What to know about hurricane evacuation orders ahead of Helene

As Hurricane Helene picks up strength and heads toward landfall Thursday, nearly all of Florida’s 67 counties are under some kind of watch or warning.

But no residents are more at risk of possible storm effects than those in areas under mandatory evacuation orders. Three counties in North Florida — Wakulla, Franklin and Taylor — ordered all county residents to leave.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a news conference on Tuesday, said it’s “not a light decision” for county managers when they tell residents to pack their bags and go.

So how do local governments decide when to make that call? Here’s what to know.

Water vs. wind

Evacuation zones are based on risk from storm surge, not wind speed risk. When people evacuate, they often don’t need to travel hundreds of miles, but instead need to seek higher ground.

Evacuation calls are common for mobile homes and manufactured homes, even those further away from water. Such buildings are vulnerable to high-speed winds in a way other Florida homes aren’t.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said that most counties, if not all of them, had called for people in manufactured housing to evacuate.

Leon County, for example, is landlocked but sits in the path of Hurricane Helene. On Wednesday, Leon issued a mandatory evacuation for all residents of mobile and manufactured homes because of wind risk.

Considering traffic

When a county makes an evacuation call, they’re not looking at the hurricane’s forecast alone, said Craig Fugate, a former Federal Emergency Management Agency director and former Florida Division of Emergency Management director.

Officials must also weigh how long it takes people evacuating from a zone to get to safety considering traffic, and how that lines up with the timing of storm-force winds that would prohibit people from traveling, he said.

Counties with larger populations often need to make their decisions earlier, Fugate said. Smaller population counties can evacuate faster.

“That driving time is a huge factor in making that decision about when they should go,” Fugate said.

Elizabeth Dunn, director of the USF Community Emergency Response Team, said counties near each other work together to decide when to make the call. In Tampa Bay, she said Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee and Pasco all need to collaborate to account for possible traffic that could happen once they all start making evacuation calls.

“Usually it’s a coordinated effort,” Dunn said.

Trying not to call evacuations prematurely

Making an evacuation call is a balance between making sure you’re giving residents enough time to leave without calling it too early, Dunn said.

If an evacuation order comes too early, people often won’t heed those warnings, she said.

Fugate said that if counties make evacuation calls too early, they could end up “evacuating Florida so many times it would become counterproductive.”

It’s not just the cone

The National Hurricane Center’s forecasted cone isn’t the best metric to determine whether an area will be impacted by dangerous storm effects, Fugate said.

DeSantis has echoed a similar sentiment, telling people not to get “wedded” to the path of the cone and ignore the risk to their area, which can come from storm surge and other effects.

Choosing to evacuate outside of mandatory calls is also often a personal decision, Dunn said. People who are on oxygen or need to have access to air conditioning may choose to evacuate even if their house wouldn’t take on any serious physical damage.

Evacuations around Tampa Bay

Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties all issued mandatory evacuation notices for residents in each county’s Zone A — the lowest-lying and most flood-prone areas, many of them coastal or along rivers — as well as for all residents living in mobile or manufactured homes. Between the three counties, the orders cover more than 650,000 people.

Though it seemed clear by Wednesday that Helene would not hit Tampa Bay head-on, emergency managers warned that a storm with Helene’s size and strength will still make itself felt here.

In Pinellas, where officials expect 5 to 8 feet of storm surge, county Emergency Management Director Cathie Perkins said Wednesday morning that water could stay high for 24 to 36 hours, posing a threat even after winds die down. County Administrator Barry Burton compared the expected surge to Hurricane Idalia, which brought over 4 feet of surge in “a few spots.” It battered the county’s coastline and caused damage to about 1,500 homes.

“The impacts can be real,” Burton said. “When water consumes you, there’s no way to help you.”

Burton said everyone needs to be evacuated by tomorrow, before storm-force winds become too strong.

Emergency officials were still waiting to see whether more people would heed their warnings this time, after several storms in which low shelter-attendance rates suggest many took a risk and stayed home.

“We order evacuations in Pasco County, people don’t move. They don’t listen,” said Pasco County emergency management director Andrew Fossa. “They are complacent. I preach it until I’m blue in the face. ... I would like to see that change.”

• • •

Tampa Bay Times hurricane coverage 2024

5 things to know about the 2024 hurricane season, according to forecasters.

Forecasters predict ‘extremely active’ 2024 hurricane season. Here’s why.

Want to know what areas are flooding in Tampa Bay? Here’s where to look.

Checklists for building all kinds of storm kits.