Visits to Deserted Cities?

September 1, 2005 10:46 AM

What happened the last time a city was evacuated?

An empty city is a compelling science-fiction cliché. They're saying now, everyone must leave New Orleans. I think the last time something like this occured was 1975, when the Khymer Rouge drove the Cambodians out of their capital. Was Phnom Penh actually abandoned, until the Vietnamese captured it in 1979? What was it like there, say, in 1976? Anybody know of any reports, of exploratory expeditions, or of residents who were able to hide for the duration?

posted by Rash to grab bag (13 comments total)

There's Chernobyl from 1986. Still abandoned, of course.
posted by smackfu at 11:01 AM on September 1, 2005

Ninety percent of Grand Forks, ND (pop. 50,000) was evacuated in the Flood of 1997.
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:15 AM on September 1, 2005

May not be exactly what you're looking for, but--Centralia, PA has had a mine fire burning under it for 40 years. In 1984, Congress bought out most of the homes in the town and the residents moved to the surrounding area. There are still about 20 people living there, and it's a favorite destination of so-called "urban explorers."
posted by CiaoMela at 11:35 AM on September 1, 2005 [1 favorite]

Centralia is pretty freaky. Almost all of the houses have been knocked down, the foundations smoothed out in piles of rubble that fill in the basements. Smoke rises out of the ground. Roads are jumbles of crumbling asphalt. There are shotgun shells everywhere, and occasional weird shrines to strange things -- I remember one to the Virgin Mary, another to a bathtub.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 11:45 AM on September 1, 2005

I second Centralia - I've had the opportunity to drive through it, and it's eerie. I see it as kind of a tribute to the best, weirdest parts of Central PA: something totally weird, related to coal happened, and people come and gape and some people stay and still live there.

In regards to your question, St. Malo as well as, I believe, other parts of Bretagne were ordered evacuated in WWII. From what little I know of the (very lovely) town, everyone fled, and it was severely bombed. They've carefully rebuilt it, though, to resemble the original architecture. It's now a gorgeous, bustleing seaside town.
posted by kalimac at 11:56 AM on September 1, 2005

The largest US city evacuation prior to the current evacuation of New Orleans was the evacuation of ... New Orleans, in 1998 due to Hurricane Georges. That being said, it was voluntary, and only an estimated 60% of the city's population left.

There were also many city evacuations during WW2 in the Pacific theatre, both forced on other by the Japanese and evacuations of Japanese cities in advance of attacks.

In Bucharest, Romania, they forcibly evacuated large sections of the city ahead of mass demolition of old buildings. Some plans were never carried out, and gypsies settled the abandoned buildings.

During the Balkan wars, many cities were emptied of their residents, only to be replaced with different ethnicities. Also, the Greek city of Salonika was completly emptied of it's 90% Jewish population, as well as Turks and Bulgarians to be replaced by ethnic Greeks. Speaking of that, the population exchange between the Greeks and the Turks after their war in the 1920's resulted in entire regions being evacuated, with 1.2 million Greeks moving from Asia Minor to Greece, and roughly 500,000 Turks going the other way.

You'll never get a 100% evacuation, except in the case of the total disaster (which then is more destruction than evacuation). Even in a forced evacuation (like Phnom Pehn) you'll have those members of society that live under the radar continuing to live under the radar. How can you force them to leave if you don't know they exist? Think of the chuds and the molemen of New York!
posted by loquax at 11:57 AM on September 1, 2005

Come to think of it, I guess most of what I wrote didn't really answer your question. Oh well, sorry.
posted by loquax at 11:58 AM on September 1, 2005

"Famagusta, once the centre of the tourist industry in the 1960s, is now a ghost town, caught within a UN buffer zone between Greeks and Turks. Standing here is an eerie experience, as the wind howls incessantly in this part of the island, adding to the sense of disorientation at the knowledge that a once thriving urban centre is bereft of human habitation." [link - scroll down]

According to a photographer friend of mine who once tried to gain access to Famagusta for a photo project (but didn't succeed) the city still stands exactly as people left it behind, covered with dust, the newspaper still on the table etc.
posted by AwkwardPause at 12:21 PM on September 1, 2005

AwkwardPause: I visited Turkish Cyprus for about three weeks four years ago. I went with my film professor at the time, who knew a government official well and told us about his past trips to Famagusta. Apparently it is incredibly eerie. We weren't able to go, but there are areas on the Karpas Peninsula that are similarly barren. Entire towns, previously inhabitated by Greeks, had been abandoned. Much of Northern Cyprus is underpopulated and has an eerie feel to it, unlike the Greek half, which is apparently like Ibiza.
posted by billysumday at 12:33 PM on September 1, 2005

The Fairfield section of Baltimore was mostly abandoned because much of the ground was tainted with toxic chemicals. There are plans for "brownfield" rebuilding, but now it's vacant storefronts and churches, though co-workers have said they've driven through and seen people still attending church there, which might be the eeriest thing of all to me.
posted by Airhen at 4:39 PM on September 1, 2005

WSJ:

Will New Orleans Rebound?
If Past Disasters Are a Guide, the City Will
Revive; Chicago, San Francisco, Galveston,
Johnstown Rebuilt
posted by evariste at 5:27 PM on September 1, 2005

AwkwardPause, you surely don't mean the whole city of Famagusta. A neighborhood of it called Maras, made up mainly of hotels, is abandoned since 1974. It is still used as a negotiation token between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, though the value of the area must be falling with no maintenance whatsoever done on the buildings for over 30 years.

billysumday, I very much disagree with North Cyprus being underpopulated. It is not as dense as the South, but I would not call 230,000 people in 3555 square km (~1300 square mil) underpopulated, either. Having been to both the north and the south of the island, the two are really not that different, even though the south is definitely more densely populated. You can find Ibiza on both sides, a little cheaper in the north, a little more dense in the south.
posted by copperbleu at 7:18 PM on September 1, 2005

The most recent total evacuations of cities (well, towns of a few hundred or thousand people) before Hurricane Katrina was probably the evacuation of all Jewish communities in the Gaza strip, within the past month.
posted by Asparagirl at 10:10 PM on September 1, 2005