# Evacuation, shelter and outage-source layer

Built September 28, 2026. Local collection and reference page; not deployed, continuously refreshed or suitable for automated evacuation decisions.

## Collected

- 23 evacuation-zone polygon features published by the SCEMD Know Your Zone website.
- 21 evacuation-status records from that same website. All returned `normal` in this snapshot; this label is preserved as provider data, not interpreted as an all-clear.
- A successful shelter-feed response with zero records. This is a timestamped source result, not proof that no shelter or other assistance is available statewide.
- Four official outage map links: Dominion Energy South Carolina, Duke Energy, Electric Cooperatives of SC and Santee Cooper. No outage totals, restoration estimates or outage polygons have been imported.

The records include retrieval time. Provider publication/update timestamps were not present in these inspected payloads; they remain unknown.

## Important source discrepancy

The SCEMD website's polygon and status keys do not fully agree. Polygon-only keys: Colleton C, Jasper C, Berkeley D/E/F/B. Status-only keys: Berkeley G/H/I and Charleston, Berkeley B. No fuzzy merge, county substitution or guessed zone conversion was performed. Six polygons are unmatched; four status records have no exact geometry match. The dataset may reflect different source revisions, but the cause is not established.

Automatic address-to-zone assignment remains disabled. Use the [official zone finder](https://www.scemd.org/prepare/know-your-zone/) and current local/state announcements. The saved geometry is for inspection and integration review until the discrepancy is resolved with authoritative current boundaries. Planning zones are not evacuation orders.

## Files and refresh

- `zones.geojson`: normalized reference geometry and exact status matches only. Embedded source HTML/scripts are omitted.
- `evacuation-status.json`: all source status rows, including unmatched ones.
- `shelters.geojson`: explicit shelter statuses where returned. An entry is not marked open unless its source status explicitly says Open; missing status stays unknown.
- `status.json`: retrieval time, status, counts and mismatch diagnostics.
- `outage-sources.json`: provider links and verification limits.
- `emergency-resources.html` in the website root: saved-data viewer and official source links. It recalculates staleness, but does not itself run collection.

Run from the website directory:

```powershell
python tools/collect_emergency_layers.py
python tools/collect_emergency_layers.py --offline
python tools/test_emergency_layers.py
```

Default downloads fresh public SCEMD data. Offline rebuild retains source-file retrieval times instead of pretending the data was refreshed. Failed requests preserve previous outputs and mark collection unavailable. The viewer marks snapshots older than 15 minutes stale. No background schedule was installed.

Four tests passed for mismatched keys, unknown opening status, explicit opening status, untrusted description exclusion and duplicate status rejection. JavaScript syntax validation passed. Browser layout/interaction testing is outstanding.

## Source provenance

The URLs below were found in scripts loaded by SCEMD's own public pages, not inferred from unrelated ArcGIS search results:

- https://www.scemd.org/prepare/know-your-zone/
- https://www.scemd.org/json/evac_zones.json?v=1.2
- https://www.scemd.org/json/evacuation.json
- https://www.scemd.org/stay-informed/emergency-shelters/
- https://www.scemd.org/json/shelters.json

Outage sources were verified through [SC ORS](https://ors.sc.gov/safety/emergency-management) and [Dominion's current SC page](https://www.dominionenergy.com/south-carolina/report-outage-or-emergency). ORS's legacy SCE&G link was replaced with the current SC-specific Dominion map; the similarly named Virginia-focused Dominion map was not used. Duke's direct web-reader request returned 403, so its link is only verified as listed by ORS. The Santee Cooper wrapper loads an external map; underlying data was not imported.

Remaining work: reconcile evacuation-boundary revisions, verify nonempty live shelter records when available, obtain suitable outage feeds/reuse arrangements, add official evacuation routes, and deploy scheduled collection with monitoring. No emails were sent, agreements accepted or API permissions obtained in this step.