1. Introduction
Emergency managers and communications experts have worked for decades to improve compliance with evacuation orders among residents in hurricane evacuation zones. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 has made that task even more challenging with hurricane evacuations that typically result in congregate sheltering for impacted populations (Whytlaw et al. 2021). People evacuating from a hurricane must leave their homes and, in many cases, congregate with others in public spaces, hotels, or shelters—actions that directly conflict with public health guidance to socially distance and isolate in order to prevent infection and the spread of disease. Prior research conducted by Collins et al. (2021a,b,c, 2022) examined how the COVID-19 pandemic affected what evacuation options residents thought about, and planned for their households, in the months prior to the 2020 and 2021 hurricane seasons. A follow-up study explored the actual evacuation behaviors of residents during Hurricanes Laura and Sally in 2020 (Collins et al. 2021c). These studies demonstrate that individuals develop a hyperavoidance of sheltering and favor the risks of staying at home over the risks of exposure and possible infection in congregate sheltering.
The purpose of this study is to document how a later stage of the pandemic—when there was a heightened understanding of virus transmission and when masks and vaccinations were widely available—would influence hurricane risk perceptions and evacuation behaviors using Hurricane Ida as a case study. This described later-stage COVID-19 context is likely to endure for several hurricane seasons, if not longer. Understanding how evacuation perceptions and behaviors evolve can help guide emergency managers and other practitioners to promote higher rates of compliance with future evacuation orders.
The 2021 hurricane season and Hurricane Ida
The occurrence of Hurricane Ida in 2021 presented our research team with an opportunity to investigate evacuation behavior in a later stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since December 2019, there have been 601.2 million cases of COVID-19 reported worldwide, with over 6.4 million deaths as of 1 September 2022 (World Health Organization 2022). At the time of Hurricane Ida, vaccinations were available with approximately 40% of the population of Louisiana vaccinated (Mayo Clinic 2021).
The 2021 hurricane season was above-average ranking third for the most active hurricane years on record with 21 named storms (NOAA 2021). This trend was predicted to continue into the 2022 hurricane season (NOAA 2021, 2022; Shipley 2021) due to considerably warmer sea surface temperatures averaged across the tropical Atlantic and much lower vertical wind shear than average (NOAA 2021, 2022). This heightened activity compounded by the pandemic posed additional challenges during the hurricane season.
Hurricane Laura made landfall as a category 4 on 27 August 2020, as the strongest hurricane to hit Louisiana in over a century. This hurricane was the first time in recent history that a mass evacuation occurred during a pandemic. One year later, while still recovering from the 2020 hurricane season, the region was impacted again on 29 August 2021, when Hurricane Ida made landfall as a category 4 in Port Fourchon, Louisiana (Fig. 1). Ida rapidly intensified in the days leading up to its landfall and had notable wind speeds, central pressures, tornadoes, and storm surge heights up to 10 ft (1 ft ≈ 305 mm) (Borenstein 2021; Livingston 2021; Zhu et al. 2022). Ida tied with the Last Island Hurricane (1856), and Hurricane Laura (2020) for the strongest maximum sustained winds for a Louisiana landfalling hurricane on record, each with sustained winds of 150 mi h−1 (67 m s−1). Ida resulted in over 90 deaths (Hanchey et al. 2021) and at least $31 billion in damages, ranking it one of the costliest hurricanes on record (Scism 2021).
Map of Hurricane Ida’s path with an overlay of population density.
Citation: Weather, Climate, and Society 15, 3; 10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0114.1
Hurricane experts remind residents to prepare for every season regardless of predicted activity. However, guidance during the 2020 and 2021 seasons differed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When Hurricane Ida made landfall, Louisiana was already dealing with a fourth surge of COVID-19 patients overwhelming their health care systems and diminishing existing resources due to the more severe delta variant (Linderman and Galofaro 2021). Epidemiologists are unsure if additional cases occurred due to Ida, yet there was a decrease in reported cases and hospitalizations related to COVID-19 in the weeks following the hurricane (Kiefer 2021; Louisiana Department of Health 2022). The data may not accurately portray the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to the strain on local hospitals, halting of testing capacities, and evacuation of residents out of the area (Hanchey et al. 2021; Kiefer 2021).
These compounding risks posed urgent challenges for those in the path of Hurricane Ida. Since social distancing was warranted, and capacity issues have historically plagued public shelters, there may have been competing priorities when deciding to evacuate. While noncongregate shelters were offered in the past (such as hotels used by local governments during the 2020 hurricane season), this was not a common practice during Hurricane Ida (Kiefer 2021). Because of the pandemic, shelter operations following Hurricane Laura were primarily noncongregate options with limited use of traditional congregate shelters. As a result, thousands of evacuees from impacted parishes in west Louisiana evacuated to larger metropolitan areas—primarily New Orleans—with higher-density development to immediately house and sustain large numbers of people in hotels.
In contrast, Hurricane Ida targeted New Orleans and strengthened rapidly during the approach, further reducing the ability to issue a mandatory evacuation across the New Orleans region. Emergency management plans do not support mass sheltering south of Interstate Highway 10 in Louisiana, including the New Orleans metropolitan area, nor encourage vertical evacuation strategies (e.g., moving to higher levels of a structure in the case of an emergency). Because of the increased rate of infection and community spread, noncongregate shelters across the state were once again prioritized and utilized outside Ida’s immediate impact area.
Shifting to this emergency planning and response method meant noncongregate shelter options were less densely concentrated from city to city. The inability to target traditional congregate sheltering operations with large numbers of evacuees proved challenging for circulating a survey tool in both Hurricanes Laura and Ida. A demonstrable density of noncongregate sheltering operations was employed during Hurricane Laura within a single jurisdiction due to the use of New Orleans–based hotels. These operations were much more scattered during the response to Hurricane Ida and crossed various jurisdictions. In both situations, the primary use of noncongregate sheltering options reduced survey reach to residents who evacuated to a traditional emergency shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic. The few survey respondents who did evacuate to a congregate shelter may have stayed in unplanned, spontaneous shelters—shelters opened by businesses and organizations that were not part of the official disaster response plan.
Hurricane Ida provided the ability to examine affected populations, many of whom were still recovering from a previous hurricane when Ida made landfall. Understandably, the U.S. population and emergency management workforce has no practical experience managing a hurricane evacuation in tandem with maintaining public health measures necessary to prevent the spread of an infectious disease. COVID-19 poses a unique threat to evacuation shelter management and mass care as compared with other infectious diseases that have affected prior hurricane evacuations. However, it is also important to note that the level of misinformation fueling public distrust impacts personal perceptions and behavior, further impeding the uptake of officials’ public safety messages. In addition to state and locally elected officials, emergency managers and public health officials from the government, private sector, and nonprofit organizations need to recognize the influence and impact COVID-19 has had, and continues to potentially have, on hurricane evacuation plans in order to improve existing strategies now and integrate these lessons into future plans.
2. Literature review
People form their decision to evacuate or not evacuate for several reasons. Senkbeil et al. (2020) and Morss et al. (2016) suggest that evacuation decision-making is a complicated puzzle as people receive different information via different forms of messaging, that interact with people’s physical and social stimuli. Many factors impact evacuation decisions, including predicted landfall location, storm severity, official warnings, mobile home residence, low-lying areas, expected impacts, type of housing, social cues, individual assessment of their risk of injury, and past experiences with hurricanes and evacuations (Baker 1991; Demuth et al. 2012; Dow and Cutter 2000; Huang et al. 2016; Gladwin et al. 2011; Goldberg et al. 2020; Whitehead et al. 2000).
When local officials issue an evacuation order, the decision to comply and evacuate is the protective measure to ensure safety from hurricane hazards, including flooding, particularly from storm surge. However, many people still resist evacuation orders as they consider the negative consequences of evacuating, including the expense, chaos, frustration, and inconvenience. Past research (Goldberg et al. 2020) on evacuation decision-making has shown that people with previous hurricane experience will make the same decision in the future. For example, if they sheltered at home in the past, they will most likely shelter at home again, or if they evacuated, they will most likely evacuate again. This prior research provides an understanding of prepandemic household plans, and compounding the issues of hurricane evacuation with health concerns fueled by a pandemic adds additional factors and complications to the decision-making process. When considering individuals who live in flood-prone areas in Florida, Botzen et al. (2022), for example, noted that COVID-19 concerns overshadowed flood risk perceptions and negatively impacted evacuation intentions.
a. COVID-19 and evacuations
Research has greatly advanced our understanding of how residents perceive hurricane risk and make decisions about evacuating. Nevertheless, the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic created much uncertainty about how people’s perceptions and decision-making processes might alter in this new context. Previous research suggested some possible outcomes. For example, Bissell (1983) found that hurricanes are associated with higher rates of infection with endemic diseases in the area because large numbers of people seek shelter together in places that are especially conducive to the spread of disease via respiratory droplets. Likewise, Lemonick (2011) studied past disasters and disease associations and found that crowding increased disease transmission, a frequent concern in shelters. In addition, Ivers and Ryan (2006) found that after the impact of a natural hazard, “the congregating of displaced individuals” increased disease transmission. In another analysis of how tropical cyclones impact disease spread, Shultz et al. (2005) conducted a study on a wide variety of hurricanes and their associated disease outbreaks. They identified six factors that can play into infectious disease outbreaks, with one of these key concerns pertaining to changes in population density (especially in crowded shelters), which leads to an increased risk of exposure and the potential for infection.
Travers (2020) found that Americans generally hold one of five “types” of views regarding risk perception of COVID-19 and trust in the governmental response to the pandemic. Individuals fall into one of the following categories: 1) “sounding-all-alarms,” 2) “at risk,” 3) “under-control,” 4) “open-ups,” and 5) “dismissers.” The largest group (sound-all-alarms, 29%) feels that the federal response has fallen short and worries about things getting worse, whereas groups 4 and 5 (14% each) think there has been an exaggerated response to the threat.
b. Hurricane evacuations in the age of COVID-19: Prior research by author team
Hurricane Ida provides data that, when compared with prior research on actual evacuation behavior in 2020 and anticipated evacuation behavior in 2021, create a timeline of COVID-19’s impact on evacuation decision-making. Future work on this project will further explore the connections between prior and current research. As shown in Fig. 2, the author team has conducted six prior surveys exploring concerns of COVID-19 during hurricane evacuations. These projects consisted of either prehurricane or posthurricane surveying to capture both anticipated and actual evacuation behavior during the 2020 and 2021 hurricane seasons. The pre-evacuation surveys included four distinct projects: those residing in Florida or Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2020 and then the coastal United States and the U.S. territories again in 2021. The postevacuation surveys conducted after hurricane landfall include Hurricanes Laura and Sally in 2020 and Hurricane Ida in 2021. All prehurricane surveys were very similar in question wording and length to allow for comparisons across the research projects; the same is true of the longer posthurricane surveys. Similar questions shared between the pre and posthurricane surveys include Likert-type questions that gathered data on individuals’ perceptions of shelters and the concern of COVID-19 in congregate spaces.
Timeline of related projects conducted by the research team. Note: In orange, the start of the pandemic is displayed. All prehurricane survey projects, or those measuring anticipated evacuation behavior, are shown in light blue (with the start date of data collection). All posthurricane survey projects, or those measuring actual evacuation behavior, are shown in light green (with the start date of data collection).
Citation: Weather, Climate, and Society 15, 3; 10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0114.1
The first of this research series was a pilot study conducted in Florida to measure anticipated evacuation behaviors entering the 2020 hurricane season, the first season impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2020, our research team disseminated an online survey (in both English and Spanish) of 40 questions to Florida residents through regional planning councils, emergency management agencies, and the media. In just over two weeks, 7102 people from more than 50 counties responded to the survey (Collins et al. 2021b). Half of the survey respondents described themselves as vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their health status. In addition, 74.3% of individuals viewed the risk of being in a shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic as more dangerous than enduring a hurricane at home. A significant number of individuals noted that they would choose not to utilize a public shelter during COVID-19 when they would have previously, with a 7.7% decrease in the number of individuals who identified that they would definitely or probably use a shelter. In 2021, our team sent a follow-up survey to those residing in the coastal United States as a point of comparison with the Florida study. However, this research included additional questions regarding vaccination status and its role in hurricane evacuations. Preliminary research from this project found that many individuals (71.3%) anticipated evacuation decision-making would not be affected by their vaccination status (Collins et al. 2021c).
When comparing the current research on Hurricane Ida, prior data collection from Hurricanes Laura and Sally has proven to be useful. Since the research team used similar surveys to those deployed in 2020, these research projects yielded information on actual hurricane evacuation behavior for the two events for further comparative analysis. Key results from the study found that 76.7% of people stayed home and that, of those who stayed at home, 80% stated that the choice was somewhat attributable to concerns of COVID-19. However, for those who evacuated to somewhere other than a shelter or a hotel (15.8% of the overall sample), the majority (85%) stated that COVID-19 was not the primary reason they selected that evacuation choice. Regarding perceived vulnerability to COVID-19, 39.4% of those who experienced Hurricanes Laura or Sally considered themselves vulnerable to COVID-19 due to preexisting health concerns, and two-thirds of the sample stated that it would be “very serious” if they or their loved ones contracted the virus. In terms of perceptions of shelters, there was an observed negative perception of public shelters similar to responses seen in the pre-evacuation research and a significant decrease in the number of people who would utilize them during the pandemic who would have before (Collins et al. 2021c).
3. Method
a. Research questions
As Hurricane Ida approached and local officials issued evacuation orders, residents balanced their need to evacuate against the risk of contracting COVID-19. The purpose of this research project is to examine how the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Louisiana during the 2021 hurricane season—a context that includes the wide availability of vaccines and masks, greater scientific and public understanding of how the virus is transmitted, relaxed public health restrictions, and a surge in cases due to the highly contagious delta variant—affected how residents’ perceived hurricane risks and made evacuation decisions. Ultimately, this study investigates the extent to which people risk their lives by sheltering in place rather than evacuating. The four primary research questions (RQs) addressed in this study were as follows:
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How did the later-stage COVID-19 context in August 2021 affect people’s hurricane risk perceptions and evacuation decisions?
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What concerns did residents have about COVID-19 in their potential evacuation sites, and how did these concerns influence their evacuation decisions?
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Did various health factors, such as vaccination status, affect evacuation choice?
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What sources of information did people rely on during Hurricane Ida’s evacuation, and did individuals feel the information was adequate?
b. Survey design and measures
Residents in the path of Hurricane Ida received an anonymous survey, available in both English and Spanish, through Qualtrics between 1 November 2021 and 24 February 2022. The University of South Florida Institutional Review Board approved this study (STUDY001517), and we followed standard consent and data management practices to protect participants’ confidentiality and privacy. The Hurricane Evacuations in the Age of COVID-19 survey projects previously used by Collins et al. (2021c) to study evacuation behavior during Hurricanes Laura and Sally is available in a recent online data repository (https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-ry5r-a653). The research team initially designed the survey instrument during the 2020 hurricane season with input from emergency managers, planners, and other government officials to ensure the questions supported their planning and response efforts. Word consistency of questions allows for comparisons between surveys for various hurricanes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This current survey includes additional questions regarding vaccination status and its effect on evacuation decisions. Piloting both the English and Spanish survey instruments for Hurricanes Laura and Sally and the modified version used for Hurricane Ida ensured questions were understandable and strengthened the reliability of the survey instruments.
Respondents chose their evacuation decision from one of four primary options: 1) evacuated to a shelter, 2) evacuated to somewhere other than a hotel (but not to a shelter), 3) evacuated to a hotel, or 4) stayed at home. Individuals who evacuated to a shelter and then were sent later to a hotel were asked additional questions from the hotel experience section (see Fig. 3).
Visual display of the branching paths offered through the survey design.
Citation: Weather, Climate, and Society 15, 3; 10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0114.1
The survey contained 146 questions. Each option noted above contained approximately 80 questions, with those who stayed at home having the shortest questionnaire and those who initially evacuated to a shelter that then sent them to a hotel received the longest set of questions. The median time for survey completion was 13.43 min. It was necessary to have a long survey to address the research questions and maintain the reliability of the survey instrument. The authors acknowledge that the survey length likely affected the number of completed surveys.
The survey asked participants several questions regarding their hurricane risk perceptions and the practical aspects of their evacuation experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other questions asked respondents about their health status and risks, their perceptions of shelters, and how their perceived risks of a hurricane compared to their perceived risks of contracting COVID-19. In addition, participants answered questions regarding social distancing and COVID-19 protection measures witnessed during their evacuation experience. The survey also included a section on vaccination status, the role of vaccination in evacuation decision-making, and impressions of vaccination in their local communities.
c. Sampling strategy and sample demographics
To obtain participants for this survey study, the research team utilized a unique and diverse professional network developed in previous projects (Collins et al. 2021b,c) to assist with distributing surveys to the local community. Existing social networks shared the survey instrument primarily through direct email distribution and social media outlets hosted by our network of connections. This distribution network, which shared our survey with their communities, consists of regional partnerships within local emergency management offices in the affected areas, government officials including assistance from connections at the Louisiana Public Health Institute, Ida-specific social media groups, and news media outlets. Additionally, partners from previous research projects about Hurricanes Sally and Laura employed in engineering, emergency management, public health, and communications also distributed promotional materials and survey links (see Fig. 4) to their community contacts.
Example of distribution materials provided to professional network.
Citation: Weather, Climate, and Society 15, 3; 10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0114.1
This sampling method represents a combination of convenience and snowball sampling, which effectively identifies participants beyond the initial contacts from affected areas due to challenges reaching individuals in a disaster setting. However, a disadvantage is the limited knowledge of actual distribution in the affected areas and the representativeness of the population not being guaranteed. Nevertheless, despite having downfalls regarding representation, this process was an effective way of contacting this community, which remained in recovery mode for over a year following the hurricane. Furthermore, the research team decided to limit exposure to COVID-19 risks by not administering the survey in person.
At the beginning of the digital survey, the research team presented a consent form with information outlining the study as low-risk for participants. Following this step, participants confirmed if they were 18 or older and if they were affected by Hurricane Ida. If participants answered no to either question, the survey ended as they did not qualify to participate in the study. The survey had 124 unique respondents who partially or fully completed the survey. Most respondents (99%) took the survey in English. They lived in 18 counties or parishes and 51 zip codes, primarily in Louisiana. The sample is not representative of the population in hurricane-prone areas of the United States. In comparison with the South region of the U.S. Census estimates (U.S. Census Bureau 2020a,b), the sample from this study had a higher percentage of women (79.8% as compared with the regional average of 51%), and less racial diversity (with 81.9% identifying as white as compared with a regional average of 68.2%), resulting in a low representation from minority ethnic groups. Additionally, the study population had a higher annual income (with many having a household income exceeding $90,000 when the average income of the South is $60,566).
The sample also had higher rates of educational attainment. All respondents had completed high school as compared with 87.4% for the regional average. Moreover, 62.7% of our sample were college graduates as compared with the percent with a college degree (40.9%) in the South (U.S. Census Bureau 2020b). The majority of the sample was employed full-time (60.6%); of note is that 14.9% identified as retired. Due to these demographic variations, this research may not be generalizable to the public at large in the region—review Table 1 for further demographic characteristics to provide a deeper understanding of the population surveyed.
Summary of demographics. Note: M and SD are used to represent mean and standard deviation, respectively; N represents the number of individuals; the percent is equivalent to the percent of respondents from the sample population as a whole.
Although this is discussed further in the limitation section (section 6b), it is important to acknowledge prior literature addressing why the sample has these demographic skews. As noted in the literature, digital and email surveys are typically less representative than other forms of surveying, such as mail surveys (Dillman 2000; Mackety 2007; Tse 1998). Email samples typically represent the middle and upper classes with a higher educational background, higher income, and are whiter than the average relative to other survey methods (Kehoe et al. 1999; Mehta and Sivadas 1995; Sheehan and Hoy 2000; Witte et al. 2000). Furthermore, women and white individuals typically respond more frequently to their counterparts in all survey modes (Green and Stager 1986; Kehoe et al. 1999; McCabe et al. 2002).
d. Data analyses
Data were downloaded from Qualtrics and imported into IBM SPSS v.26 to be cleaned, categorized, and organized for statistical analyses. Any short-answer questions, such as respondents’ descriptions of hazards near their homes, were broadly categorized by topic for analysis purposes. Due to the small sample size and the majority of questions asked being categorical or ordinal in nature, the analysis included nonparametric testing (such as chi-square and McNemar’s tests) and simple frequencies with t tests and ANOVAs used when relevant.
4. Results
a. RQ1: Risk perceptions and evacuation decisions
1) Concerns for specific hurricane hazards
An evacuation zone is a classification based on storm surge risks that emergency managers use to determine which broad areas should be under a mandatory evacuation order in the event of a hurricane. Each jurisdiction provides recommendations for individuals located in a mandatory evacuation area to evacuate to the nearest, safest place outside of the storm surge area. A flood zone is a FEMA-designated classification of vulnerability to flooding risks based on topography on a local scale. Since both represent aspects of hurricane risks and states do not consistently employ evacuation zones, both were included. Less than half (42.1%) of the sample lived in a flood or evacuation zone at the time of Hurricane Ida. Nearly 1 in 10 (9.3%) did not know if they lived in a flood or evacuation zone.
Most of the sample (80.4%) were homeowners. Few (8.4%) lived in a mobile home at the time of Hurricane Ida. The majority of respondents (74.8%) sustained damages to their homes as a result of Hurricane Ida. Nearly half (42.7%) had concerns about their home or location prior to Hurricane Ida, mostly related to prior flooding concerns, proximity to a water source, or large trees that could fall.
Survey participants were asked to rate how concerned they were about a specific hurricane-related hazard on a Likert-type scale from “not concerned” (zero) to “extremely concerned” (four). Respondents were most concerned about the intensity/category of the storm (N = 101;
Average respondent score for the question “Please rate how concerned you are about the following hazards at your residence.” Note: N and SD are used to represent number of survey responses and standard deviation, respectively. Mean score is based on a scale from 0 to 4, with 0 representing “not concerned” and 4 representing “extremely concerned.”
2) General evacuation decisions
For their actual evacuation decision for Hurricane Ida, 44.5% of the sample stayed at home, 0.8% went to a shelter and stayed in a shared space with other evacuees, 18.5% went to a hotel or motel (paid for by themselves or someone else), and 36.1% evacuated to the home of a friend or family member, stayed in their vehicle, or went to another location. One-third (33.6%) of the group self-identified as being under a mandatory evacuation order for Hurricane Ida, 60.5% were not, and 5.9% did not know if they were.
Seventy-two members of our sample were under a mandatory evacuation order. For those that were under a mandatory evacuation order, 35.0% stayed at home, 2.5% went to a shelter, 15.0% went to a hotel, and 47.5% evacuated to somewhere else. For those not under a mandatory evacuation order, 51.4% stayed at home, 0% went to a shelter, 20.8% went to a hotel, and 27.8% evacuated to somewhere else. As expected, those in a mandatory evacuation zone had a higher percentage of individuals evacuating somewhere else, and fewer staying at home. However, the distinction of being under a mandatory evacuation order was not statistically related to specific evacuation choices or even the broader decision to stay or go, indicating it did not play a significant role in evacuation decision-making. This could be attributable to the smaller sample size of those under a mandatory evacuation (72 people) or due to the demographic skew of the sample, as those with more money may have more flexibility in their evacuation choices. Nearly one-quarter of respondents (24.5%) reported having to seek a secondary shelter after their original place of shelter was flooded, lost electricity, or was damaged. These individuals typically fled to the homes of friends or family (47.8%) or a hotel/motel (34.8%).
Most respondents (84.8%) had experienced a hurricane evacuation order before. During those previous events, nearly half (49.6%) of the respondents stated that they chose to stay at home, 4% went to a public shelter, and 55.4% had evacuated to another location such as the homes of friends and family or to a hotel or motel. Prior hurricane experiences were not significantly linked with evacuation choices made during Hurricane Ida.
For hurricane preparedness, 69.8% of the sample had a hurricane evacuation plan and 62.5% had a disaster kit prior to Hurricane Ida. More than half (54.2%) owned a generator. For those who did have a generator, 62.1% stated that it did affect their decision to evacuate or stay at home. For those who did not, 53.1% stated that not having a generator impacted their evacuation decision. There was a statistically significant relationship between generator ownership and evacuation choices, with those who owned generators being 28.4% more likely to stay at home than those who did not [X2(1) = 7.910; p = 0.005]. Further, those who had a disaster kit before Ida were also 32.8% more likely to stay at home than evacuate [X2(1) = 9.980; p = 0.002]. The research team did not see this relationship among those who had an evacuation plan, indicating that the presence of a disaster plan was not indicative of evacuation choice.
Nearly 80% of respondents answered affirmatively when asked, “Did the category of Hurricane Ida influence your evacuation decision?” When asked about hurricanes in general, three-quarters of the sample (75.5%) also stated that the category influenced their evacuation decision. Of this group, 35.3% stated that the lowest category they would evacuate for is category 3, whereas 4.9% selected category 1, 10.8% selected category 2, 16.7% selected category 4, and 7.8% selected category 5.
The study found no differences across groups when analyzing demographic effects on hurricane evacuation decisions. These findings can be attributed to the limited sample demographics described above. Additionally, due to the low number of shelter evacuee respondents, no specific statistics will be presented from that sample group.
b. RQ2: Perceptions of specific evacuation sites
1) Perceptions of those who evacuated to hotels
A small portion of this sample (18.5%) said they went to a hotel or motel. Although we asked if COVID-19 was the primary reason they chose to evacuate to a hotel, no respondents answered this question. No one in this study self-identified as being sent to a hotel from a public shelter. Additionally, no one identified having to separate members of their group at the hotel due to them having symptoms or being more at-risk. The majority of respondents (76.2%) personally paid for or had a household member pay for the hotel accommodation. Additionally, 9.5% had a family member or friend outside their household pay, and 4.8% had the cost covered by a nonprofit or government organization. The overwhelming majority of the sample (90.5%) got to the hotel via personal vehicle, with the remainder (9.5%) carpooling to a hotel.
Participants’ experiences with staff and guests at the hotel maintaining social distancing in common spaces varied, with 33.3% definitely agreeing, 28.6% somewhat agreeing, and 33.3% not agreeing at all. Regarding masks, 23.8% felt that staff and guests definitely masked in shared spaces, 42.9% said somewhat, and 33.3% said not at all. No one identified extreme difficulty obtaining supplies to protect themselves from COVID-19 (e.g., hand sanitizers, masks, soap) while staying at the hotel, with 76.2% stating that it was not at all difficult and 23.8% stating it was somewhat difficult. Many individuals (85.7%) brought their own masks. A few respondents (9.5%) tested positive for COVID-19 after their hotel experience. Three-quarters (76.2%) of the sample had pets at the time of evacuation, and the overwhelming majority (93.8%) of those pet owners were able to bring their pets into the hotel.
2) Perceptions of those who stayed at home
Almost half (44.5%) of the sample stayed at home during Hurricane Ida. When asked if COVID-19 was the primary reason they stayed at home, 4.9% said definitely, 14.6% said somewhat, and 80.5% said not at all. When asked, “If I wanted to evacuate, I could have found friends or family to give me shelter IN my COUNTY,” 53.7% agreed. When asked the same question outside of the county, 65.9% agreed. Approximately one-quarter (22.0%) wanted to evacuate but waited until it was too late. (Note: The distinction between county and parish was not made in the survey past the introduction as it was clarified at the beginning of the survey that they were used interchangeably).
Most (85.4%) of those who stayed at home had pets, and, of these pet owners, 65.7% stated that their pet played a major role in their choice to stay at home. Additionally, 7.3% stated that a lack of transportation did play a role in their choice to stay at home. One-quarter (22.0%) stated that one of the reasons why they chose not to evacuate was to care for someone else who either could not or would not leave.
3) Perceptions of those who evacuated elsewhere
Approximately one-third of the sample (36.1%) evacuated from their home and did not choose to go to a shelter or hotel. The majority (54.1%) of individuals who evacuated elsewhere identified that they stayed with their families. The remainder of the sample stayed with a friend or coworker (21.6%), at a vacation rental such as Airbnb (5.4%), or in their recreational vehicle (RV) or car (5.4%), or they did something else such as staying at a secondary owned property (8.1%). Most individuals (94.6%) got to this evacuation location via their personal vehicle.
The majority of participants (94.6%) stated that COVID-19 was not the primary reason they chose to evacuate to somewhere other than a shelter. Almost three-quarters (67.6%) of those who evacuated elsewhere had pets at the time of Hurricane Ida, and of those who had pets, only 28.0% stated that having pets influenced their decision to go somewhere other than a shelter. A small number of evacuees (5.4%) tested positive for COVID-19 within 14 days of their evacuation experience.
4) Perceptions of those who went to a public shelter
A series of Likert-scale questions have been summarized in Table 3 that relate to aspects of individual perceptions of public shelters during COVID-19. When comparing the questions, “Prior to COVID-19, if I needed to evacuate to a shelter during hurricane season, I would most likely have done so,” and “Considering the current situation with COVID-19, I would still go to a shelter if I needed to during a hurricane evacuation order in 2020,” 11.4% more individuals stated that they would definitely or probably avoid using shelters in 2021. When comparing this willingness to use shelters before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a statistically significant decrease in potential shelter usage (p = 0.043) as determined through a McNemar’s test.
Summary of Likert-scale responses to statements regarding public shelters during the COVID-19 pandemic. Note: N is the number of survey responses.
c. RQ3: COVID-19, vaccination, and perceived health
The public health orders for COVID-19 in effect at the time of Hurricane Ida ranged by respondents’ county or parish. The survey asked respondents what they believed their current restrictions were to allow comparisons between those who believed that masking and isolation restrictions were in place and those who did not. One-third (39.2%) stated that all restrictions were lifted in their county or parish, 20.6% reported a stay-at-home recommendation, and 25.5% were unsure. For mandatory masking, half (50.5%) believed that they lived in a county or parish that enforced masking inside all public and commercial buildings, 28.7% of participants stated that masks were required in some places, and 9.9% said they were not required anywhere. A small portion (10.9%) did not know their masking requirements. When comparing this perception of restrictions with their evacuation choices, no significant relationship was found.
Slightly more than one-third (37.3%) of respondents reported having preexisting health conditions, putting them at greater risk of serious illness if infected with COVID-19. When comparing this with vaccination status, those who considered themselves more vulnerable to COVID-19 were much more likely to have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine [X2(3) = 13.438l; p = 0.004]. More specifically, 13.9% of respondents identified as immunocompromised, and 15.8% were over the age of 65. Moreover, half (50.5%) said they or someone in their household had an underlying medical condition associated with a higher risk for severe COVID-19 or that they were eligible for special needs shelters, such as electricity dependence. Our analysis showed that those respondents with health risks for severe COVID-19 were no more likely to evacuate than those respondents who had no health risks. When observing evacuation choices of those with children, who could not vaccinate against COVID-19 at the time, there were no significant changes in the evacuation choice. However, those who had at least one individual over 65 years of age in their house were 35.6% more likely to evacuate somewhere (a hotel, shelter, or elsewhere) than stay at home [X2(1) = 8.355l; p = 0.004].
When asked, “How serious would it be if you or someone in your household were to get COVID-19?,” 35.3% stated it would be very serious, 51.0% stated it would be somewhat serious, and 13.7% stated it would be not at all serious. There was no significant relationship between an individual’s perception of COVID-19 severity and their choice to evacuate.
One-quarter (24.2%) had someone in their household test positive prior to Hurricane Ida. Of those who tested positive, approximately one-third (29.2%) tested positive within 14 days of Hurricane Ida’s landfall. These results were not significantly related to the choice to evacuate or not, indicating that those who had previously tested positive, even within 14 days of landfall, did not have their decision-making significantly altered by this factor. We asked those who chose to evacuate (either to a shelter, hotel, or elsewhere) if they had tested positive following the evacuation. Of those respondents who replied (58), many had not received a test following the evacuation. Only four (6.9%) reported that they had tested positive following their evacuation.
Many (76.0%) respondents knew someone who tested positive for COVID-19, 53.6% knew someone who was hospitalized due to COVID-19, 36% knew someone who was placed on a ventilator due to COVID-19, and 39.2% knew someone who had died due to COVID-19 complications. These numbers are slightly higher when compared with prior research from Pew Research Center in September 2020, which found that 39% of people knew someone who had been hospitalized or died due to COVID-19 (Kramer 2020). This variation in responses is potentially attributable to the fact that the Hurricane Ida evacuation survey occurred almost a year later, farther into the course of the pandemic than the Pew study.
Regarding vaccination, 81.2% of individuals identified that they had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Approximately one-third (39.6%) had received their booster dose, and another third (35.6%) had received either two doses of Moderna or Pfizer or one dose of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine but not their booster; this survey was conducted prior to the approval of a fourth booster. Only 14.9% stated that they had no plans of getting vaccinated. Vaccination status was not statistically significantly related to age, evacuation choice, or gender. When asked if their vaccination status played a role in their evacuation decision-making, 21.8% stated it did. When asked, “If more people in your county were to get vaccinated, would you have a different hurricane evacuation plan?,” 8.1% stated yes. These individuals who did say that vaccination status affected their decision to stay home or not were significantly more likely to have made the choice to stay at home than the rest of the sample [X2(4) = 9.987, p = 0.042].
d. RQ4: Sources of information
Most of the sample felt that they were “provided enough information to make a good evacuation decision,” with 42.7% definitely agreeing with the statement, 43.7% somewhat agreeing, and 13.6% not at all agreeing. The survey asked participants to rank the sources of information that they relied on during their Hurricane Ida decision-making on a Likert scale ranging from “not relied on at all” at 1 to “most relied on” at 5 (see Table 4). The most relied on sources of information were local media (N = 95,
Sources of information that individuals relied upon when making prior hurricane evacuation decisions. Note: N and SD are used to represent number of survey responses and standard deviation, respectively. Mean score is based on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being “more likely to rely upon” when making prior hurricane evacuation decisions.
5. Discussion
Representing the largest group in the Hurricane Ida evacuation study were those who stayed at home (44.5%). However, a higher percentage of respondents also chose to evacuate to a location other than a shelter (e.g., a hotel or house of a friend or family member) than was observed in a similar study focused on Hurricane Sally, which reported a majority of individuals chose to stay at home (Collins et al. 2021c). These findings from Hurricane Sally may be attributable to qualitative responses suggesting a majority of respondents indicated that the shift in storm track did not allow them enough time to evacuate or they were not informed that they should evacuate. Furthermore, some of the evacuation results for Hurricanes Laura and Ida are comparable, potentially due to the similar severity and similar geographic location of the two storm systems (see Table 5).
Summary of evacuation decisions made in Hurricanes Ida, Laura, and Sally. Note: N is the number of individuals.
Those who used shelters only accounted for 0.8% of the study sample. This mirrors what was seen in prior research from the author group (Collins et al. 2021c) during Hurricanes Laura and Sally, where only 0.9% of the overall sample for both hurricanes evacuated to a shelter. As shown in hurricane evacuation research, those with access to more resources will typically choose an evacuation plan that does not involve public shelters as they are seen as undesirable, even before the pandemic (Perry and Lindell 2007). Other research that measured shelter usage before the pandemic found an average evacuation rate to shelters around 5%, ranging from 2% to 11% (Wong et al. 2021).
Relative to Collins et al.’s (2021c) research on Hurricanes Laura and Sally, fewer individuals identified that COVID-19 was a primary reason that they chose to stay home (80.5% responding that it did not play a role at all during Hurricane Ida, while only 13.2% indicated that during Hurricanes Laura and Sally). These findings suggest that with the availability of vaccines and improved COVID-19 management, COVID-19 has had less of an impact on evacuation decision-making than in earlier stages of the pandemic.
Of note is that 22% of those who stayed at home wanted to evacuate but waited until it was too late, which shows that there is room for improved social support to encourage those who would evacuate to do so if they felt it was in their best interest. Further, this reflects an area of practical improvement for emergency management and communications teams. Improved and timely communications to the community, and linking them to the most impactful sources of information (local media, government officials, and electronic media), remain an area of improvement. These findings could also be attributable to the fact that Hurricane Ida went through what is known as rapid intensification, making prelandfall evacuation orders all but impossible due to a compressed time frame. Most jurisdictions threatened by tropical systems operate evacuation protocols based on intricate timelines. Due to the more recently recognized phenomenon of rapid intensification, these timelines need to be revisited and adjusted as best they can to accommodate this threat that will continue to persist in the future due to climate change. Further, most jurisdictions are incapable of procuring and maintaining, or even locally sourcing, high volumes of transportation assistance to be operational at a moment’s notice. Not having this mandatory prelandfall evacuation order might have influenced these respondents’ decisions, demonstrating the need to improve policies and further leverage mitigation investments to harden the infrastructure used for emergency shelters.
Louisiana had one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation at the time of Hurricane Ida (with only approximately 40% of the population fully vaccinated), providing a unique environment for data collection regarding actual evacuation behavior and its connection to the COVID-19 pandemic (Mayo Clinic 2021). When observing the role of vaccination on evacuation decision-making, 21.8% of individuals whom Hurricane Ida impacted stated that their vaccine status did play a role in their decision-making. These individuals were more likely than the sample to have chosen to stay at home, indicating that they may have chosen one of the other protective actions that increased COVID-19 exposure. This matches prior research done by Collins et al. (2021c) tracking the anticipated impact of vaccination on evacuation behavior in the coastal United States, where 29.6% stated it would play a role in the then-upcoming 2021 hurricane season.
Further, despite one-third of the sample considering themselves more vulnerable to COVID-19, this perceived vulnerability did not impact evacuation decisions. This could also be due to the high percentage of individuals who decided to stay at home, which would be the expected response for anyone concerned about COVID-19 infection, as remaining at home is isolated and noncongregate. However, it may be due to people’s risk-taking behavior with COVID-19. In many other circumstances, when individuals perceive a threat as severe and imminent, they generally engage in more preventative behaviors, but this does not seem to hold true in the case of COVID-19. Studies by Harper et al. (2021) and Pakpour and Griffiths (2020) show that although people have felt stressed, anxious, and fearful of COVID-19, those feelings did not match their behaviors of adopting preventative measures to reduce their risk of catching COVID-19.
Additionally, as seen in Table 3, people still have a negative perception of shelters, which worsened during the pandemic relative to nonpandemic situations. More than half (58.3%) of the participants identified that they felt the risks of staying in a shelter were greater than the risks they would experience by staying home and enduring a hurricane. This is lower than participants indicated during Hurricanes Sally and Laura, where 62.5% would rather risk hurricane conditions than COVID-19 infection in a shelter.
Of particular interest is the number of individuals who would have considered using a public shelter in the past who would no longer do so during the COVID-19 pandemic. Travers (2020) found that Americans generally hold one of five “types” of views regarding risk perception of COVID-19, with trust in the governmental response to the pandemic representing the largest group (29%) in which people feel that the federal response has fallen short and worry about things getting worse. This aligns with our study findings, where our data suggest a significant increase in the number of individuals (11.4%) that would disagree with the statement that they would use a shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic when compared with before the pandemic. This finding highlights a poor perception and a lack of trust in public shelters during the pandemic. When asked to self-identify their likelihood to evacuate to a shelter before the COVID-19 pandemic and afterward, there was a statistically significant decrease in potential shelter usage, with 11.4% more individuals stating that they would definitely or probably avoid using shelters in 2021. This finding suggests that although individuals rarely utilize shelters during hurricane evacuations, those who may have previously chosen a sheltering option are choosing other evacuation options (such as staying at home or going elsewhere) directly resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This shelter usage decrease was much more significant than what researchers saw during Hurricanes Laura and Sally (11.4% as compared with 2.1%).
Relative to the situation for Hurricanes Laura and Sally, those who experienced Ida more often reported lacking enough information to make “a good evacuation decision” (13.2% as compared with just 3.6% in 2020). This shows a need for improved communications and better-utilized communication channels during the upcoming hurricane seasons to increase message uptake and ensure that individuals have enough information to properly proceed with making a protective action decision.
6. Conclusions
a. Key results and impacts
Our Hurricane Ida research provides interesting results demonstrating COVID-19’s impact on evacuation decision-making farther along the course of the pandemic. When compared with the 2020 hurricane season, in particular Hurricane Sally, more individuals affected by Ida left their homes. Ida victims also seem to have fewer negative perceptions of hurricane shelters than those of Hurricane Sally. However, in direct conflict with this finding, individuals are also less likely to utilize public shelters during the COVID-19 pandemic than was observed during Hurricanes Laura and Sally. This could be attributable to the skew of the Ida sample being more affluent, who are traditionally individuals who are less likely to use shelters. Further, relative to the 2020 hurricane season, fewer individuals identified that COVID-19 was a primary reason they chose to stay home (80.5% stated it did not play a role at all during Hurricane Ida as compared with 13.2% during Hurricanes Sally and Laura). With the availability of vaccines and improved management of the pandemic response, COVID-19 has had less of an impact on evacuation decision-making than in the past.
Individual perceptions of research respondents have been dynamic throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic as people weigh their personal health risks and the ever-changing COVID-19 exposure risks during hurricane evacuations. As displayed here, individuals seem to be more willing to evacuate when they need to instead of when they are facing hurricane risks at their homes when it is dangerous, showing that people are adjusting to the balancing of COVID-19 and hurricane risks to make an appropriate evacuation decision. Further, as vaccines and masking became more widely available, COVID-19 played a much smaller role in many individuals’ evacuation planning. Although considerations for COVID-19 still need to be made in risk communications messaging and, most importantly, shelter planning, they seem to be less at the forefront of people’s minds than during the 2020 hurricane season.
This research and anticipated further analysis of the longitudinal data gathered by Collins et al. (2021a,b,c, 2022) regarding COVID-19 and hurricane evacuation is important as COVID-19 poses a unique and widespread threat to shelter management and mass evacuations. This research provides not only additional knowledge on sociological perspectives during complex disasters but also provides guidance that is necessary for future planning during pandemic-hurricane events in the United States (Lindell et al. 2011; Whytlaw et al. 2021). Therefore, the results from this work should guide those in emergency management and public health planning for the 2022 hurricane season and future pandemics. Specifically, stakeholders should consider this research regarding anticipated behavioral changes in light of an infectious disease threat.
b. Limitations and strengths
One key strength of this research is how it fits into the existing work by Collins et al. (2021a,b,c, 2022) conducted on hurricane evacuation decision-making during the pandemic. One critical limitation of the research is the low response rate. The team believes this is likely due to survey fatigue seen in the professional distribution network and the surveyed population utilized in previous research done by Collins et al. since early 2020, as well as other researchers. Due to team limits and an overabundance of caution for COVID-19 safety, the research team did not contact respondents in person to increase the response rate. An additional limitation is that a limited number of respondents used public shelters, leading to the inability to use several shelter-specific questions. As stated previously, the study sample is unrepresentative of the population in the South region of the United States, limiting the generalizability of this research. The sampling method utilized could contribute to this factor; although not ideal for representation, this strategy is effective in disaster research (Norris 2006; Price 2013). This is of concern as various studies conclude that minority groups are a vulnerable population. Racial and ethnic minorities are at greater risk during pandemics since they often have less capacity to implement preparedness strategies or tolerate impacts given disparities in underlying health status and social factors, such as socioeconomic disadvantages, cultural, educational, and linguistic barriers, and a lack of access to health care (Hutchins et al. 2009).
Acknowledgments.
We acknowledge critical collaborators to this project’s success, including those who assisted with translation services: Andrea Tristán, Antonio Piñero Crespo, and Carmen Crespo. In addition, we acknowledge the funding and support from the Natural Hazards Center’s Quick Response Program as well as the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate program in “Weather, Climate and Society” (NSF Award: 1659754; principal investigators: Collins and Ersing), which helped provide training for the student authors on this paper. We thank student volunteers for their feedback and assistance with piloting these surveys in Spanish and English, and we appreciate the assistance of Delián Colón-Burgos, who assisted with graphics for this paper. We thank Dominic del Pino for his careful review. Additional thanks are given to emergency management practitioners who provided feedback on the survey instrument before and during distribution. We thank those from numerous fields, including broadcast meteorology, emergency management, and others who assisted with disseminating the survey.
Data availability statement.
The dataset from this survey is not available. A report provided to the Natural Hazards Center on this work is available online (https://hazards.colorado.edu/quick-response-report/the-effect-of-covid-19-vaccination-on-evacuation-behavior-during-hurricane-ida). The hurricane data were from the National Hurricane Center’s North Atlantic hurricane database as archived in the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship, version 4 (IBTrACS; https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ibtracs/). Population data at the county level as of 2020–21 were from the U.S. Census Bureau (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-counties-total.html).
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