The first time we did it, we did it by the book. Or at least by what I thought a book on evacuating for a hurricane would say if anyone had ever written one. Perhaps someone has written one and there are meticulous details on how to go about it. If so, I never read it, but instead, we did what we thought a book like that would have said to do.
That about explains the mental state we were in as we tried in just a few hours to 1. Prepare our home to be flooded; 2. Pack all our most important belongings to take with us; 3. Plan our path out of the city.
For part 1, we did things like empty the water bed and place the mattress part of it up on a table. Move several pieces of furniture up on top of chairs. We talked about putting the refrigerator up on cement blocks, but thankfully by that time, we were so exhausted we just hoped for the best.
It turns out that all of our important belongings were most of our belongings, or at least it seemed that way as our van and pickup truck steadily filled with 'things'. Things like the computers, the photo albums, the cameras, the science fiction book collection, the comic book collection, the keepsakes, the summer clothes, the winter clothes, the good china - pretty much anything that could be put in one of many, many Rubbermaid totes we possessed. Of course, our most important belongings were our pets which consisted of two dogs and two cats and that meant all their food and crates and bowls as well. We might as well have just decided on the spur of the moment to move because the only things left in the house were large pieces of furniture.
For some reason, I decided I needed to work for the first part of the day, which by my reckoning would leave us plenty of time to evacuate, an event not scheduled until the next day. I can remember filling my van with gas and seeing the person next to me filling not only his car but several gas cans. He looked nervous and this in turn made me feel nervous. Should we go out and buy gas cans and pack them too?
When we finally parted from our now mostly empty house it was almost 3pm. We would have stayed longer but there was literally no way anything else could fit in our vehicles. I was in the van with the two dogs sharing the passenger seat and the cats in the back in a crate. Off we went and all was well until we hit the first major highway. Now, we were savvy and knew that heading north would doubtlessly be a crowded venture, so we set off west with the intention of turning south as soon as possible. Once we were on the highway we did not move more than a mile for the next two hours.
Prior to leaving, we agreed that we would stick together which meant in reality, since I was following, I had to steadily drive like a jerk in order to keep up. One would think that in traffic that was not moving there would be no way to get separated, but one would be wrong. Within the first 2 minutes, three cars came between us. That's okay I thought, I can still see him and we have our cell phones. One of the things to know about 3 million people evacuating is that they all want to talk to each other on their cell phones. After about an hour of barely moving, I could no longer see his truck. I knew he had to be there and sometimes my phone would ring but we were only connected for a second or two before the line dropped.
Finally, we crept to our first interchange where we pulled over and reassured each other that since we were turning south things were bound to get better. Never have less accurate words ever been spoken. The next three or so hours were spent barely moving but also jockeying for position against other insane with rage, fear, heat, and panic mad drivers. I am surprised there was no gunfire - at least none that I heard anyway. Cell phone reception remained a joke and night eventually fell. We finally crept far enough away from the monumental holocaust that had become the city's freeways to contact each other. He had stopped at a gas station and although it was closed it was a welcome relief. Having been in a heightened state of anxiety for more than five hours did nothing for my nerves and even less for my bladder. It was pee or die. Since no bathroom was available I found the equivalent of a bush (concrete pillar).
We did make it to our destination south in what would have been considered remarkably heavy traffic, but because we were able to move greater than 5 miles an hour we were deliriously happy. We went on to experience evacuating motels, lost reservations, an amazingly kind and generous motel owner, the worst red tide outbreak ever possible on the gulf coast, a very scary asthma attack from one of our dogs who it turns out is allergic to red tide, and a cat who would howl at night unless I stuffed him under the covers with me. So in other words, good times.
We returned home to a completely dry and undamaged home and no electricity plus a freezer that was filled with rotting food (forgot that one detail about emptying the freezer, which will definitely take up the first chapter if I ever write the evacuation manual).
So fast forward to the next hurricane evacuation. Even though it was aimed right at us and even though the prediction was that the water would rise about 25 feet and our house sat at just 22 feet above sea level we did not put anything up on anything else. We took the computer hard drives but no computers. We took the photo albums and the cameras and some clothes. We just walked away from it all, although we did empty out the fridge and freezer.
This second time we evacuated to my father's house which was 52 feet above sea level and rode it out. I must say that this was the best evacuation ever and even though the city was brought to its knees for almost two weeks afterward and we were without power for almost a week it was a great time. Our only slightly upsetting event occurred when we finally made it back to our house a couple of days after the storm was over. We were prepared to see just a slab and had talked about how we would start over. When after several detours around downed massive trees and power lines, we pulled up to our home to find it had suffered barely a scratch. Just a few downed limbs. I had been anticipating starting over and rebuilding so much that it was actually quite a letdown to see the ugly thing still standing.
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