The time to choose where you would go is a quiet evening, not the hour an order arrives. Most households have three realistic options and have never put them in order.
Where do households actually end up?
With family, in a hotel one or two counties inland, or in a public shelter. In roughly that order, and almost never anywhere dramatic.
I have processed the paperwork after enough evacuations to say that the remote cabin almost nobody has is not where anybody goes. People go where they are already welcome, where the road stays open, and where there is a bed. The households that struggle are not the ones without a bunker. They are the ones who started phoning around at the same moment as forty thousand other people.
Ranking your options in advance costs nothing and removes the single slowest part of leaving, which is the argument in the driveway about where you are going.
The three tiers worth having ready
One place within an hour, one at three hours, and one outside the region entirely. Each needs a different amount of arrangement.
- Tier one, under an hour. A friend or relative on higher ground or a different circuit. Good for outages and short local events. Needs nothing more than a conversation and a spare key.
- Tier two, two to four hours. Far enough to be outside the same weather and the same grid. Usually family or a booked hotel. Needs a phone call made before the season, not during it.
- Tier three, out of region. Somewhere a multi-day event cannot follow you. Needs a standing agreement and a route that does not depend on one interstate.
The mistake worth avoiding is having three options that all fail together. Two relatives in the same town and a hotel eight miles away is one option written three times.
Expert note from Renata Sowell, water and evacuation editor
Call the tier two and tier three people before hurricane season starts, not during. A yes given in June is a completely different conversation from a yes asked for at eleven at night with the television on. It also gives them time to say no, which is information you want early.
What makes a destination good or bad?
Road access, water and whether the people there already know you are coming. Distance matters less than any of the three.
| Destination | Typical distance | What it costs | Fails when | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family or friends | 1 to 4 hours | A phone call, and a favour owed | The same storm reaches them too | Best option if it is genuinely arranged |
| Hotel, booked early | 2 to 5 hours | Money, and a card that works offline | Everyone books at once, or power is out there too | Reliable if booked before the order |
| Public shelter | Within the county | Nothing, plus restrictions on pets | It fills, or it is in the affected zone | A real fallback, not a failure |
| Second property | Varies | Ongoing upkeep all year | It is unoccupied and unheated in January | Only if someone maintains it |
| Campground or vehicle | Varies | Very little | Weather, and the first cold night | Last resort, and only in mild conditions |
Choosing routes before you need them
Two routes out of the neighbourhood and one that avoids the interstate. Drive them once, in daylight, while nothing is happening.
- Draw the obvious route, the one you would take without thinking. That is the one everyone else takes too.
- Draw a second that leaves your neighbourhood in a different direction, even if it is slower on a normal day.
- Draw a third that never touches an interstate or a bridge over the water that is causing the problem.
- Print all three. Paper works when the tower is congested and the phone is at four percent.
One household in our county did this in the spring and then used the third route in September, because the bridge on the obvious one was closed by the time they reached it. They were at the destination in under three hours. Neighbours who left at the same time on the same road took eleven, and two of them turned back. The whole difference was a printed page in the glove box.
Expert note from Dan Brackett, founder and former distribution lineman
Keep a quarter tank as your floor, all year round. The queue at the last open station is where the evacuation time actually goes, and half the cars in it did not need to be there. Fuel is the one preparation that expires safely, because you use it anyway.
What should you avoid?
Anywhere that depends on a single road, a single bridge or a single person answering their phone.
- Destinations inside the same watershed or the same fire perimeter. Check a map rather than assuming distance is enough.
- Places that cannot take your animals. The federal guidance at Ready.gov on pets is worth reading before you need it, because households turn back for animals and that decision is made in seconds.
- Anything that requires an online booking to be made on the day. That is the hour when connectivity fails.
The decision of whether to leave at all is a separate one, and it is covered in the case for a go bag against a stay put bin. Federal guidance on the mechanics of leaving is at Ready.gov, and everything else we have written on this sits under evacuation and route planning.