Going through the motions, part 239

More details on the lavish drill last year on “Hurricane Pam”:

Under FEMA’s direction, federal and state officials began working on the $1 million Hurricane Pam project in July 2004, when 270 experts gathered in Baton Rouge, La., for an eight-day simulation. The so-called “tabletop” exercise focused planners on a mock hurricane that produced more than 20 inches of rain and 14 tornadoes. The drill included computer graphic simulations projected on large screens of the hurricane slamming directly into New Orleans. “We designed this to be a worst-case but plausible storm,” said Madhu Beriwal, chief executive of Innovative Emergency Management Inc. of Baton Rouge, hired by FEMA to conduct the exercise.

Isn’t that great? For eight days the experts went through this exercise, probably in a deluxe hotel, with all the amenities, the highest tech computers, and fancy simulations of catastrophe—and none of this translated into, say, a ready-to-execute plan to use hundreds of available school buses to drive the people caught in the doomed city out of town.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 10, 2005 12:13 AM | Send