Returning to FL...Traffic

[Honeychild]

I like the rest of you have been watching the hurricane and have stayed glued to the Weather Channel. During this time I have seen that millions of people have been evacuated, they showed traffic jams in Atlanta due to this. My question is this...when will people start returning? I live in the FL panhandle and we start driving on Tuesday. Are we looking at major traffic jams? Will there be fuel? Anyone else driving?

 

[siily047]

well here in homestead we are out of gas at all places. also as of friday tampa had little gas and orlando was getting very limited. we have friends in orlando and they left friday for higher ground/ we will not be able to get gas and food until after the storms have passed and the roads are cleared in some places that could be over a week without

 

[lbgraves]

It will also depend on whatever flooding has happened. Here in NC that was the worst part of Hurricane Floyd. We evacuated to western VA and returned to our home the next day. However, all we heard on the radio was roads being closed...right where we had to go. Once we got off I40 it was hit or miss with traffic being rerouted on the wrong side of the road because of small bridges & overpasses that had collasped from the flood waters eroding the foundation or causing the road to break away. We were very lucky to get home. Once we were here, the city was cut off by the flood waters. The stores ran out of meat, chicken, milk, bread...just about everything. It was at least a week before the trucks could make it into town with more food. I certainly hope that doesn't happen to anyone there, but Floyd moved thru quickly and flooded, along with the damn being released in Raleigh to keep it from breaking. This one is moving so slowly there is bound to be more rainfall in the area.

 

[ginabug]

honeychild, we're in Quincy, about 4 hours from port. We'll fuel up here and that will get us to the port. We're hoping by the time we get back from cruise they'll be fuel available to get us back home. Hubby suggested if we see fuel on the way down closer to the port that we stop and refuel up as close as possible. We were on I 10 this morning and it wasn,t that bad. More traffic than usual though. I 75 may be a different story though.

 

[thewagman]

Apparently the gas shortage was not all due to Hurricane Frances but also due to the fact many people pumped on August 31st which was the last day of the holiday gas tax break (8 cent tax per gallon break). Jeb Bush was just on a tv hurricane briefing and was asked about the gas shortage and he indicated that the bigger problem is if gas stations do not have electricity - gas can not be pumped without it. Some more info on the timeframe of gas being replenished in the following article:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...,2179234,print.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

Feeder bands of high wind and rain have officially started as of 11:00 am. Earlier in the morning it started out as a beautiful sunny day. We have a 2 pm curfew today and the worst is yet to come for Kissimmee/Osceola. We would prefer it passed during the day - at least we could "see" what was happening.

Good Luck to fellow Floridians and to all in the Bahamas.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

People might be hitting the highways as early as tonight and definitely tomorrow.

The key is not the gas required to cover the distance--but the likely stop and go traffic you may hit which wreaks havoc on fuel efficiency. So leave EARLY when you do leave--and when your tank is between 1/2 and 1/4 of a tank--you should keep an eye out for gas stations and plan on refilling when you have a 1/4 of a tank. That gives you pad in case the stations with fuel are few and far between. Power can be out in places and with no power, the fuel pumps will not work.

And with lack of fuel--AAA might be really really busy with people who are out of gas.