It’s the million-dollar question in disaster planning: Do you order a city to evacuate before a hurricane makes landfall, or do you tell residents to shelter in place?
This question Governing magazine explores in a new feature on the scrutiny Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is receiving for his decision to not evacuate the nation’s fourth largest city ahead of Hurricane Harvey.
“You cannot evacuate 6.5 million people within two days. You cannot. That would be chaotic … you would be putting people more in harm’s way,” Turner has said. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, on the other hand, urged people the day the storm made landfall in the Houston area to leave, adding to the political fallout from Turner’s decision.
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