Evacuation, Safety Measures for Floyd Force Shutdowns on Eastern Seaboard
Freight movement in the southeastern United States ground to a halt last week as a massive hurricane bobbed and weaved up the Eastern Seaboard, threatening to hammer towns from South Florida to North Carolina.
At press time, forecasters had downgraded the hurricane from Category 4 to 3 — on an intensity scale of 1 to 5 — but it was still packing winds up to 130 mph. The sheer size of the storm was expected to wreak havoc on the Interstate 95 corridor from Florida as far north as Maine.
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Hurricane Floyd crippled truck and freight movements in the Southeast. On Sept. 15, the day before the storm was expected to make landfall on the U.S. coast, many carriers with offices in the storm’s projected path had secured their equipment and were going home for the evening to be with their families and take care of personal effects.
The storm’s unpredictable path forced the evacuation of more than 3 million residents along the southeastern coast, an exodus President Clinton called the largest peacetime evacuation in U.S. history. The exodus resulted in jammed Interstates and local highways, making movement of freight difficult or impossible.
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