Reading through these lesson commentaries and articles, I have realized how important evacuation plans are. There are many policies that are in place for natural hazards and disasters like a places mitigation processes, preparedness, recovery, and response. A coastal areas preparedness is also very important, this includes the communications of government agencies to the public about evacuation plans and what to do during natural disasters. Although many places have evacuation plans in place, many people choose not to participate or listen to what the government is saying about impeding storms. I found an article about the problems that the people of New Orleans faced during hurricane Katrina. The plans in 2005 for evacuation were close to meaningless. Federal levees broke and even though evacuation plans were set up, no contracts were set in place for busses or trains to help people leave the city. Many people chose to stay, and practiced “vertical evacuation”, where people stayed with family members that lived on higher ground or rented hotel rooms that were said to be safe because of instances in the past.
Because of how horrible Louisiana’s evacuation plan was, they have changed their plan and wrinkled out some problems during some trial and error. Now, if the city has declared a mandatory evacuation, federal agencies can implement that within 36 hours, all city residents and their pets will be moved to safety. The cities emergency planers also use computer simulation models developed at Louisiana State University. The article from Next City, also states that the plan was put into action in 2008, when hurricane Gustav turned toward the city. I think that it is great that Louisiana has changed their evacuation plan, because they saw how horrible it was. Even though some people stayed and tried other practices at being safe, I’m glad that a mandatory evacuation had been put in place to bring people to safety. I also like that the city is taking advantage of volunteer services, and are training people on how to help others during a crisis. I’m also happy that their new evacuation plans includes animals, I know I could never leave my cat behind, and now people wont have to. I also like the fact that they are using computer models to predict how bad storms will be and will be able to see the storms direct path. As happy as I am that they have improved their plans, it still makes me a little upset seeing as their original evacuation plans were pointless and not helpful. They left many people in the city still and didn’t push the urgency of the storm.
Reference:
Why New Orleans’ Katrina Evacuation Debacle Will Never Happen Again. (n.d.). Retrieved July 28, 2016, from https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/new-orleans-evacuation-hurricane-katrina-will-never-happen-again
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