When the next hurricane heads toward Florida, some people won’t have to join the lines of traffic slowly snaking out of town. They won’t need to worry about gas, or where they should head. Instead, they will be swiftly flown out of state on a privately hired airplane. A new company called PriorityEvac, which launched in June, is offering private evacuation flights from Florida’s coasts. For US$1,250 a year, a member is guaranteed a spot aboard an Airbus A320 aircraft to Atlanta for a maximum of two hurricanes per season. PriorityEvac “gets the prepared Florida household out first,” the company’s website says. The appeal of a service like this is clear. Hurricanes are changing as humans warm the planet. They’re intensifying faster, dumping more rainfall and causing more destruction. At the same time, chaos within the Federal Emergency Management Agency and cuts to emergency programs are stoking people’s fears that help won’t be there when they need it. PriorityEvac says it’s offering certainty and a straightforward escape route for a relatively affordable price. But this service also hammers home what many experts have long said: The impacts of the climate crisis — even in a wealthy country like the United States — will almost always hit those with least resources hardest. Wealthier people can pay to get themselves out of danger’s way fast and first; poorer people simply have far fewer choices. “PriorityEvac is another illustration of how people with greater financial resources can purchase more convenience and certainty during a disaster,” said Christa Remington, an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of South Florida. A hazard may affect the whole community, “but the capacity to protect oneself is not distributed equally.” Regardless of resources, evacuating home as a hurricane advances isn’t easy for anyone. Jason Murgio, PriorityEvac’s founder, was inspired to start the company after seeing the chaotic process play out in real time for friends and family. “They weren’t able to get on the same flights; the family was dispersed; the cost was exorbitant, over $1,500 a person. And then you watch and see the traffic and the fuel shortages,” he said. He wanted to find a better way and came up with PriorityEvac. The $1,250 annual fee buys two evacuation flights per hurricane season — the start of June until the end of November — with members selecting from one of Florida’s six major airports. Small pets can join for a fee of $125; larger pets will need their own seat. A PriorityEvac evacuation is triggered based on a hurricane’s timing and intensity using National Hurricane Center forecasts. Once the conditions are met, the company will contact members to give them terminal information, check-in windows and departure slots. Several flights can go each day. Murgio said they looked at 22 years of Florida hurricane data and found the evacuation window was usually between 36 to 60 hours. Florida disaster authorities advise that people need only evacuate tens of miles, not hundreds, but PriorityEvac sends people to Atlanta. It chose the city because it’s big with plenty of accommodation options and is also a major transport hub for onward flights, Murgio said. The service is much cheaper than a private jet, Murgio said, and sometimes even than regular commercial flights, which can see price surges during hurricanes. On the surface, PriorityEvac’s service “seems like a viable option,” said Jeff Schlegelmilch, an associate professor who leads courses on disaster resilience at the Columbia Climate School. The hardest part of an evacuation isn’t usually the storm but the household: aging parents who struggle to sit in traffic for hours, medications, pets that disqualify people from most accommodation options, small kids. “A pre-arranged plan strips out the deliberation that causes people to leave too late, in a haphazard manner,” Schlegelmilch said but, he cautioned, PriorityEvac only covers a flight out. People will pick up the tab separately for their accommodation and the return trip home. Plus, there are a lot of moving pieces in an evacuation. “There is really no room for failure with a service like this and there are a lot of things that could go wrong,” he added. Murgio said the team has a wealth of experience with evacuations and its chief operating officer, Tim Houston, is a retired US Air Force colonel. This kind of service can be useful if it’s legitimate and well-managed, Schlegelmilch said, but he warned pressures on disaster assistance and moves to privatize disaster programs may well further widen the gap between those with resources and those without. Hurricane evacuation is already a two-tier system, experts say. Vulnerable people, including those without a vehicle and those with medical needs, are often left behind. More than half of Floridians don’t have an evacuation plan, according to 2021 research from Florida State University. Half of those surveyed cited a lack of financial resources as a reason for not evacuating, with nearly 43 per cent saying they had less than $1,000 to cover emergency expenses. “A system in which some people in an at-risk area can get to safety via a private plane while others choose to ride out a storm due to financial insecurity is not a resilient system,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at Climate Central, a non-profit research group. On top of this, the churn in federal emergency management leadership and cuts to programs have left households “less certain about what will be there when they need it,” Schlegelmilch said. For the University of South Florida’s Remington, the problem is not that this additional evacuation option exists, it’s that if these programs for wealthy people proliferate, it could “distract from the responsibility to maintain a dependable public system for everyone else,” she said. PriorityEvac’s Murgio pitches his service as a way to take pressure off resources in an emergency. “For every person you get out, there’s more resources for people that might not be members or may choose not to use this service,” he said. “I recognize it’s expensive, but aviation in general is expensive … we tried to really keep it as economical as possible,” he said. The company has plans to expand beyond Florida after this hurricane season and also cover other extreme weather perils, like wildfires — which are only getting more frequent and more severe.
