Although Cape Cod and the Islands are not prone to the kind of flash flooding from rivers that killed more than 120 people in Texas last week, local emergency managers have their own risks to watch.
“For us, 'The Big One’ is a hurricane,” said Chip Reilly, emergency preparedness director for the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment.
Hurricanes can bring coastal flooding, along with destructive wind, rain, downed trees, and power outages.
Reilly said the maximum-impact scenario would be a major hurricane hitting the region in August, when the population has swelled with summer tourists. By then, the September peak of hurricane season is drawing near.
“People are here for vacation,” he said. “They’re not going to want to leave until the last minute. And, of course, we’re restricted by our bridges.”
Any evacuation would hit a major choke point at the Bourne and Sagamore bridges, the only roadways off the Cape. Traffic already backs up on weekends, and even more so on a holiday — just like it did Sunday, as people were leaving at the end of the 4th of July weekend.
“We were at gridlock status through a lot of the communities in the Mid Cape,” Reilly said. “So that’s one of our issues, but we plan for it. We plan for everything.”
The state has a Cape Cod Emergency Traffic Plan, developed in coordination with local police and emergency management agencies, to smooth traffic flow over the bridges in the event of an evacuation.
Planning on the Cape also includes emergency shelters at six high schools and a “shelter of last resort” at Joint Base Cape Cod.
While a hurricane is one of the more likely emergencies here, Reilly said emergency management officials take an “all hazards” approach. Rather than focus on a single type of event, they ready the system to respond to anything — be it a storm, terrorism, or something else.
The good thing about hurricanes, he said, is the benefit of time. In his office, the staff starts every morning looking at a computer tracking of storms brewing off the African coast. They know about storms a week in advance, and they can see if a hurricane is likely to hit the Cape region several days out.
But tornadoes, like some floods, don’t offer much notice.
Reilly said his best advice for storm safety is to pay attention to weather alerts — including tornado alerts — and take them seriously.
“I’ve personally been there before, where we’ve gotten tornado alerts in the middle of the night, and we say, 'Is it really worth waking up the kids?’” he said.
His answer is yes.
“Since the first time that we heard this happen, I now wake up my children, and we bring them down to the basement, and we camp out down there until the 'all clear’ is given,” he said. “And that’s what we encourage people to do: Take the weather alert seriously.”
Copyright 2025 CAI
