Mass coastal evacuation may work only in theory

State transportation officials met in June to fine-tune a plan for evacuating hundreds of thousands of South Floridians by turning a large portion of Florida's Turnpike into a one-way northbound route.

Known as Contra-Flow, the plan is similar to that used to evacuate New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. It would take the threat of an approaching Category 4 or 5 hurricane and a direct order from the governor to reroute turnpike traffic from Fort Pierce to Orlando. Tow trucks and emergency vehicles would be stationed along the way to help motorists.

Chris Warren, the turnpike's deputy executive director, estimates that it would take about 29 hours to evacuate 171,000 vehicles, most of them from Palm Beach, Martin, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Emergency managers concede that this is a plan of last resort, and that even with Contra-Flow, it would be difficult to move enough people fast enough. "We can't evacuate our way from a hurricane anymore," says Gov. Bush. "The state is too big now."

Besides the problem of sheer numbers, planners have to figure out where to tell evacuees to go. The fickle nature of recent hurricanes indicates that even the best planning does not ensure that evacuees could find safe haven. Last year, Hurricane Charley was believed to be on a track toward Tampa Bay when it surprised forecasters and veered east at Punta Gorda. People fleeing Tampa to the south ran the risk of evacuating their way into the teeth of the storm.

Plans for using buses to evacuate residents out of the region are more theoretical than precisely developed. Palm Beach County, for example, is prepared to use Palm Tran buses, school buses and sheriff's office prisoner buses to transport "vulnerable populations" -- such as elderly and special-needs residents from the coast, or the homeless -- to inland shelters. But sending them off as part of a mass Contra-Flow exodus to the north would require some improvisation.

After Hurricane Frances damaged the St. Lucie County Civic Center, emergency managers preparing for Hurricane Jeanne used 34 Palm Tran buses to transport special-needs evacuees to shelter at the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana. Most counties' emergency plans prohibit running buses in winds greater than 40 mph because of stability concerns. The decision to use buses for evacuation has to come well before the storm's arrival; the order could come, and the storm could go elsewhere.

The state actually developed the Contra-Flow plan after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 but did not release the details to the public. Last year's quartet of hurricanes made the case for educating people about how a major evacuation might work. The issue has come into sharper focus with the examination into whether New Orleans could have gotten more people out of the city. Exactly how well mass evacuation would work here remains less of a certainty than an open question the state hopes it never has to answer.