Hurricane Hazards, Evacuations, and Sheltering: Evacuation Decision-Making in the Prevaccine Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the PRVI Region

Abstract

While research relating to hurricane evacuation behavior and perceptions of risk has grown throughout the years, there is very little understanding of how these risks compound during a pandemic. Utilizing the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (PRVI) as a study region, this work examines risk perceptions and evacuation planning during the first hurricane season following the COVID-19 pandemic before vaccines were widely available. Analyses of how people view public shelters and whether evacuation choices will change in light of COVID-19 concerns were conducted, and results reflect major changes in anticipated evacuation behavior during the 2020 hurricane season. Key findings include that over half of the sample considered themselves vulnerable to COVID-19. When asked about their intended actions for the 2020 hurricane season, a significant number of individuals who would have previously evacuated to a shelter said that they would choose not to during the pandemic, reflecting that public shelter usage has the potential to decrease when the decision is coupled with COVID-19 threats. Additionally, individuals were shown to have a negative perception of public shelter options. Approximately half of the respondents had little faith in shelters’ ability to protect them, and three-quarters of respondents found the risks of enduring a hurricane to be less than those posed by public shelters. These results will inform future hazard mitigation planning during a disease outbreak or pandemic.

Evacuation behavior of households facing compound hurricane‐pandemic threats

“…Other vulnerable populations across the Eastern seaboard, on the Gulf Coast, and in Puerto Rico have experienced hurricanes more frequently but were not included. However, there is recent research by Collins et al (2021); Collins, Polen, Dunn, Jernigan, et al (2022); Collins, Polen, Dunn, Maas, et al (2022) and others (Zhao et al, 2022) on evacuation behavior in several of these states and regions. The survey methodology and analysis used in this study of coastal Virginia could be applied to other regions and in the later stages of a pandemic (e.g., the post‐vaccine period) to expand the body of knowledge about evacuation behavior in different places and times.…”

“…Research is emerging that looks at hurricane response during the COVID‐19 pandemic (Botzen et al, 2022; Collins et al, 2021; Collins, Polen, Dunn, Jernigan, et al, 2022; Collins, Polen, Dunn, Maas, et al, 2022; Hill et al, 2021), but more is needed to understand households' evacuation behavior to develop responsive and equitable policies, processes, and practices. This study focused on households' prospective evacuation behavior when facing threats of a hurricane during a pandemic and identified equity implications for disaster management.…”

Evacuate or social distance? Modeling the influence of threat perceptions on hurricane evacuation in a dual‐threat environment

“…Finally, a dual hazard event that has contradicting protective action suggestions (evacuation vs. social distancing) is fairly novel as of the time of this writing. When this study was conducted, there was not enough literature focusing on this issue (Clay et al., 2022; Collins et al., 2021; Collins, Polen, Dunn, Jernigan, et al., 2022; Collins, Polen, Dunn, Maas, et al., 2022). Therefore, this study solely focuses on the interrelationships among threat perception variables and how they affect hurricane evacuation decisions in this novel case.…”

“…However, most of these PADM evacuation studies have not explored the multivariate relationships among threat perception variables (affective risk perception [ARP], cognitive risk perception [CRP], optimistic bias, and hazard intrusiveness) and how it influences evacuation decisions (Huang, Wu, et al, 2017;Lin et al, 2014;Lindell et al, 2005Lindell et al, , 2011Wei et al, 2014). In addition, to date, only a few studies have examined COVID-19 impacts on hurricane evacuation decisions (Botzen et al, 2022;Collins et al, 2021;Collins, Polen, Dunn, Maas, et al, 2022;Whytlaw et al, 2021). Given the novelty, scale, span, impact, and messaging around COVID-19, we expect to see hurricanes along the Gulf Coast-a hazard addressed seasonally by residents with mostly consistent protective action messaging-produce different reactions in residents in this pandemic context.…”

Resilience to hazards overlapping a pandemic: A shelter resource stabilization model

“…The collection of direct evacuee perspectives was beyond the scope of this study, but has been documented (e.g. Collins et al 2022). Workshop participants were randomly assigned to break-out rooms of no more than 20 individuals.…”