Pre-Planning Your Evacuation Route: A One-Hour Exercise
You will not plan a route during a crisis. The mental space is not there. One hour of pre-work — on a normal Saturday — gives you a route that survives congestion, fuel shortage, and route closure.
Why "we will just drive south" fails
Across multiple major evacuations — Hurricane Katrina, Mariupol, eastern Ukraine 2022, wildfire evacuations in Greece and Portugal — early decision-makers had broader options than those who waited. The people who waited until "it became serious" got stuck on roads that were full, blocked, or fuel-empty within hours. The decision to leave is half the problem. The route is the other half.
A pre-planned route is not paranoia. It is one hour spent on a normal weekend that converts a future moment of panic into a sequence of remembered actions.
The three-route principle
You need not one route but three: primary, secondary, foot. Each handles a different failure mode.
Primary route — by car, motorway-priority. Fastest if traffic is light. The default. Plan it to a specific destination 100–300 km away — relative, friend in another region, hotel in a stable area. NOT just "south" or "out of the city." A specific address.
Secondary route — by car, smaller roads. When the motorway is closed or impassable due to congestion. Slower, but uses the road network that emergency services and panicking crowds typically avoid. Print it on paper. Local-knowledge cab drivers in your area often know these routes intuitively; spend 10 minutes asking one in normal times.
Foot route — to the nearest defensible position. When cars do not move (city centre, peak congestion, fuel out). To a specific shelter within 5 km — a relative's flat, a known public shelter, a friend's house. Map the route. Walk it once.
Five things to know about your route
- Fuel stations en route. Mark two specific stations on the primary route. In a fuel-supply scare, the ones nearest the city run out first; the ones at the 80-km mark stay stocked longer.
- Choke points. Bridges, tunnels, single-lane sections. These are where evacuation traffic stops moving. Identify them. Have a way around.
- The first 24 hours of accommodation. Hotel, relative, friend — confirmed in advance, not assumed. "We will figure it out" is not a plan.
- The decision trigger. Write down the exact condition that means "go." For example: "If officials issue an evacuation notice OR if [specific event] occurs OR if [specific service] fails for >12 hours." Vague triggers produce vague action.
- Communication plan. One household member is the contact point for everyone outside the household. Their number is memorised. SMS-first, voice only if SMS fails. (See the comms briefing for detail.)
The 1-hour exercise
Open Google Maps. Pick your specific destination — a real place. Plan the primary route. Save it offline (most map apps support this). Plan the secondary on smaller roads — actually drive a stretch of it on a normal weekend so you know it works. Walk the first kilometre of the foot route from your home. Take a photo of the route map and email it to yourself.
That is the whole exercise. The household that does this once is fundamentally different from the one that has not.
What this is not
This is not preparing for the apocalypse. It is the same level of thinking that booking a holiday requires. The mental work is in deciding the destination in advance, not in any survival skill. Most evacuation crises in modern Europe will resolve within 72 hours; what matters is being out of the affected zone for that window.
One thing this week: identify one specific person whose home you could go to. Tell them. Send them a half-sentence message confirming it. That is the foundation; routes are easy once you have a destination.