“My Kids Are My Priority”: Mothers’ Decisions to Evacuate for Hurricane Irma and Evacuation Intentions for Future Hurricanes

Abstract

Although families with children are particularly vulnerable in hurricanes, little is known about factors affecting families’ evacuation decisions. Following Hurricane Irma, we evaluated multiple factors potentially influencing mothers’ evacuation decisions and evacuation intentions for future hurricanes. Mothers of children under 18 years (N=536) completed an online survey assessing sociodemographic, hurricane-related, family, and psychological factors, as well as intentions regarding future evacuation. Logistic regression analyses identified factors associated with increased evacuation likelihood. Mothers’ reported reasons for evacuating highlighted family and psychological factors as most critical in decision-making. Mothers who evacuated for Irma or experienced more Irma-related loss/disruption reported significantly greater intention to evacuate for future hurricanes than mothers who did not. Mothers prioritize the safety and comfort of their children and keeping their family together when deciding whether to evacuate. Developing a Family Disaster Plan may facilitate evacuation decisions.

Willingness of Hurricane Irma evacuees to share resources: a multi-modeling approach

“…In almost all models and scenarios, households with children were less willing to provide resources. This result likely stems from concerns about their children's safety and security, which was also found in Wong et al (2020e) and Brodar et al (2020). Third, spare capacity had positive but mostly insignificant influence on sharing.…”

“…This level of concern for safety was displayed through additional trip-making in child-gathering models for a no-notice evacuation developed in Liu and Murray-Tuite (2013). Other research has found that mothers prioritize the safety and security of their children in evacuation decision-making (Brodar et al, 2020). It is not immediately clear why long-term residents would be less likely to share transportation.…”

Evacuation- and hurricane-related experiences, emotional distress, and their associations with mothers’ health risk behaviors.

“…This study reports on a large sample of mothers residing in Southern Florida at the time of Hurricane Irma. We previously reported that these mothers found evacuation-related experiences to be very stressful regardless of whether they evacuated or not (La Greca et al, 2019), and that mothers prioritized the safety and security of their family when making evacuation decisions (Brodar et al, 2020). Using a conceptual model of risk and resilience (e.g., La Greca et al, 2010) as predictors of psychological distress, we also found that prestorm evacuation experiences contributed significantly to mothers’ and children’s posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), as well as symptoms of general anxiety and depression, 3 months after the storm (La Greca et al, 2022).…”

Disaster Evacuation for Home-Based Patients with Special Healthcare Needs: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Women are also more likely than men to evacuate because they are more aware of the roles of long-term care and incentives for evacuation [ 15 ]. A survey of children and families affected by Hurricane Irma in 2017 found that mothers who experienced evacuation, chaos and loss due to Irma were more willing to evacuate again than those who did not [ 16 ]. After Hurricane Matthew, it was reported that those with a close-knit community they could rely on during the disaster did not evacuate and stayed with friends and relatives [ 17 ].…”