Hurricane’s Path Includes Towns With Limited Evacuation Routes

Excerpt of full story by John McCormick, Wall Street Journal Artificial Intelligence, Sep 4, 2019.

Hurricane Dorian, which is creeping up the Atlantic Coast, is threatening several towns that data-analytics company StreetLight Data Inc. ranks as having the most limited evacuation routes in the country.

Hilton Head Island, S.C., and Hutchinson Island South, Fla., were No. 2 and No. 4, respectively, on the company’s list of the top 100 communities with limited means of escaping a hurricane, wildfire or other natural disaster.

The states with the most communities on the list were Florida, with 20, California, with 14, and Arizona, with eight. The company looked only at towns of less than 40,000, as larger cities tend to have more escape routes.

A number of communities on the list told StreetLight Data they would use the information as a way to escalate their evacuation planning, according to Laura Schewel, the San Francisco-based company’s founder and chief executive.

“It basically raised a red flag,” she said.

 Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal

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