Evacuate or Shelter-in-place The Role of Corporate Memory and Political Environment in Hospital-evacuation Decision Making

The authors conducted this study to identify factors that most heavily influenced the decisions to evacuate the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs New York Harbor Healthcare System's Manhattan Campus before Hurricane Irene in 2011 and before Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The most influential factor in the decision to evacuate was New York City's hospital-evacuation mandate. Results indicated that hospital evacuation decisions are confounded by political considerations and are influenced by past disaster experience.