Trust, Traffic, and Contemporary Evacuation Barriers in Hurricane Ida
Date
2025-02-05
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Disaster Studies
Abstract
In hurricane evacuation decision-making research, it is critical to understand complex influences and larger processes at work in shaping the decisions and experiences of people and communities in affected areas and evacuation zones. Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana in 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing economic problems, and disruptions to trust in political officials. Gulf Coast residents made decisions about if and when to evacuate in this context. We use a framework that emphasizes the social causes of evacuation decision making, including optimism bias, compounding disasters, and situational factors. Results show that during Ida residents were navigating the relative risks, varied perceptions, and previous experiences with other disasters, compounding disasters, traffic, work and school demands, and long-term systemic problems. Understanding this reality more deeply and with a more nuanced approach to the complexities of how such perceptions and experiences affect one another, rather than viewing evacuation as a "yes or no" decision, is essential to improving disaster policies and evacuation responses, as well as our knowledge of both. This article delves deeply into the barriers to evacuation still existing in the United States, despite efforts to improve these procedures over time, particularly after Hurricane Katrina.
Description
This article was originally published in Journal of Disaster Studies. The version of record is available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/950740.
© 2024 Jennifer Trivedi, Sarah DeYoung, Prosper Anyidoho, Maria Porada, Tricia Wachtendorf, Rachel Davidson and Linda Nozick.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY NC-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Keywords
evacuation, Hurricane Ida, government trust, traffic, compounding disasters
Citation
Trivedi, Jennifer, et al. "Trust, Traffic, and Contemporary Evacuation Barriers in Hurricane Ida." Journal of Disaster Studies 1, no. 2 (2024): 189-219. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/950740.