Weather to evacuate?

Woods, Cindy E; Goodman, Donna; Mills, Jane; Usher, Kim; McBride, William J H

doi:10.5694/mja11.11052

Topics

In February 2011, Cyclone Yasi was bearing down on the Queensland coast near Cairns. People living in coastal suburbs and towns from Cairns to Townsville were given orders to evacuate their homes, airlines put on extra flights to help people evacuate, and Queensland Health made the decision to evacuate Cairns hospitals for the first time in history.

1 School of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD.
2 Queensland Health, Cairns, QLD.
3 School of Nursing, Midwifery and Nutrition, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD.

Correspondence: cindy.woods@jcu.edu.au

Competing interests:

No relevant disclosures.

1. Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology. Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi: 30 January – 3 February 2011. http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/yasi.shtml (accessed Nov 2011).
2. Sexton KH, Alperin LM, Stobo JD. Lessons from Hurricane Rita: the University of Texas Medical Branch Hospital’s evacuation. Acad Med 2007; 82: 792-796. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e3180d096b9.
3. Eosco GM, Shafer MA, Keim B. Lessons learned: evacuations management of Hurricane Gustav. 4th Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research, American Meteorological Society; 2009 Jan 11-15; Phoenix, Ariz. http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/151280.pdf (accessed Nov 2011).
4. Maybauer MO, Megna M, Asmussen S, Maybauer DM. Hurricane evacuations of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In: Lupo A, editor. Recent hurricane research: climate, dynamics, and societal impacts. InTech, 2011: 473-482. http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/hurricane-evacuations-of-the-university-of-texas-medical-branch-at-galveston (accessed Nov 2011).

Online responses are no longer available. Please refer to our instructions for authors page for more information.