Evacuating an entire Major City

[NYankees24 0]

Prompting the premier of the post-apocalyptic thriller, I am Legend, it forced me to think of an important future issue that can arise from many cities all oer the world, but typically for the city of

New York and Manhattan Island. Now come from Atlanta, but have lived in the

New York Tri-state area for 2 years now, and after viewing this great movie of I am Legend, I am prompted to think of the issue of getting an entire population out of a specific area should a catastrophic event occur that forces the mass evacuation of an entire population, and how that could be carried out. 

I enjoyed the 2007 movie of I am Legend, but I just want now to discuss what any of you think about the current state of how to evacuate metropolitan areas if there should be disaster, not many people think of this, because many could pass it off, but in the future, what if...?

[GreekMan 246]

i live in SD so different areas of the city leave at different times

also they have to take certain freeways out of San Diego County

I think this is how it works and I think they used this during the fires.....

[NYankees24 0]

If you ever visited new York city, the tunnels can get grilocked easily, especially during rush hour, there are HAZMAT evacuation route signs though, on the freeways leading to the bridges, but how could you move the population out of those bridges? the geographics of Manhattan island only point towards a bottleneck when it comes to leaving the city.

[DuskTrooper 314]

Go look up the evacuation of metro Houston during Hurricane Rita (which never came BTW).

AFAIK, they say it is the largest civil evacuation ever to take place in the US.

[panthersimcity4 162]

Gee, that would suck... I'd hate to be in Los Angeles during "Independence Day"... if ya know what I mean I'm glad the poor doggy jumped away from the flying fiery cloud of flames just in time... he was a cute little golden retriever (or whatever breed he was lol)

[palin1388 0]

If you think that is bad Check out the Hampton Roads Evacuation Plan. There is 6 main roads to get out of the area and even during minor tropical storms or even a bad rain storm 2 get flooded out, 1 has about a 1 mile water crossing that at this time in the event of an evacuation they are still imposing the toll. That leaves 3 main roads out of the area and only 1 of them is an interstate. Plans are on the way to expand 2 of the roads the ones that flood to hopefully stop the flooding and expand their capacity.

[Easy Bakes 253]

It would go badly.

no matter which large city you pick.

All you have to do is look at daily traffic. its gridlocked when people just go to and fro during a normal day.

your best bet would probably be to walk.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Originally posted by: Easy Bakes It would go badly.

no matter which large city you pick.

All you have to do is look at daily traffic. its gridlocked when people just go to and fro during a normal day.

your best bet would probably be to walk.

quote>

 

Actually, I watched the Day After Tommorow, and just about the same happened.

A quote from Wikipedia;

JD's driver is stuck in traffic a ways from the apartment, so they decide to walk there, deciding that it'll be faster to get out of town that way.quote>

There were 3 large hurricane-like storm systems that were evolving and covering Europe, Asia, and North America.  This too depicted what would happen if a major disaster occured in a major city...well major cities, but you see my point; in fact everyone here has pretty much made it.  An enormous storm surge engulfed all of Manhattan with people still trying to leave, and the subways were flooded out while buses and taxis got swept up downtown.  Most people who survived seemed to do so by just walking away, as that truely was the smartest bet.

A very small fraction escaped to South America when Mexico and other southern countries relieved their border restrictions in exchange for us relieving their debt (or it may have been the other way around, I can't really remember).  It was a great movie to me though, if you watch it you may pick something up for your prompt.  Or perhaps War of the Worlds...

Haven't seen it, but it's supposed to be pretty good (but a little gross lol ).  There's some crazy urban legend about how when they read that over the radio, people though it was really happening by the way they broadcasted it and started evacuating major cities.  Head down the bottom of the page and look for "public reaction"; it's amazing how people get when they miss the beginning of a broadcast...

...by the way this topic title appearing on the home page scared me for a second, I thought there was some cataclysm going on right now (wasn't kidding either)!  It's amazing how dumb I get when I don't see the sub-heading for a topic!

-Yoshi

[Micah 16]

Originally posted by: DuskTrooper Go look up the evacuation of metro Houston during Hurricane Rita (which never came BTW).

AFAIK, they say it is the largest civil evacuation ever to take place in the US.quote>

 

Yeah... you're right, it was the largest. How many people? Wasn't it like 3 million to 4 million? The local government really messed up that one because no one was prepared at all.

[hawkpride147 1]

you would have to make all tunnels, bridges, freeways, and mass transit lines one way going out...in other words, all the normal inbound routes would go outbound along with the routes that are already outbound...then you would have to have military helicopters airlifting people out as well...and if possible use boats/ferries that sort of stuff....if you have trains leaving as soon as they are full and all roads leading out of manhattan and all the boats and helicopters possible sending people out, you could get people out pretty well...in theory. lol.

[Easy Bakes 253]

To where?

Were do you put the 12 million new yorkers?

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

I think even some cities can have a successful evacuation... if done right. You'll have to utilize every possible form of transportation including mass transit, air travel, and even ferries depending on the situation.

Of course, some cities are more prepared than others. I think a city like Houston or Atlanta can be cleared without major problems... but New Yorkers are doomed if the traffic is like what I've experienced there.

[Ntq€310 1]

Speaking of New york, remeber the movie GODZILLA, they evacuate the entire city because of a monster, and chaos and gridlock happened, im preety sure the movie cloverfield would be like that too. But really any major city Facing disaster whill have have problems, it's impossible for a huge metro to fully evacuate soundly, eathir some unknown element, say car crashes, or cars running out of gas on the highway, or even bad weather conditions.

Really just imagine the Chicago/milwaukee Metroareas Under full evactuation. thats over 13 million people in the magapolis area of those cities, it would be grid lock, over 100's of miles of highway. It would really suck to live there for a couple of days is basicly what im saying

[LarksTonguesInAspic 28]

Just tell 'em that they are giving away free Hannah Montana tickets in, say, Juneau, Alaska.

[Ntq€310 1]

Lol, most of the area would be a ghost town within a hour

[830point35 8]

In the CNN classic movie, "Katrina," the evacuation of New Orleans went swimmingly.

[Meg 368]

The idea of evacuating an entire major city is a joke.  Most major cities have a "rush hour" that goes on for 3 or 4 hours and that isn't the entire city.

And, as EB points out:

  To where?

Were do you put the 12 million new yorkers?quote>

Evacuation plans don't seem to include this detail.  They just dump millions of people somewhere else and expect the somewhere else to be able to handle it.

Ask Baton Rouge how that works.  It doubled it's population in a few weeks.   Think about what that does to the school systems, the food distribution network, the sewer system, the power grid, and so forth.

[BurroDiablo 222]

Movie was alright, not brilliant though. My bro says Warner have the rights to 2 more I am Legend movies... probably following the life of that kid.

Anyway, evacuating a city...  nigh impossible without leaving million of people behind, depending on the time period you have, and what kind of disaster it is. In a war, say... I would think the safest city is one with a large Subway system, you could basically cram alot of the populace into the tunnels while the rest escape to the country, like London during the Blitz. Nuclear war though, not a chance. Even if you do survive the initial explosion, the radiation will kill you later... same goes for a Chemical attack, if somebody unleashed Anthrax or Sarin on a major urban centre, your not going to surivive (unless by chance you happen to be in a full Hazmat suit)... not even in the Tunnels.

Hurricanes and floods, your not really going to be safe in the tunnels... but at least you have plenty of warning so you always have time to either 1. Escape, or 2. Wait it out.

Tsunami's are pretty fast and you can't detect them that well. Say if La Palma fell into the ocean tomorrow, everyone on the US Eastern seaboard and in the Carribean would have less than 2 hours to live... there would be too much panic for a coordinated rescue effort, only those with the means to escape by air would survive... basically, rich people with private helicopters.

Meteors... hmm... depending on how large the meteor is, you don't really have much chance surviving within the blast zone... so escape is pretty pointless.

A viral infection like I am Legend however... your not really safe from it anywhere... how it went in IAL was 'if your gonna get the virus, your gonna get it... if your not gonna get the virus, your gonna get eaten by the people who do have it'.

Ah... I think thats it for most Disasters... there isn't many really.

[tommyvercetti7 0]

LONDON EVACUATION PLAN

Operation Sassoon is the name given to the London Evacuation Plan, which

describes the mechanism for the evacuation of part or parts of Greater London.

Operation Sassoon enables the Capital's responding services to facilitate the large

scale evacuation of part of Greater London in the event of incidents arising from

natural disasters, industrial accidents and terrorism with the primary aim being to

save lives either immediately following or before an emergency.

The plan is flexible enough to be used anywhere in the capital. It identifies key

transport links to enable the emergency services, transport agencies and Local

Authorities to evacuate members of the public away from the area of an emergency

as safely and as quickly as possible. The plan also includes arrangements to

accommodate those leaving the city using private transport can do so with minimal

disruption.

The plan is the result of collaboration within the London Resilience Partnership and

with regions outside London.

The current version of the London Evacuation Plan is confidential and under review.

[tommyvercetti7 0]

and here is a lot more information about the LONDON evacuation plan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sassoon

[patriots_1228 51]

we got some room for new york up here. Although I doubt we'd let you in.

[GMT 389]

or just take southern us, florida that is. and the bahamas (but they're not as populated as florida).

ever wondered why they have this... washed-over look? like they fade towards west?

like this:

There's a scientific idea that a major part of the isle of El Hierro (canarian islands) once slipped of as a vulcano erupted, causing a rather "giant" tidal wave pushing itself towards west, literally washing all over the eastern coast of north america, giving the characteristic look to the bahamas and florida, which, so they think, both must have been washed over entirely.

They realized that something like this must have happened cuz they found certain types of rocks lying around there on the bahamas and florida and several other places around the north-american coastline, that actually belong to the bottom of the atlantic ocean. Then they realized that certain geological formations on El Hierro are not a partly sunken crater but a result of a giant landslide caused by a vulcanic eruption.

now, this wave, so they think, crossed the atlantic in an unbelievable 8 hours, and "entered" the north american continent something around 60-100 miles. (they guessed it by the aproximate mass of the "landslide", how much water it must have displaced compared to recent events and experiments guessed the speed by comparing it with recorded tsunamis (like the one in 04) and came to these figures).

now, go figure how 100millions of people all across the northern american coastline, especially the 20 million around florida, try to escape this tidal wave at least 100 miles upcountry.

that's simply crazy and even almost impossible, especially for florida, cuz they have to get off their peninsula first by rushing north, which means loosing important time to actually get upcountry.

but nevertheless, it's not impossible that something like this happens again, and that's what all scientists agree on. the canarian islands are a vulcanic active region (partly tectonical, partly hot-spot), and major eruptions can always happen (take st. helens, my favorite one, or former krakatau at the philippines).

[Hahayoudied 3]

Now I wonder how does the world's largest city would be evacuated.

[NYankees24 0]

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 we got some room for new york up here. Although I doubt we'd let you in. quote>

 

Same to you. Although I would hope that Boston would be hit by an exact sized meteorite and wiped it off the face of the earth. *sigh* that would be nice.

[NYankees24 0]

Its a scary thought.

[outriderdriver 4]

I dont see it being possible ever. even if everyone was able to stop what they were doing and jog to the nearest form of transportation until that was filled. then moving on to another without wasting any time, leaving the rest to walk or find empty seats in passing cars would still make for a grueling couple days I would think to abandon a city like New York. So it would still be possible to evacuate but not for any Immediate issue.

[NYankees24 0]

I agree with you, it would be impossible, and many people would simply want to ride it out in the hopes that it will blow over. I would think that too many people do not want to believe that an entire city could be destroyed by a disaster.

[Xyloxadoria 1,098]

The evacuation plan would probably not work that well. If there was a meteor head toward New York, you could try an evacuation plan, but there will be people who will fear for their own life over the lives of the geenral populace and put the evacuation into their own hands. They would probably get their stuff and their family into a car and get out of there as quickly as possible. Then those people would ruin the order of the normal evacuation plan.

There is also the fact that not everyone would be evacuated. In a fairly large city, not everyone will be found With a evacuation plan they will look in houses and other places people would commonly be. They wont look in all places, like where some homless people would be, so they would be skipped

[BurroDiablo 222]

GMT - I think your talking about Cumbre Vieja  on La Palma in the Canary Islands... its a very unstable Volcanic Island thats likely to collapse sometime in the future.

Time to buy umbrella's I think

[NYankees24 0]

Yeah, I hav been hearing of some sort of volcano that could collapse or somethin, that would cause a devastating tidal wave that would take out the whole of the east coast. Anyone else know of it?