Watches, warnings to be issued earlier

Just a nudge -- that's what new federal guidelines will give people should a hurricane loom, emergency managers say.

The National Hurricane Center said Tuesday it will now issue tropical storm and hurricane alerts 12 hours earlier. Watches will be issued 48 hours before a storm is forecast to arrive. Warnings will be issued 36 hours prior.

The change was made because of steady year-to-year improvement in forecasting storm tracks, senior hurricane specialist Lixion Avila said. Watches and warnings already have been issued earlier for individual storms.

"(The tracks) have gotten a little bit better. I'm not saying it was a magic moment," he said.

The change, though, comes amid escalating concern among emergency managers about problems getting people away fast enough from an increasingly crowded coast on a few available highways. It could potentially change how evacuation decisions get made for major storms, said Cathy Haynes, director of Charleston County Emergency Preparedness.

"This gives us that much more lead time to get people out. But how well people are going to receive that remains to be seen," she said.

South Carolina is among a number of coastal states that tend to announce voluntary and mandatory evacuations ahead of the federal warning.

"Typically what you find is people will wait until the last minute," said Derrec Becker, public information coordinator for the South Carolina Emergency Management Division.

Having a federal warning issued might spur people to move quicker.

"That's one of our biggest challenges. We understand that evacuation will be gridlock. It won't be fun," Becker said.

"This certainly does help. The sooner people get the message the sooner they can make plans to evacuate."

More than a quarter million people are on the Lowcountry coast during prime vacation season, and more people flock to the coast each year. The average traffic flow on Interstate 26 is about 150,000 cars per day, and the highway already backs up at rush hour. The highway locked up so badly during the worst of the Hurricane Floyd evacuation in 1999 that it took 12 hours for some motorists to reach Columbia, which is a little more than 100 miles away from Charleston.

An as-yet-untried evacuation plan devised after the Hurricane Floyd gridlock fiasco predicts it will take 28 hours to evacuate the coast for a Category 3 hurricane, a destructive storm with wind stronger than 110 mph, starting with voluntary evacuations. But the plan depends on a number of cars leaving during a voluntary evacuation.

Reach Bo Petersen at bpetersen@postandcourier.com or 937-5744.