We see the flooding issue right now--an evacuation would have killed far more people.
A dirty bomb? Once the bomb goes off you will have plenty of time to evacuate where you need to. Keeping radioactivity contained would be more problematic than removing people.
A biological agent? You want to quarantine rather than evacuate.
A fire? San Diego showed how to deal with that--phased evacuations ahead of the actual fire path.
Earthquake? Well, once it's done you have plenty of time to evacuate.
I can't really think of anything that would affect something the size of Houston simultaneously.
Because the cost to not be in it is enormous.
[1] https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...
Enormous compared to the value provided.
> We spend 3.2 trillion a year on Medicare
No, we don't. As your own source says, it is only $646 billion on Medicare, and $3.2 trillion a year in total combined public and private healthcare expenditures.
> Imagine if just 1K per person per year (300B) was spent on infrastructure every year to make mass evacuations over a few days possible.
Then it still probably wouldn't be enough, and we'd get a lot more value for nearly doubling infrastructure spending [0] if we spent it on something else.
[0] $416 billion/year in 2014, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52463
I'd disagree here. Many major cities in the world could probably get this done. I guess you could get London evacuated within a day just by trains if you plan accordingly. And that'll be the case for most European cities as well as many in Asia. It's just US cities which have little to no public transport (except for NYC).
Except the Houston metro area is physically larger than that part of the Netherlands (the populations are close enough to the same).
Even equating civility, which is not the case, between the NL and TX, there's literally no public transport available, period. Roads are not an option (just check any daily commute between say Montrouse and Katy).
Houston is a dead trap in events like this, with no recourse available other than holing up and hoping it's not your time.
Evacuation or not, I'm sure to leave the city at the slightest sign of heavy rain, and I haven't regretted so far.
Source: I lived in both places for the last ten years.
I do wonder how long it would actually take to move 3-5 million people ~500 km though. Quite a project.
2) There aren't many train lines, passenger trains, and most of the lines are inaccessible to most of the city.
3) There are not many buses in the city as the city is hugely sprawled out so public transportation is weak.
However, even if Rita happened to a city like say Boston, with strong public transportation options, the disaster would be pretty similar. The traffic infrastructure just isn't there to transport 6 million+ people no matter what vehicle.