History Main / CitywideEvacuation

** ''Film/Godzilla1998'': Godzilla's arrival in New York prompts Manhattan to evacuate to New Jersey.
** ''Film/Godzilla2014'': A city in Japan is evacuated when the first M.U.T.O hatches.

* ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}''. Thanks to the reluctance of the Soviet authorities to admit the scale of the disaster, the evacuation of Pripyat doesn't happen until 36 hours after the explosion of Unit 4. The scene uses the original audio of the evacuation order, broadcast by LoudspeakerTruck. One of the people being evacuated is the Communist Party official who argued against the idea when it was first raised, looking a lot more frightened now than he did then.

-->'''LoudspeakerTruck:''' Everybody, listen carefully! The Martians are coming this way! We must evacuate the city! Take food and water and extra clothing with you! All major highways have been marked to lead you to shelter and welfare centers in the hills!

* One of the major criticisms leveled at FEMA post-Hurricane Katrina was its failure to evacuate New Orleans; two notable examples include turning down an offer from Amtrak to evacuate several hundred people using trains it was moving out of the city (the trains left the city empty), and not using school buses to evacuate people (with pictures of flooded parking lots full of school buses becoming one of the iconic images of Hurricane Katrina). As a result, emergency shelters in the city quickly became overwhelmed due to the unexpectedly high numbers of people sheltering in them and doing so for a much longer time than expected.

* On November 10, 1979, a train filled with various toxic gases [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Mississauga_train_derailment derailed]] in the middle of Mississauga, Ontario. Thanks in part to a well-coordinated week-long evacuation of 218,000 people, the vast majority of the city's residents, there were zero fatalities.

* New York City, as a general rule, and Manhattan in particular, is notoriously difficult to evacuate. On September 11th, an estimated 1,000,000 people were evacuated from lower Manhattan by boat alone. (This is considered to be the largest maritime evacuation in world history at 500,000 - 1,000,000 people in the first 8 hours. Compare this to the former record holder, the Dunkirk evacuation, which had just below 340,000 in a total of 9 days.) Many more people evacuated by other means, mostly by walking over bridges.

* In 2017, a very active hurricane season necessitated the evacuation of multiple major US cities such as Houston, Tampa, and Miami. Citizens found themselves stranded on the highways as the roadways simply were not meant to handle millions of people moving in a single direction simultaneously.

* ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'': Towards the film's end, the Furious Five evacuate the Jade Valley so none of the villagers will be in Tai Lung's warpath when he arrives. The villagers all return when the danger is over at dawn.

* In ''WesternAnimation/FrozenII'' after seeing an intense wind rip through Arendelle followed by all the fires going out and all the water disappearing, Elsa realizes that [[FourElementEnsemble Earth]] is next and orders the entire city to evacuate before the earthquake hits.

* ''Literature/LordOfTheRings'': The Rohirrim's hilltop city being evacuated to the more defensible fortress of Helm's Deep. Of course, they didn't count on Saruman having breaching explosives...
* ''Rip Tide'', a 1980's novel by Donald Cheatham. An island off Florida has to be evacuated due to an oncoming hurricane. Things don't go well as no-one has paid attention to the civil defense signs in the past so don't know where the shelters are, the police have to threaten lethal force a couple of times to get people moving, and eventually a car washes off the bridge forcing the police to shut down the evacuation and go to the shelters themselves to save their own lives.
* In ''Literature/TheStand'', most of the residents of Boulder, Colorado evacuate over a mistaken belief that the superflu 'Captain Tripps' was secretly created at the weather research station nearby. Some residents remained, but far less than other metropolitan areas. This resulted in far fewer bodies to be disposed of and much less rioting/looting in the final stage of the breakdown, leaving Boulder ready to be easily reoccupied afterwards as the capital of the Boulder Free Zone.
* ''Wyatt's Hurricane'' by Desmond Bagley. Wyatt is a meteorologist [[CassandraTruth trying to convince people]] that a hurricane is about to strike a BananaRepublic in the middle of a revolution. TheCaligula throws Wyatt out of his office but the RebelLeader believes him, has his soldiers evacuate the citizenry by force and withdraws to higher ground, [[GoodIsNotNice knowing that the government forces will reoccupy the city]] and get [[WeatherOfWar wiped out by the hurricane]].

** As soon as France declared war to UsefulNotes/NaziGermany in September 1939, the city of Strasbourg and other smaller cities in [[UsefulNotes/DepartementalIssues Alsace]] (which is most of France's borders with Germany) were nigh-completely evacuated, with most of the evacuees going to South Western areas of France such as Dordogne. This was done out of fears that something like the horrific German shelling of Strasbourg during the UsefulNotes/FrancoPrussianWar could happen again. When Germans reannexed Alsace after the French defeat in 1940, the evacuees were invited to come back (most came back but they weren't exactly expecting Nazi indoctrination).

** As soon as France declared war to UsefulNotes/NaziGermany in September 1939, the city of Strasbourg and other smaller cities in [[UsefulNotes/DepartementalIssues Alsace]] (which is most of France's borders with Germany) were nigh-completely evacuated, with most of the evacuees going to South Western areas of France such as Dordogne. This was done out of fears that something like the horrific German shelling of Strasbourg during the UsefulNotes/FrancoPrussianWar could happen again. When Germans reannexed Alsace after the French defeat in 1940, the evacuees were invited to come back (most came back but they weren't expecting to fall under Nazi rule).

* ''Series/{{Krypton}}'': In the season 1 finale, Brainiac tries to collect the city state of Kandor, shrink it, and put the residents in suspended animation, and lots of people try to get out before he can finish the process. Many citizens and soldiers flee in skimmers offscreen (although some are shot down), Seg tries to get people out through tunnels and calling transports from other cities, and Ajax-air and her Black Zero troops pack up to flee across the Outlands on foot.

** As soon as France declared war to UsefulNotes/NaziGermany in September 1939, the city of Strasbourg and other smaller cities in [[UsefulNotes/DepartementalIssues Alsace]] (which is most of France's borders with Germany) were nigh-completely evacuated, with most of the evacuees going to South Western areas of France such as Dordogne. This was done out of fears that something like the horrific German shelling of Strasbourg during the UsefulNotes/FrancoPrussianWar could happen again. When Germans reannexed Alsace after the French defeat in 1940, the evacuees were invited to come back.
** Most of the German population of East UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}} (including the biggest city there, Königsberg -- Kaliningrad nowadays) was evacuated to avoid atrocities at the hands of the [[UsefulNotes/RedsWithRockets Red Army]]. Polish and Russian settlers filled the area when the war ended.

* ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda3'': The Jade Valley ''intended'' to have another exodus of everyone except Shifu and the Furious Five before Kai arrives, although this time, the Jade warriors are unable to execute the evacuation before Kai's attack.

* ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda3'': The Jade Valley has another exodus of everyone except Shifu and the Furious Five before Kai arrives, although this time it occurs offscreen. Again like the last time, the population returns to rebuild at the end once the crisis is over.

* ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow'': The climatologist, trying to impress on the government the scale of the ongoing catastrophe, produces a SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic, draws a line through the middle of the United States, and says "Evacuate everyone south of this line." The President reluctantly agrees and in later scenes crowds of people are seen crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico.

* ''Film/DeepImpact''. The Biederman fragment of the comet will impact the Atlantic ocean, causing a massive tsunami that will destroy many coastal cities. New York City (and presumably others) is evacuated once this becomes clear.

** Downplayed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, as [[BlitzEvacuees children were evacuated]] to distant places in order to keep them safe from German air raids.

** Most of the German population of East UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}} (including the biggest city there, Königsberg -- Kaliningrad nowadays) was evacuated to avoid atrocities at the hands of the [[UsefulNotes/RedsWithRockets Red Army]]. They were replaced by Poles and Russians.

* Deconstructed in ''Film/WrongIsRight''. Terrorists have threatened to detonate two suitcase nukes in New York City. With five hours to go before the deadline, the President is pouring over the evacuation plan and is hopeful when the report says they can successfully evacuate its two million residents until IntrepidReporter Patrick Hale points out a few disclaimers.

** Downplayed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, as children were evacuated to distant places in order to keep them safe from German bomb raids.

** As soon as France declared war to UsefulNotes/NaziGermany in September 1939, the city of Strasbourg and other smaller cities in [[UsefulNotes/DepartementalIssues Alsace]] were nigh-completely evacuated, with most of the evacuees going to South Western areas of France such as Dordogne. This was done out of fears that something like the horrific German shelling of Strasbourg during the UsefulNotes/FrancoPrussianWar could happen again. When Germans reannexed Alsace after the French defeat in 1940, the evacuees were invited to come back.

** Downplayed during UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo, as children were evacuated to distant places in order to keep them safe from German bomb raids.
* As word of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion came, the citizens of the city of Pripyat and its surroundings evacuated, and to this day, the city became a GhostTown.

There is a city full of innocents. Men, women, children; civilians. But danger is coming, and because those civilians live in the city each and every one of them is in grave danger. Maybe it's a BigBad hoping to [[RapePillageAndBurn sack]] or [[KillEmAll massacre]] the city, maybe it's an impending natural disaster like a [[GiantWallOfWateryDoom tsunami]] or a [[TheGreatFire fire]]. Either way, it's too late to prevent what's coming and if people stay there they will die.

* ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow'': UpToEleven as the climatologist, trying to impress on the government the scale of the ongoing catastrophe, produces a SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic, draws a line through the middle of the United States, and says "Evacuate everyone south of this line." The President reluctantly agrees and in later scenes crowds of people are seen crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico.