County to learn first-hand about 

 North Carolina's commercial fishing 

 industry. Although the African coun- 

 try of Nigeria has a healthy seafood in- 

 dustry of its own with an abundance of 

 resources, McGee says it is 

 technologically undeveloped by 

 modern standards. Most of the actual 

 fishing and processing work is done 

 with manual labor. (At least 45 per- 

 cent of this work is handled 

 mechanically in North Carolina.) 



"I guess one of the most valuable 

 aspects of this program," McGee says, 

 "will be their exposure to our 

 technology. They will learn about all 

 the mechanical aspects of fishing 

 vessels, the use of electronic equip- 

 ment, processing of marine products 

 and much greater utilization of their 

 resources through importing and ex- 

 porting." 



During their training program, the 

 Nigerians will participate in the con- 

 tinuing education program in addition 

 to attending extension classes through 

 a local technical college, College of the 

 Albemarle. Trainees interested in a 

 particular skill, such as net making, 

 will also be required to work in an ap- 

 prenticeship program. 



But, the learning process isn't going 

 to be one-sided. McGee anticipates 

 that local fishermen are also going to 

 learn more about the industry, es- 

 pecially on an international level. He 

 hopes that if this program proves suc- 

 cessful, it can be used as a model for 

 future involvement in international 

 cooperative ventures. 



Photo courtesy of Coastland Times 



Planning for 

 Evacuation 



The threat of a hurricane is a fear all 

 coastal residents and visitors face each 

 year as the season begins in June. But, 

 perhaps an even greater fear is felt by 

 the community leaders of each small 

 town and village. They must decide 

 when and how to evacuate the people 

 during an emergency. 



Consider this hypothetical situa- 

 tion: It's the middle of August, the 

 beaches are packed, and a hurricane 

 warning is issued for the Outer Banks. 

 Over 100,000 residents and tourists are 

 asked to evacuate the area, and there 

 are only two roads leading to the 

 mainland. How long will it take to 

 safely evacuate these people? The 

 answer — no one really knows. 



Transportation studies for evacua- 

 tion have been done in other states, 

 such as Texas and Florida. In the 

 Galveston and Tampa Bay regions, 

 highly computerized models have been 

 developed to evacuate these large, ur- 

 ban areas should disaster strike. But, 

 these same models can't be applied to 

 North Carolina's coastal communities, 

 which are predominantly small and 

 rural. "That's the wrinkle in my 

 study," says John Stone, assistant 

 professor of civil engineering at NCSU. 



In a new Sea Grant project, Stone 

 will be assessing the transportation 

 problem of North Carolina's coast to 

 estimate evacuation time. He says a 



typical transportation problem for 

 evacuation includes consideration of 

 the following factors: the population 

 and its density; coastal topography; 

 the transportation system and the 

 number of alternate routes; and the 

 storm and its location, intensity, speed 

 and direction of travel. 



"Given this type of information," 

 Stone says, "we can basically deter- 

 mine how many vehicles that roadway 

 can carry in an hour." John Sanders, 

 Sea Grant's coastal weather aware- 

 ness specialist, will be providing Stone 

 with the necessary transportation, 

 topography, storm and population 

 data for two sample areas: Route 130 

 at Holden Beach and Route 33 in the 

 Lowland-Hobucken area. Stone says 

 the results of this limited study will be 

 a set of simplified techniques designed 

 for small communities. 



An example of one manual tech- 

 nique could be used to answer the 

 question asked in the beginning of 

 this article. According to Sanders, the 

 National Hurricane Center estimates 

 that in time of disaster 600 vehicles us- 

 ing a single lane of highway could 

 travel 30 miles in one hour. In each 

 vehicle, there would be approximately 

 2.5 people. Therefore, to evacuate 

 100,000 people in an area, it would 

 take approximately 67 hours. The only 

 trouble with this figure is that a warn- 

 ing means a hurricane may strike in 24 

 hours. While this general formula may 

 not be accurate for the Outer Banks 

 area, it does emphasize the great need 

 for a system coastal communities can 

 use to estimate evacuation. 



Flooding is a common transportation problem which slows down hurricane evacuation traffic 



