Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng says rapid intensification of hurricanes means it is less likely that the state will be able to set up contraflow on interstate highways for hurricane evacuations.
Sheng said rapid intensification makes it far more difficult to know when to pull the trigger on mandatory evacuations, so residents need to be more prepared to bug out when a storm is approaching.
"We only want to leave if we have to leave," Sheng told WWL's Newell Normand. "It's tremendous amount of expense."
She says the old time frame we have grown accustomed to is obsolete.
"The message is, you need to do it sooner," Sheng said. "Whatever you thought the time was to leave, it needs to be quicker, sooner, earlier."
Sheng said 2021's Hurricane Ida is a recent example of how a storm that probably should have triggered a mandatory evacuation didn't because of the timing of the forecast.
"Like we saw in Ida, we would have had to implement contraflow when the models for Ida at the time, the cone was still over a four-state area," she said, "going from Houston to Mobile."
Sheng said it is the new reality we live in, and it means people who can leave earlier, should.
