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How Hurricane Florence is affecting transportation routes around the US

Blog 1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2018/09/11/flooding-high-winds-florence-could-impact-regions-roads-transit-systems/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5e143b8a8dfe

Hurricanes and other natural disasters have devastating effects on the natural environment of entire regions as well as human created structures. Recently, Hurricane Florence is set to make landfall along the East Coast of the United States within the next few day. Millions of people are already preparing for its devastating effects. Over 1,000 sandbags have already been deployed in the DC area alone to prepare for Florence. Multiple warnings have been issued regarding the hurricane, and top government officials have warned the thousands of people who will be hit the worst to evacuate. Hurricanes not only affect the people and wildlife that live in or are in their path of destruction but they also affect a series of transportation networks in and around the area of the hurricane. Florence has already created a drastic change to these networks.

Transportation networks provide a vital service to people within the United States. Florence puts pressure on the networks in the surrounding areas because the overload of people and the preemptive closure of certain routes such as flights, trains, and buses. As people pour out of areas that are supposed to be hit by Florence, the routes such as highways, local roads, and train routes become severely congested. This provides a serious logistical headache for those attempting to retreat from the hurricane. With the ever looming presence of Florence, future flights, trains, and buses are already being cancelled because they may pass through the predicted areas that Florence will hit. Again, this forces thousands of people to take different routes in different directions which may alter traffic, movement, and fluidity of certain routes. Finally, Florence will lay waste to many different places including the roads, train tracks, etc. The destruction of such routes will cause a chain reaction in other routes as more and more people are diverted to different places causing the same problems as before. All in all, Florence will not only be bad for the people and area hit by it, but it will also cause the closure of certain portions of the transportation network on the East Coast and congest other portions of that same network.

 

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