National Capital Region officials Wednesday repudiated a study claiming that 7 million D.C. suburbanites will flee the area in the event of a major terrorist attack.
Homeland security heads from D.C., Maryland and Virginia said in a statement that a study conducted by West Virginia University researchers contradicts their own survey conducted by the University of Virginia.
“Our survey found that a majority of residents would comply with government directives to stay put or ‘shelter in place’ in response to a biological or radiological attack,” said Ed Reiskin, D.C.’s deputy mayor for public safety and justice.
The D.C.-Baltimore region has about 8 million people.
“I don’t see it happening. I don’t see a scenario where we have to move a million people out of the county,” said Montgomery County Homeland Security Battalion Chief Brian Geraci. “If I’m in Gaithersburg and there’s a attack downtown, why would I want to move? I should stay put.”
The survey of 800 people was presented by WVU assistant professor Brian Gerber on Wednesday at the Urban-Rural Evacuation Conference in Davis, W.Va.
Many people plan to leave the region, either heading north, south or straight through the Maryland panhandle to the Mountain State, Gerber said.
“This is a real issue that should be addressed,” Gerber said. “There’s going to be some sort of large-scale self-evacuation.”
Reiskin said he has not seen the WVU survey, but he found the findings questionable and said the survey did not include D.C. residents.
Area emergency officials say they’re working with the six-state region to improve planning for evacuation and sheltering, but they say a mass exodus remains a highly unlikely scenario. Their survey of more than 1,000 residents found 84 percent of residents would be willing to shelter at home for 48 hours in the event of a dirty bomb attack, and more than half were willing to shelter at home for two weeks in the event of a smallpox attack.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
