there are jitters about deadly gridlock if a major storm hits, as Hurricane Donna did in 1960.

“There are too many people who think it couldn’t get much worse than Andrew,” said Robert Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center. “The fact is, Andrew was not the big one.”

Sheets’ definition of the big one? A major hurricane scoring a direct hit on a population center. Although Andrew savaged Homestead and Florida City, it dealt Miami only a glancing blow. If it had hit the city, damage would have been three to 10 times worse.

Prospects of such a storm are not pleasant to consider.

Congested areas in 10 different states face intense evacuations, raising fears of mass casualties. Tens of billions of dollars in property, built under questionable standards, would be lost to wind and water.

A series of annual storms, as witnessed in the 1940s and 1950s, would send the already wobbly insurance industry reeling and cost the economy billions more in federal aid and guaranteed flood insurance.

“It’s got nowhere to go but worse,” said Orrin Pilkey, head of Duke University’s Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, who has warned for years about the dangerous mix of hurricanes and coastal development.

The threat of the giant storm has haunted emergency planners for 24 years, a time when a lull in hurricane activity coincided with a huge migration to the coastline.

Now come indications that the lull is ending.

In the 20 years before 1989, only one storm was greater than a Category 3: Hurricane Camille, a Category 5 storm that struck Mississippi and Louisiana in 1969.

But since 1989, Hugo and Andrew, both Category 4 storms, caused an estimated $32 billion in damage. There was a bit of good news in all the bad: Both narrowly missed becoming even greater villains.

Hugo came ashore in a state park. If it had hit 20 miles south, a 20-foot wave of water would have inundated Charleston, S.C., where many residents opted for “vertical evacuation,” waiting out the storm from upper floors.

“The second floors would not have been there,” said Bill Massey, a regional hurricane planner for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “We would have had tremendous loss of life.”

Andrew was a concentrated storm that plowed tornado-like through communities south of Miami; its flood surge hit in a relatively open piece of coastline. But if a slower-moving Andrew had scored a direct hit on Miami and Miami Beach, damage could have been three times the $25 billion left behind, said Kate Hale, Dade County’s emergency administrator.

“If it had lingered for six hours instead of three, not a stick would have been left standing,” Hale said.

Meteorologists had no way of predicting where the storms would make land. “We were a gnat’s eyelash from much larger disasters,” Sheets said.

With the continued rush to develop coastal areas, prospects of such narrow escapes grow slimmer each year.

The coastal population from Maine to Texas has grown from 28.9 million in 1970 to 44 million today. Once sparsely populated shores now are booming residential and vacation spots--all costly targets for the next hurricane.

“Nature hasn’t changed,” Sheets said. “Severe storms occurred in the 1940s. What’s changed is the number of people at risk.”

To help move those people out of harm’s way, FEMA has identified 34 coastal areas needing evacuation studies--complex evaluations of potential flooding, escape routes and available shelters.

But with just $900,000 available annually--compared to $16 million for earthquake preparedness--only 17 studies have been completed; eight of those need updates because of growing populations.

“It’s been frustrating. This is crucial work that is taking longer than it should,” said Gary Johnson, FEMA’s assistant associate director for earthquakes and natural hazards.

Many evacuation plans that exist lay out troublesome scenarios of surging populations funneling through traffic choke points:

* Norfolk’s evacuation route through the Hampton Roads Tunnel could be cut off if an approaching hurricane threatened to push the tide up by 10 feet. At that point, floodgates would have to be closed, eliminating the tunnel as an escape route for some of the 300,000 people fleeing the area.

“When Gloria was approaching in 1985, we had a 17-mile-long traffic jam. If we had to close the floodgates, we would have to get the traffic into the interior part of the city,” Talbot said.

* The prospect of a Hugo-sized storm hitting South Florida would force evacuation of the Florida Keys, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, even possibly Tampa-St. Petersburg. Much of the traffic would use the Florida Turnpike, raising the specter of long miles of gridlocked cars at the mercy of an approaching storm.

* Ocean City, Md., attracts as many as 300,000 tourists on some summer weekends. All would have to flee over two bridges. Clay Stamp, director of emergency management, ticks off the mathematics of survival: A maximum of 5,000 vehicles clear the island each hour. Multiplying that by 2.5 persons per vehicle equals a total evacuation time of 30 hours.

“I think it can work,” Stamp said. “But I think there is not a lot of room for error.”

The most frightening scenario is New Orleans, where 500,000 people live six feet below sea level behind levees holding back the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain and watery marshland.

A major storm would overpower the levees, leaving most of downtown under 20 or more feet of water.

Evacuation is problematic. The only interstate route could flood in heavy rains. Officials would have to begin evacuation more than two days before the hurricane was projected to hit.

“Try convincing people to leave then,” said Louisiana State Police Capt. Ron Jones.

There is even less emergency planners can do to mitigate the tremendous destruction left in a storm’s wake. Homes and businesses already are in place, many built with little thought to details that could limit the damage.

Herbert Saffir, a Coral Gables engineer who pioneered the study of hurricane damage, said the sobering message of Andrew is that despite the horrific damage, Dade County’s building codes probably are the best in the country.

“The dollar value of a storm like Andrew hitting coastline communities, where no codes are as rigorous, would be worse than Miami,” Saffir said. “Building codes are not detailed enough and there is little code enforcement that means much.”

The economic consequences are staggering.

A 1988 study by the Insurance Research Council found the industry faced a $1.86-trillion risk along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. The federal government, which separately insures for flood damage, covers only a $229-billion risk.

Property damage projections by Applied Insurance Research, a Boston research firm, are equally chilling: A major hurricane blow to southeast Florida could cause $106 billion in damage. A similar hit to the Galveston-Houston area could run $80 billion.

The financial impact of such losses already have been felt. Eight insurance companies failed as a result of Andrew. Others now limit new policies; some consider the quality of local building codes in fixing rates.

Sheets sees a glimmer of hope in these and other reactions to Andrew.

“People have awakened to the notion that we are at great risk,” he said.

James Lafavor would agree.

A longtime resident of Tybee Island, Ga., a beach resort linked to Savannah by a 12-mile causeway, Lafavor used to laugh at vacationers who ran to safety each time a storm threatened.

But Andrew made Lafavor a believer.

“Before, I would have sent my wife off and I would have stayed,” he said. “Now, we’re all leaving.”

Hurricane Horrors

When do you evacuate for an approaching hurricane? A day--or two--ahead of expected landfall? Planning is tricky. No one can say at 24 hours out where a storm will hit. The problems are illustrated in the following scenarios from different communities:

Atlantic City, N.J.

One of the chief concerns in this gambling mecca is not the logistics of evacuating 250,000 vacationers over three bridges to the mainland--it’s convincing them to go.

“We can get every car off this island in less than 24 hours in the high season,” said Allyn Seel, emergency operations and training officer. “The biggest problem is public perception. The storm’s off Florida or Georgia and I tell you you have to put the kids, the dog, the cat in the car.”

Experts say limited access off the island, plus the unpredictability of fast-moving storms, could make a smooth evacuation a long shot. As many as 1.25 million people could be attempting to flee Atlantic and Cape May counties.

And although officials say evacuation would begin 36 hours before a storm hit, Robert Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center in Florida, recalls that tourists were being bused in even as Hurricanes Bob and Gloria were approaching. “The official response was there was only a 1-in-5 chance and look at the business we would lose,” he said.

After Gloria’s 1985 near miss, city officials were criticized for waiting too long to heed evacuation calls. Long traffic lines developed as tolls still were collected along escape routes.

Bob Levy, Atlantic City’s emergency management coordinator, said things will be handled differently next time. “I won’t lie to you and say there’s not an economic impact,” he said. “When it gets that close, the economic impact has to take a back seat to the side of life and safety, and that’s the way we are going to operate.”

Southeast Florida

While emergency officials elsewhere worry that complacency and ignorance might keep people from fleeing an approaching storm, those in South Florida have a bigger worry: Hurricane Andrew’s legacy of fear.

Studies after Andrew indicate more than 1 million people in Dade County alone may try to leave their homes--many of whom would be safer staying put.

“Now we’re concerned that people that didn’t evacuate with Andrew will evacuate out of fear,” said Kate Hale, Dade County’s emergency director. “That would add to the clearance times.”

Before Andrew, about 25% of Dade residents said they would evacuate in a storm. But a Miami Herald poll taken in February found almost two out of every three homeowners--at least 80,000 families--now plan to leave.

Add to that the numbers evacuating the Florida Keys, the populous coastal strip above Miami, and even areas of Florida’s west coast like Ft. Myers and the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.

It would take nearly four days before a storm hit to conduct such an evacuation safely, emergency officials say. The tidal wave of cars would flow to the Florida Turnpike, creating huge traffic jams back to coastal areas, trapping people in areas of potentially deadly flooding.

“We’re not very sophisticated in the way we do it,” said Robert Sheets, head of the National Hurricane Center. “The plan today is: Everybody in this area go. There are no staged evacuations.”

New Orleans

New Orleans’ 500,000 residents face one of the highest risks in the country. Surrounded by the waters of the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain and marshland, a strong storm could overwhelm city streets with 12 to 28 feet of water.

A series of levees protecting New Orleans would hold in milder storms, said Bryan Giddings, the city’s emergency management director.

“Once the storm goes above that, we’ll experience flooding and destruction that no system can adequately protect us from,” he said. “The best way to avoid the effects of a hurricane is to not be there when it arrives.”

But evacuating the city is no easy task. Sections of Interstate 10, the only major road intersecting the city, are below sea level and flood in heavy rains. Several high bridges are vulnerable to winds.

Many people might be stranded in the city, where a major storm could destroy shelters. Not that there are enough shelters to begin with. When Andrew hit, Louisiana did not have enough places ready for storm refugees. People had to travel as far as Memphis, Tenn., to find sanctuary.

As in South Florida, officials also worry that Andrew may have given people the wrong notions about the next storm. “Andrew simply reinforced how sensitive evacuation situations are,” said State Police Capt. Ron Jones. “We had many people who left and didn’t need to. That makes them reluctant to go the next time.”

South Padre Island, Tex.

If a hurricane threatens this island resort, officials have a simple plan to encourage people to leave: Cut the water and electricity.

There is little margin for error. On a busy summer weekend, more than 25,000 tourists, along with the island’s 1,170 permanent residents, must cross the two-mile-long Queen Isabel Causeway to shelters 50 miles inland.

“We’re not going to physically force anybody off the island. If they want to stay here and die, that’s up to them,” Fire Chief Clifford Rowell said.

The storm surge of a category 4 or 5 hurricane could wash Gulf waters completely over South Padre Island, leaving above water only sand dunes and whatever buildings survive.

South Padre has it easy compared to the Texas Gulf island city of Galveston, where more than 200,000 people can visit on busy summer weekends.

Hurricane Alicia demonstrated how a storm can catch people off guard if it’s not taken seriously. The 1983 storm killed 21 people in the Houston-Galveston area and caused an estimated $1.2-billion damage.

With that reminder, Padre Island officials don’t see a problem encouraging people to leave.

“We’re the front line, and I think people realize that,” Police Chief Ed Sanders said. “You’re looking down the gun barrel.”

Source: Associated Press