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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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February
2006
Volume
10 - Number 1 |
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Evacuation Planning for New Orleans
By Patrick Lynch The evacuation of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina in hindsight can be considered woefully inadequate. The pre planning for an evacuation of the New Orleans (NO) area appears non-existent. New Orleans emergency planners had not prepared for a mass evacuation, thus the city’s infrastructure could not support a mass evacuation. The census bureau estimated the population of New Orleans as 462, 269 in 2004, with a population of the greater New Orleans metropolitan area totaling 1.3 million. Initially it was believed that 85% of NO residents heeded warnings to evacuate the area. The 15% left behind consisted of the poor, infirmed and handicapped, due to the fact that these people did not have the means to evacuate the area. Unlike their emergency management counterparts in Florida, Louisiana management officials lacked an adequate plan to evacuate New Orleans. Plans were lacking even despite years of research that predicted a disaster equal to or worse than Katrina. In fact, a disaster test run a year prior to the catastrophe-exposed weaknesses in evacuation and recovery plans, yet officials still failed to come up with solutions. This exercise, which focused on the developments of a fictional Hurricane, “Pam” highlighted the fact that if a strong hurricane were to hit NO 100,000 people would had no means to evacuate – and that thousands more would be immobilized by infirmity or age. All levels of government participated in this widespread exercise and the results were published. But not concrete planning resulted in the wake of these warnings. Officials in other jurisdictions expressed concern before and after the devastating effects of Katrina. Lack of a coordinated response plan was a key discussion point. "They're where we were in 1992, exactly," said Col. Julie Jones, director of law enforcement for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, in a reference to Florida's state of emergency preparedness before Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Miami-Dade County. After action reports and testimony from Congress confirm that the outdated evacuation system was poised for failure. But prior the storm FEMA and other government agencies still knew that upwards of 100,000 people needed to be evacuated as well as assuming hospitals and other care facilities would assume the responsibility to evacuate patients on their own, which most care facilities failed to do. Several of the issues concerning an evacuation in New Orleans went un-addressed by the state and local officials. Unlike other emergency mangers in other jurisdictions, Louisiana’s emergency management experts and political leaders seemed ignorant to repeated warnings of the risk they faced. For example, Florida, state, under Bush, has allocated resources to study and glean best practices from storms in Florida and elsewhere. Florida studied evacuation procedures and routes after Hurricane Floyd in 1999, in order to better evacuate people when the need arisen. At the time of Katrina Louisiana still had not addressed the evacuation needs of NO. The most recent Louisiana emergency operations plan doesn't address how to evacuate in the case of flooding from storm surge, saying simply that The Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area represents a difficult evacuation problem due to the large population and its unique layout”. The evacuation of Louisiana during and after Hurricane Katrina lacked in so many areas it has inspired the DHS to lead a review of evacuation plans prior to the 2006 hurricane season. The Department has made participation in this review process mandatory in order for jurisdictions to receive FY 2006 Homeland Security Grants. |