New Orleans’ evacuation document

Many people now understand that evacuation was a city—not a state or a federal—responsibility. But their knowledge of this seems general rather than specific. This City of New Orleans document, “ANNEX I: HURRICANES: PREPAREDNESS (PHASE I: TRAINING, EXERCISES AND EDUCATION)” makes the city’s responsibility for carrying out any evacuation crystal clear. However, as can be seen by the title, with its reference to “training, exercises, and education,” this document does not list the actual procedures the city will use if the evacuation of a major part of the city’s population is called for.

Here’s one excerpt. Notice all the references to the elements of evacuation planning—identification of the populations at risk, the routes, the management team, and so on.

I. GENERAL

The safe evacuation of threatened populations when endangered by a major catastrophic event is one of the principle reasons for developing a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan. The thorough identification of at-risk populations, transportation and sheltering resources, evacuation routes and potential bottlenecks and choke points, and the establishment of the management team that will coordinate not only the evacuation but which will monitor and direct the sheltering and return of affected populations, are the primary tasks of evacuation planning.

Then the killer statement:

Due to the geography of New Orleans and the varying scales of potential disasters and their resulting emergency evacuations, different plans are in place for small-scale evacuations and for citywide relocations of whole populations. [Italics added.]

“Plans are in place … for citywide relocations of whole populations.” I’m impressed. Inquiring minds would like to know exactly what those plans were, for example, how were people to be moved out of town, or what was to be done with people who could not be moved out of town immediately. All that must be in the plans. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe the “plan” is just as general as this document. Maybe there is no plan. Or maybe the plan is specific, and the mayor simply didn’t execute it. The document says that the plans are in place, meaning they are in a state of readiness to be executed. But why wasn’t the appropriate plan executed? And the best answer at the moment seems to be: Mayor Ray Nagin is a strutting, preening, slightly more yuppified version of a glad-hander prancing around town in a fancy suit and a Cadillac. He showed up at his office, he dug the perks, dug the “role” of being mayor, but when it came to exercising the most important and urgent duties of his office, there was no one home.

I don’t know that what I just said is true, and maybe it will turn out that it is terribly wrong and unfair. But all the evidence so far—chiefly the way Nagin sent thousands of people to the Superdome without activating any steps to take care of them once they were there, thus creating the most horrendous, subhuman circumstances in historical memory—clearly points to the conclusion that that is indeed what happened.

I’m looking for other linked pages that may have more specific information on evacuation. I see a link for “General Evacuation Guidelines,” but it runs out to be, not the guidelines for the city, but guidelines for residents, including such pointers as “

- Stay calm. Take your disaster supply kit. Remember as you leave your house to do the following:
- Turn off lights, household gas appliances, heating, air conditioning, and ventilation systems.
- Leave refrigerator/freezer on.
- Lock house. Etc. etc.

I see another page for “Comprehensive Plans—Hurricanes.” I load it, but it turns out to be the first page I was on, the one that dealt with TRAINING, EXERCISES AND EDUCATION.”

That’s all I’ve found so far. Maybe there’s another page that gives the city’s actual “to do” list in event of the need for massive evacuation. It would sure be nice to find that.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 05, 2005 02:06 AM | Send