It is called a mandatory evacuation. It is issued by local government agencies telling residents that they need to get out of harm’s way.
Here in South Florida, mandatory evacuations are common when a hurricane is expected to make landfall. Twenty-four to thirty-six hours before the storm is anticipated to strike, local governments, working with forecasters at the National Hurricane Center, will issue the evacuation orders.
Ordinarily, those evacuation guidelines will cover long stretches of communities close to the coastline or in areas that typically flood. Folks who live on Palm Beach, Singer Island or barrier beaches are told to leave their homes and move inland.
Still, not everyone leaves. Even though it is a “mandatory” evacuation, authorities do not have the manpower to enforce the evacuation. So, in every storm, there are always a few people who stay behind.
Just like Connie Travis and her son, Mathew Nez, of Crystal Beach, Texas.
As told by Houston television station KHOU, Connie and Matthew were not going to leave their Crystal Beach home just because Hurricane Ike was headed their way. So, they defied the “mandatory” evacuation and rode out the hurricane, recording the event with Matthew’s home video camera.
“There is no way the water is going to rise to that roof,” Connie says on the videotape pointing to the bottom of her house some 15 feet above the beach. “It is all news media, weather propaganda. And, I want to stay.”
Connie’s comments were recorded one day before Ike slammed into the Texas Coastline. Packing winds of 110 mph and generating a storm surge of 20 feet, Ike made landfall along Crystal Beach in the early morning hours of September 13. It is the costliest hurricane in Texas history with damages topping $25 billion.
“Man, I wish you could see this,” Matthew says on the videotape. “The wind is horrendous.”
During the height of the storm, the storm surge rose 15 feet to the bottom of Connie’s beach house, the generator quit working, the camera stopped rolling and Crystal Beach went black. But, Connie and Matthew survived. “The night was literally hell for me,” said Connie.
“Staying here was not a very smart idea,” Matthew told KHOU television. “We never had any idea it would have gotten than bad or we wouldn’t have stayed.’
A Coast Guard helicopter rescued Connie and Matthew just hours after the wind died down. As they were being lifted from their home and into the waiting chopper, the mother and son came face to face with their decision to stay.
“So many people lost everything, everything,” said Connie. “What’s the point? I would never ride out another hurricane again.”
Still, Connie and Matthew were lucky; their home survived the hurricane. Most of their neighbors lost everything. It will be months before Connie, Matthew and the residents of Crystal Beach, Texas recover from Hurricane Ike. And perhaps years before the emotional scars go away, like the last words a 911 operator told Connie hours before the storm hit.
“She said ‘write your Social Security number of your arm so that if you get swept away we can identify you’,” Connie said. “That’s when I freaked out.”
Safe to say that Connie and Matthew now understand the meaning of “mandatory evacuation.”
