The contraflow network has made mandatory evacuations easier over the last decade and stood ready again this week as Hurricane Erin approached. The hurricane has stayed offshore, sparing Georgia, but still threatened North Carolina with high winds and flooding late Wednesday as it churned up the East Coast.

As the first storm to threaten from the Atlantic Ocean this year, Erin reminded Georgia’s coastal residents that the season’s peak — September to mid-October — lies ahead.

Emergency managers, meanwhile, have been storm prepping for months with a focus on a new challenge the contraflow barriers don’t address: storms approaching from the west and cutting off traditional evacuation routes.

Four Gulf of Mexico storms have affected Georgia’s Atlantic coast since 2017, including Hurricane Helene and Tropical Storm Debby a year ago.

“Hide from the wind and run from the water is the rule for planners,” said Andy Leanza, director of the Glynn County Emergency Management Agency in Brunswick. “That’s increasingly difficult. Sometimes that’s your only choice.”

The Georgia coast’s two most densely populated metro areas, Savannah in Chatham County and Brunswick in Glynn County, are prepared to open more emergency shelters to assist those affected by flooding and long-term power outages.

Credit: NYT

Credit: NYT

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson is particularly anxious about this hurricane season after what the Savannah area experienced with Debby and Helene. Debby brought historical rainfall to the inland coastal counties, resulting in never-before-seen flooding of the Ogeechee River that swamped several residential neighborhoods in Savannah and nearby Richmond Hill.

A month later, Helene passed 100 miles west of Savannah yet still battered the area with tropical storm force winds, downing trees and electricity lines and causing power outages that lasted more than a week.

“Just when you think you’re prepared for whatever Mother Nature is going to throw at you, you find out you’re not — that’s the nature of hurricanes,” said Johnson, who has served as an elected city official since 2004.

Johnson fears the “absolute worse-case scenario” of an Atlantic storm and a Gulf storm threatening Savannah within a tight time frame. The likely evacuation route in that scenario would be north along I-95 into South Carolina and toward another densely populated coastal city that could be facing an evacuation, Charleston.

“It’s been thought about and talked about,” Johnson said, “and it scares the crap out of everybody.”

Coastal counties have beefed up the number of local emergency shelters as a hedge against being cut off from evacuation routes. Low-lying Chatham County, with a population of 300,000, is now home to 27 emergency shelter sites.

In addition, an evacuation partnership network coordinated through the Georgia Emergency Management Agency pairs Chatham with Macon-Bibb County, a buddy system that disaster pros anticipate will be invaluable in coordinating storm response.

Credit: Sarah Peacock

Credit: Sarah Peacock

Hard lessons learned

As Gulf storms add a new layer of complexity, Atlantic hurricane threats remain the primary focus in terms of coastal preparedness. Hurricane Floyd, a powerful Category 4 storm tracking for a direct hit on Savannah, forced a mass evacuation in 1999 and exposed several vulnerabilities.

Foremost among those was a 100-plus-mile traffic jam on I-16 that prompted the installation of the contraflow network. One Floyd evacuee, lifelong Savannahian Steve Stettler, said it reminded him of a scene from an alien invasion movie where everybody is on the highway running for their life.

Stettler and other members of his extended family formed a three-car caravan that “left in the daylight” and “arrived in the daylight” the next day.

“Cars were pulled over on the shoulder, in the median. People were screaming and crying. It was crazy. Just despair,” he said. “I’ve refused to evacuate since, although my wife has and said the gates make it much better.”

The evacuation plan has undergone additional refinements since the contraflow system’s installation. Dennis Jones became the Chatham Emergency Management Agency director in 2017, shortly after Hurricane Matthew dealt the Savannah area its harshest blow in decades. He worked with other officials to tweak the county’s evacuation plan, particularly in terms of timing to minimize congestion.

Chatham has three evacuation zones, with those living on the islands and the easternmost reaches moved inland first, followed by a second wave of the rest of the residents who live east of I-95. Those west of I-95 would receive evacuation orders last.

The plan passed an early test: Fast-moving Hurricane Irma was projected to slide up the East Coast and hit Savannah directly in 2017, prompting a mandatory evacuation. The storm ultimately dipped south of Florida’s tip and later came ashore along the Gulf Coast — although the system was so wide it produced storm surge flooding on Tybee Island.

Credit: Chip Somodevilla

Credit: Chip Somodevilla

Savannah’s hurricane preparedness tweaks worked so effectively that Brunswick and Glynn County have since adopted a three-tiered evacuation plan similar to Chatham’s. Glynn’s strategy has a sharp focus on getting the 16,000-plus residents off St. Simons Island and Sea Island early. The causeway that links those islands to mainland — the lone evacuation route — has become increasingly prone to flooding in recent years.

Glynn has also redesigned its plan to handle evacuation traffic once motorists reach I-95, which runs along the Atlantic Seaboard from Florida to Maine. Unlike in Savannah, there is no east-west interstate set up for a contraflow leading to and from Brunswick. Glynn routes vehicles onto three westbound highways, with local law enforcement coordinating with public safety agencies in neighboring counties to keep traffic moving.

“It’s a bit of a ballet,” Leanza said. “But when it comes to a hurricane, everybody pulls together.”

Credit: Sarah Peacock

Credit: Sarah Peacock

An evacuation saga

Steve Stettler and his family were among the hundreds of thousands of coastal evacuees from Hurricane Floyd. Even now, 26 years later, the Savannahian winces in recalling the experience.

The Stettlers were living in a rental property on Tybee Island as the Category 4 storm approached from the Atlantic Ocean. They lacked renter’s insurance, so fearing the hurricane would swamp the beachfront community and their home, they packed their belongings — furniture, beds, clothes — in a box truck and parked it on higher ground inland before evacuating.

Once on the road in “our old Ford van,” Stettler said, they hit the evacuation traffic jam on I-16 before reaching I-95, located 10 miles west of Savannah. Stettler attempted to get off the interstate and find an alternative route, but law enforcement had blocked local roads where they met the highway, forcing traffic back onto I-16.

Traffic crept along at less than 20 mph until I-16 met I-75 in Macon. The Stettlers eventually reached their pre-booked lodgings near Athens only to get there so late the hotel had sold their rooms to other evacuees.

“This was before everybody had a cellphone and GPS in their cars,” Stettler said. “My father-in-law pulled out this old road atlas, the book with the maps in it that nobody has anymore. We took the backroads and found a place up in a little town up on the Tennessee border.

“The experience left some scars, but at least we can laugh about it now.”