(The Associated Press circulated the following article by John C. Drake on November 9.)
COLUMBIA, S.C. — More than half of the residents who lived up to a mile outside the mandatory evacuation area ordered after a train wreck and chlorine spill in Aiken County in January left their homes even though they were not ordered to, a new report says.
Such a large “shadow evacuation” is not necessarily a good thing, said a University of South Carolina researcher.
“You can say, well, that’s fantastic that people were out of the way,” said USC geographer Jerry Mitchell. “But on the flip side, if you plan an evacuation for a set number of people and suddenly it’s four times larger than what you plan for, then shelters are not staffed adequately. Roads are clogged with extra cars, so people who really need to get out can’t.”
Nine people died and hundreds were injured when a Norfolk Southern train derailed and a chlorine tanker ruptured Jan. 6, releasing a toxic cloud.
USC’s Hazards Research Lab has released the results of a survey of how Graniteville and Warrenville residents responded to the emergency. They surveyed residents who lived within a mile of the train wreck and residents who lived from a mile to two miles from the site. County officials ordered an evacuation of residents within one mile for three days. There was no evacuation ordered for people who lived more than one mile from the site.
Still, 59 percent of the survey respondents who lived from one mile to two miles away said they evacuated.
One-fifth of those residents outside the evacuation area who left said they thought they were included in the mandatory evacuation.
Mitchell said the nature of the emergency also could have led people to leave unnecessarily. Many people may not have fully understood the dangers of a chlorine leak and decided to leave out of an abundance of caution, he said.
“People often just say, ‘I’m outta here,’ regardless of if someone in a position of authority says, ‘You don’t need to,'” Mitchell said. “If they don’t trust that person they’re going to evacuate.”
But the danger of a wider evacuation is that people who need to leave could have trouble getting out of town. There is no indication that people within the one-mile evacuation area had trouble leaving in this case.
John Legare, spokesman for the Emergency Management Division, said the decision of whether or not to evacuate rests with the individual.
“If people think they may be in harm’s way, we certainly aren’t going to discourage them from evacuating,” he said.
The best advice is to always leave early in any sort of evacuation, Legare said.
About a quarter of residents in the two-mile area surrounding the train wreck returned the survey by mail. The results had a 3.6 percent margin-of-error.
The survey also found more than half of evacuees stayed with family members or friends. Only 6 percent stayed in shelters, which Mitchell said is not unusual. People generally dislike shelters, he said. And in this case, Norfolk Southern was offering residents direct financial assistance. About one-fifth of the residents stayed in a motel.