DUBLIN, Ga. — The state restricted traffic on I-16 Tuesday to allow folks fleeing Hurricane Dorian to better evacuate from Savannah and Georgia’s coast.
Interstate-16 is the main artery connecting Savannah and Macon.
"It’s pretty smooth so far. The mandatory evacuation started yesterday at twelve but we left this morning," said Wadia Rivers, who was heading with her family to Atlanta. Their best route out of Beaufort, South Carolina was up I-16.
Heidi Holland agreed. She was en route from Bluffton, South Carolina to Blue Ridge, Georgia. She had with her a 2-year old son, a cage-full of chickens, and a trailer with two horses.
"Very easy. Not much traffic. They have all the roads open for us," Holland said while stopping for fuel in Dublin.
State troopers had blocked the eastbound entrances to the highway so that all of the highway’s traffic could flow one way, westbound—and away from the evacuation zone on the Atlantic coast. The temporary configuration covered 120 miles from Dublin to I-16's junction with I-95 in Chatham County.
Despite what the DOT called its "contra" flow on I-16, the vast majority of the traffic 11Alive saw was on the highway’s normal westbound lanes. The contra lanes were mostly empty – so much so, that we saw motorists crossing over the median to escape clogged traffic to get onto the emptier asphalt on the other side.
The evacuation had a very casual feel to it, as the storm itself was slow to move.
"Based on this very slow-moving hurricane, it gives people plenty of time to heed the warnings to evacuate. And then gives us a day or two in advance for that evacuation to take place," said Russell McMurry, state commissioner of transportation.