Passive Hurricane Evacuation

The time to do passive hurricane evacuation is years and months prior to a known hurricane emergency, even prior to a suspected hurricane emergency. As soon as a suspected hurricane emergency might happen, it is time to get those sandbags, time to go out there and do basement and berm evacuation, time to get the shelter residents to higher ground, time to move from passive evacuation to active media bombardment and pro-active hurricane preparation education.

Immersing the general public with fun ideas of fun places to go away from the areas where a hurricane is likely to strike during hurricane season is a necessary thing to do. Tourism creates jobs, people with jobs stay in the areas where more tourists happen, more population means more recycling opportunities, more recycling means more jobs and more materials, more materials means more opportunities for green manufacturing, more green manufacturing means more high-end American-made consumer goods.

Living life to its fullest is important. Everybody wants entertainment, socialization, and fulfillment after achieving their basic needs. We can direct human traffic to places out of the hurricane zone, as people with money have the liberty to go to other places and to spend money where summer visitors are wanted to be. People go places, people are market-driven, people want to see and hear what people find to be entertaining.

We need to investigate the possibility of river flooding or other disasters that also might happen in the summer when doing events. We need to avoid the flood plain when working on driving traffic towards a community. This is why a community such as Binghamton, New York, where the Susquehanna River flooded recently is to be avoided. I also think that Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a community close to the Mississippi River, is also a community to be cautious about driving tourist traffic to.

For instance, despite the high cost of gasoline, the Woodstock Museum in Bethel, New York is bringing in crowds of people. This is a location in the Catskills that people enjoy visiting that presently has a high rate of commercial property vacancies. In other words, the place could use some business, this is a set of communities in the Catskill Mountains that are about a two hour drive or three hour bus ride from New York City.

Marianna, Florida is a community with a zoo that would entertain the idea of having more tourists greatly; this is a town that is about one hour north of several beach communities in Florida, along the Gulf Coast region that is still rebuilding after Hurricanes Ivan and Dennis. Bringing tourists with money to this town requires promotion as well as targeted marketing, and not much more other than getting local groups to sponsor the highway in the community, and maintain the park vegetation, so that the community maintains an aesthetic appearance.

What about Shreveport, Louisiana; or Monroe, Louisiana; or Birmingham, Alabama; or Huntsville, Texas and College Station, Texas? I am going to stick to what I am most familiar with, namely Huntsville, Texas and College Station/Bryan, Texas. These all sound like good communities to drive tourist traffic to, and might indeed be so. However, I am not entirely certain about what is available in the way of entertainment around Shreveport or Monroe, Louisiana; and found that Birmingham, Alabama was already a town with a major amount of new residents, tourists and promotional activities going on.

I myself enjoyed my visit to Huntsville, the statues and monuments dedicated to Sam Houston, the visit to the University of Texas and the various displays at the college, as well as getting a few souvenirs at the bookstore this was an educational as well as an entertaining experience for me. I liked the Huntsville, as well as neighboring communities such as New Waverly and Conroe, Texas. I think that anyone and everyone should go there, however, this is my opinion. A quick search of attractions found the Sam Houston Memorial Museum, the Gibbs-Powell Museum, as well as the Prison Museum all in Huntsville. A festival concert event dedicated to bluegrass, Oktoberfest, Anheuser-Busch beer, country music, zydeco, or world beat would be very popular here; this town is about two hours away from Houston, and three hours away from the Dallas-Fort Worth area; which means that a lot of people will be there to attend the event, even if the event is only promoted in and around Houston. There are also a lot of moderately priced hotels and motels in the neighboring town of Conroe, Texas that would entertain the increase in traffic and business.

College Station, Texas and Bryan, Texas are hosting towns for various departments of Texas A&M University, located northwest of Houston, and southeast of Austin - approximately half-way between the two cities. These are small cities, with not a lot of development outside of the universities themselves (there is also an agricultural college). However, there are plenty of stores, as well as lots of opportunities for local concert performers to bring in crowds of local tourists from Houston, Austin, as well as possibly Waco and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A quick search of the phone directory finds a historical museum, a children's museum, as well as an African-American museum. There are also numerous small art and music festival events that would have skyrocketing ticket sales if a few more people knew about their existence, in the area. The infrastructure of this area is ready for a few more people, the parking lots are waiting for people; and Austin's infrastructure is in need of a few less migrants to the city itself.

People living around the Gulf Coast area want to live, need to know that there is someone who is working on getting an economic niche ready for a few thousand people, complete with the most modern technologies available, to bring population that has overloaded some Gulf Coast cities infrastructures away from the coastline. This key point is also true for other areas of the United States that have been hit by hurricanes over the past few years, including the coastal region of North Carolina called the Outer-banks, or that are in areas that are historically known to be hit by hurricanes, such as Long Island and Rhode Island.