'A real potential for loss of life and injury': Why Houston didn't evacuate

Devastating floodswrought by the torrential rains of Harvey haveforced the mayor of Houston to defend his decision not to order evacuations of the region before thehistoric storm hit.

But evacuating an area that size is a significant challenge that may cause more problems than having residentsstay put.

"You can sit down and say 'Everybody leave town,' but mass evacuations like that have their own hazards attached to them," saidPatrick O'Neil, director of the Emergency Services Program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

"You're talking about an extraordinary high-density population, so you're talking aboutmillionsand millions of people, and to ordermandatorilythat all thesepeopleleave where are theygoingto go?"

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Days of rain have caused massive, widespreadflooding in the Houston area, asrescuers continueplucking people from the floodwaters.

More than 17,000 people were in shelters across Texas as of Tuesday afternoon, officials said, with Federal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA) director Brock Long forecasting that more than 30,000people would eventually need to be placed temporarily inshelters.

Meanwhile,The Associated Press reported that with floodwaters reachingthe rooflines of single-storey homes, people could be heard pleading for help from inside.

'Creating a nightmare'

But Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner has defendedhis decision not to issuemandatory or voluntary evacuations from the area.Putting 6.5 million people on the road would be "creating a nightmare" and is "asking for a major calamity," Turner said in a news conference Sunday.

Attempting an evacuation on that scale, without proper co-ordination, would put people in harm's way and create a far worse situation, Turner said.

O'Neilagreed that creating trafficgridlockon theseroads just beforethey floodwould be devastating. "Now you're talking about a realpotentialfor loss of lifeand injury."

There would also be challenges of moving vulnerable populations, peoplewith medicalproblemsor thosewho don't have the financial resources or available transportationto leave, he said.

He said the storm itself was extraordinarily atypicala hurricane followed by a large, lingering stormsystem that causedmassive flooding, making it difficult for officials to prepare a course of action.

"I'm not overly critical of what's happened so far," O'Neil said.

Caught off guard?

But AliAsgary, associate professor of disaster andemergency management at York University, said he believes Houston officials were caught off guard, andcould have evacuated some of the worst hit areas in the lower regions.

"Even if they didn't want to evacuate the whole region, they couldat least have evacuated those areas that were most at risk based on data analysis and based on their own emergency plan."

He said the mayor's point about the dangers of putting 6.5 million peopleon the road describes"the very worst-case scenario," which really doesn't applyhere.

Some areas could have beenput under mandatory evacuation while others were under voluntary evacuation, he said.

The evacuation plan implemented during the fires of Fort McMurray was successful because officials were prepared, he said.

Certainly, Fort McMurray is a much smaller area, with a much smaller population. Evacuees were easily absorbed in other communities and found refuge at relatives' homes or were hosted in cities including Edmonton and Calgary.

Asgarysaid he agreed it would have been difficult to have reception centres organized for millions of evacuees from Houston.

Still, cities with large populationsneed to be prepared, he said.

"When we deal with a large case, of course we know that it'scomplex but it also shows a lack of sufficientplanning," Asgary said. "They should have expected,in my view, at some pointHoustonwould be impactedby a hurricaneof this magnitude."

Madhu Beriwal, president and CEO of IEM, a global security consulting firm, said that local officials tasked with the decision would be mindful of past evacuation orders.

Lessons from Hurricane Rita

In 2005, withHurricane Ritaset to strikethe Houston areaweeks after Hurricane Katrina had devastated New Orleans, officials did not want to take chances.Theyordered mandatory evacuations, prompting more than three million people to flee from the region.

But the result wasmassive traffic gridlock, with peoplestranded on highways for up to24 hours. Dozens died from heat stroke and car accidents. Meanwhile, the storm ended up bypassing the evacuated areas.

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"So those sorts of calculations, understanding the psyche of the community, understandingthe traffic implications of that, understanding the viabilityof beingableto do evacuations, all of those factor intofiguringoutshouldwe order an evacuationor should we not," Beriwal said.

But the debate over whether there should have been an evacuation order mustbe left for another day, she said.

"Rightnow it'sreally importantwe rescue all the people that need to be rescued."