Evacuation elucidation

My sympathies go out to folks who've been evacuated from their homes by the California wildfires and the flooding in the Midwest. It's terrifying to leave behind everything you own with nothing more than hope that it'll be there when you get back.

However, I've got a problem with the word "evacuate." Years ago, that word got into my head in its, um, medical sense. Its bodily function sense. Ever since, headlines with the word "evacuate" make me snicker like a schoolboy.

I know exactly when this goofiness got stuck in my brain. I worked in a high-rise building in San Francisco in the mid-1980s. Near the elevators was a placard that said, "In case of fire, evacuate on stairs."

My thought every time: "No problem!"