One Million Dollars per Mile?: The Opportunity Costs of Hurricane Evacuation

Emergency managers should balance the benefits and costs of voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders when issuing orders prior to a hurricane. The only estimate of hurricane evacuation costs is the often-quoted “one million dollars per mile” of evacuated coastline. The purpose of this paper is to pursue better measures of the opportunity costs of hurricane evacuations that depend on storm intensity, behavior, and population. We model the hurricane evacuation decision of households using revealed and stated preference methods with data from a survey of North Carolina residents who experienced 1998s Hurricane Bonnie. We use the evacuation predictions and estimates of household evacuation costs to estimate the aggregate opportunity costs of hurricane evacuations. We find that hurricane evacuation costs for ocean counties in North Carolina range from about $1 million to $50 million depending on storm intensity and emergency management policy. These costs are much less than “one million dollars per mile” of evacuated coastline.