DISATER EVACUTIONWhen Hurricane Evacuation Isn’t an Option
Those who remain to face a hurricane are often labeled brave or stubborn. Sometimes they feel the threat is overblown, the need to leave overstated. But some have no other choice. Not everyone rides out storms like Milton or Helene by choice. Some simply cannot afford to flee.
Joe Vargas strapped a beach bag cradling his two small dogs, Peppe and Mama, around his torso before pushing his front door open to meet the wall of water head-on. It was late in the evening on September 26, and Hurricane Helene was just starting to thrash St. Petersburg, Florida with a storm surge that now engulfed him. Vargas, who is 63, will never forget how he felt in that moment, wading through the waist-deep murky torrent, debris churning in the deluge and slamming against his legs.
“I thought I was going to die,” he said on Tuesday. The torrent from the adjacent marina was “like somebody opened up a dam. It was like something biblical.”
Though he lives in Harbor Lights, a manufactured home community overlooking the intracoastal waterway, Vargas hadn’t heeded the mandatory evacuation order. Not only would leaving have been an added expense and a logistical headache, Vargas didn’t think he needed to — he’s survived major hurricanes before. “I didn’t know about this, I’d never seen a surge like this,” he said. “I was so scared.”
Those who remain to face a hurricane are often labeled brave or stubborn. Sometimes they feel the threat is overblown, the need to leave overstated. But some have no other choice. Evacuating can be costly and laborious, often prohibitively so. For cash-strapped families, those with limited mobility, and the elderly — not to mention those who have no choice but to work through the storm — leaving can feel like an unattainable luxury. And yet this decision can mean the difference between life and death.
Fighting against the water, Vargas eventually sought refuge in a neighbor’s abandoned house in a high-rise down the block to wait out the storm. The next morning he discovered many of his appliances had been destroyed, but the damage to his trailer wasn’t too extensive. Not everyone was so lucky. The calamity had reduced several nearby homes to rubble, gales of wind flattening roofs while the surge inundated vehicles and left a throng of homes uninhabitable.
