A problem as seen with Rita is too many people evacuating.
The basic purpose of evacuating is to not die in a storm surge, not to avoid hurricane winds. Won't be one on the East Coast of Florida.
Even in Andrew a very limited number of people were killed in the thousands of homes destroyed by wind.
Charley was a fluke in having very little storm surge. Hard to forecast the evolution of this storm but it's unlikely to be as narrow as Charley.
And a true Cat 3+ "normal" surge puts the entire towns of Naples, etc. under water, just like the coast of MS in Katrina.
Cancun:
6:00 AM The government issued the yellow alert for the state of Quintana Roo a few minutes ago. In press conference the civil protection director informed that new official information will be provided every 6 hours as of today. The warning color could change to orange later tonight and red for tomorrow.
http://www.cancun.bz/cancun_news.htm
Absolutely! We live 12 miles from the coast (as the crow (& hurricanes) fly) just SW of Galveston on the Galveston Brazoria county borders. When they announced mandatory evacs would start the following morning we decided to leave Tues. evening... we went to get my mom from her nursing home at 9:30 pm. We had 7 cars, 2 boats, low boy, 10 grandkids, 83 yr old mom, a dog, 2 cats and cockateil. We got out in plenty of time with no problems. However, when the storm took that last minute turn, folks east of Houston couldn't get out... everything was clogged. It was a mess... a underreported mess.
We had booked hotel rooms for TH, Fri, Sat, &Sun... but couldn't get the rooms because somebody was already in them and they couldn't make evacuees leave. We made the reservations at 6:30 am on Mon and by 4:00 pm Mon somebody had booked the rooms... by Tues they were in the rooms.
Because of the massive swarm of people from Katrina and Rita... hotels were impossible to get. We should have got out when we did for many reasons. However, many people who could have safely waited did not and it put alot of people who needed to get out in a jam. People from Beaumont, Port Arthur, Sulfur, and the Lake Charles areas were literally walking out of traffic jams on country roads with their kids trying to find shelter. It was a mess.