Coping with Disaster

Parent Cafe
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<p>Iwant to go beyond recriminations and discuss some practical issues involved in coping with disaster of the magnitude of Katrina.</p>

<p>Many years ago, my brother and his family decided, like all good Frenchmen, to start their vacation on July 14. Like thousands upon thousands of other Parisians, we drove out of Paris; or rather, we headed toward the Porte d’Orleans, one of the main exits out of the city, and sat in traffic for well over one hour. The radio was telling us that cars were backed up for several kilometers. One woman tried to maneuver her car around others in front of her and ended up causing a chain reaction that left 6 people dead. When we got to Normandy, we were all exhausted.</p>

<p>I was thinking about this experience in relation to the evacuation of New Orleans. As Barrons has pointed out, but in relation to FEMA, if an order had come early and Katrina had bypassed NO, there would have been huge recriminations against those who had ordered draconian measures. That applies to city-level orders as well. So the danger must be real and imminent before a mandatory evacuation plan can be proclaimed with any hope of its being heeded. Before that, authorities can urge residents to leave on their own. In such scenarios, the people who evacuate first are those who have the greatest resources: those who have cars or other means of transportation, funds to tide them over, and connections elsewhere to receive them or knowledge of places where they might go. An aspect of poverty is precisely immobility, being cash-strapped, especially at the end of the month, lack of connections outside of one’s own neighborhood and lack of knowledge about possible resources that could be tapped. </p>

<p>While disaster planning called for evacuation, there does not seem to have been much thought about the end point. It’s easy to say “Get out of here.” There ought to be better answers to “And go where?” There was an account of early evacuees going to hotels and motels and quickly running out of the cash they had. While local good Samaritans anonymously paid part or all of their room bills, they had other expenses that taxed their resources. One story featured a man who’d left NO with $1600 and was down to $200. Few poor people have that much cash to spend on themselves alone.</p>

<p>With voluntary evacuation, it seems from reading Times-Picayune, the roads out of NO became clogged up very quickly (this is what brought my own experience to mind). An even more large-scale early evacuation of NO might have been difficult, if not impossible, unless means of transport beyond the city’s could be mobilized. I read somewhere that the school buses photographed sitting in water after Katrina had actually been used to ferry people to the Superdome.</p>

<p>These are just some musings about what it means to evacuate a city as large as NO.</p>

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<p>Marite, I would agree with much of that. Even considering leaving Miami when Katrina was a mere category 1, the roads were heavily congested to the point where it simply seemed far safer to gamble and stay put. Far better to get off the roads than sit in traffic for hours, and burn gas and erode other resources.</p>

<p>And, even with a smaller storm, cash flows out quickly - we tend to make sure automobiles have oil changes and fluid checks, gas, food on the road is more expensive, and then there’s the issue of throwing out all the food at home because the power outages will ruin it anyway. Checking into a hotel for several days will totally wreck a budget. So even if you’re closer to the category of “haves” vs. “have nots”, a hurricane is going to cost lots of money. </p>

<p>Last year, we went through four iterations of throwing out food. Finally we began to buy food in two day supplies. </p>

<p>Long term, one begins to think about moving to another area of the country where hurricanes can’t come, but then of course that leads to other considerations - does a higher cost of living, a state and city income tax, and cold weather (winter and its related costs of heating and auto maintenance) offset the cost of the hurricanes?</p>

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<p>Evacuees may not
come to Cape
FEMA says many of the hurricane victims want to stay closer to their homes. (Today’s Globe)
<a href=“http://www.boston.com%5B/url%5D”>http://www.boston.com</a></p>

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<p>Marite, I have stayed resolutely out of the multiple threads here bashing Bush, blaming the victims, blaming everyone, etc, mainly because most of the people posting here have no clue - about the magnitude of this disaster, about hurricanes in general, about NOLA - some posters of course, are familiar with the Gulf Coast, but most aren’t, they are just reacting to what is on TV.</p>

<p>The cold brutal honest truth is, at best, a more coordinated response would have gotten in there a day or two earlier. Moving some reporters and satellite trucks in and out is one thing, evacuating 10000s of people, many sick, disabled, some armed, some in withdrawal, all in an orderly fashion, is another thing altogether. The magnitude of this storm is difficult to appreciate if you haven’t seen hurricanes. THe logistical nightmare of no communication and no transport is hard to appreciate unless you see it, too. It takes 24 complete hours after the wind dies down (that would be late in the day on Tues) for even the best coordinated efforts to get to an afflicted area - and the water was still rising in NO at that point, so add even more time.</p>

<p>I’m not saying we (all of us) can’t learn some valuable lessons about disaster planning - how about reviewing when to call in the armed forces, and who can authorize it for starters - but we need to recognize that everyone has some basic reponsiblity for their own personal safety, and a moral responsiblity for their neighbors, government can’t replace all of that, it can only start from that point. Also, this is a once in a century event for this little stretch of the Gulf Coast, and for this city, and sadly, many people are going to die in it, regardless of how much money and planning and government was thrown at it.</p>

<p>Finally, I have to recall my DH’s family’s personal history - one of his great-grandfathers fathered 28 children - his first wife, and entire family of 14 kids were drowned in a hurricane in about 1903, the storm is nameless and not even remembered (not the big Galveston storm), except in the little corner of South Louisiana where they are from. Great granddad was upstate in LA or TX, working, and escaped the storm. He returned home, remarried, and had 14 more kids. My husband’s grandmother was about 3rd in the second family, when she was 8 or 9 years old, she and her siblings were staked out in a small boat, covered with a tarpaulin to ride out a hurricane, because that was the safest way to ride out the storm surge, in a carefully selected spot - she lived to tell the story (in French).</p>

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<p>I think we have to take it as a given that when 30% of the population is Black and poor, and have virtually no ongoing “friendly” relationships with the white and wealthy, and when day-to-day services for said folks means that the burden of caring for sick and disabled falls upon them as well, a great many won’t be able to get out, even if they want to. As my friend with the grandma on a vent, mother with Alzheimers, daughter in an auto crash, son brain-damaged at birth, and daughter with three kids said, and who works two jobs to support them all (the employer at one might have required her to work on Sunday), “Which family members would you have me leave behind?” We saw such decisions actually being made all over town, at nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and in private houses.</p>

<p>The FEMA website says have your car filled with half a tank of gas…what if you have no car? Not only the hurricane, but the response and capacity of the poor folks of New Orleans to get out had been modeled (and demonstrated in previous disasters.) The need for a federal response was known well in advance. People weren’t going to get out. </p>

<p>And likely hundreds of lives could have been saved simply by following NBC News to the Convention Center with a bunch of SUVs with water bottles, or simply dropping simple supplies on the roof of the Hyatt.</p>

<p>We DO have a moral responsibility for a neighbors - that’s partially what government is all about. I pay taxes so that there is a federal agency like FEMA taking the “LEAD” (as it is says in law) in disaster planning and response, that will care for people that I can’t.</p>

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<p>Let’s do a little exercise. Let’s imagine, just for the sake of argument, that there were 200 additional buses, all gassed-up and ready-to-go, all positioned appropriately. Let’s imagine that folks could get to those buses, that the buses could get out of town, and that (this is a big if) the buses had some place to go. In the best of circumstances, then, at 40 people per bus, an additional 8,000 people might have gotten out. Would have been great if they did. But the reality is the number would have been very small, relative to the number of evacuees. (Now, mind you, that many evacuations were lost in flight cancellations on the part of the major airlines on SATURDAY (as Interesteddad noted), well before the storm hit, because these great corporate institutions had decided that they didn’t want to fly virtually empty plane INTO New Orleans, and FEMA said absolutely nothing about it.)</p>

<p>That’s why the modeling done indicated that folks weren’t going to be getting out. FEMA knew that in advance. (They had only just, within the previous year, done an exercise which indicated folks weren’t getting out.) So the contingency had to assume, you would think, that which they already knew.</p>

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<p>This is why I wanted to stay out of this.</p>

<p>FEMA does not have the authority to do some of the things Mini is asking it to do - who should have that authority, and how it should be exercised is one of the things that needs to be debated. Giving the federal government the authority to forcibly remove people from their homes (which is what it would take in many instances) is a little scary to me. Many people in the South, including a lot of those in NOLA, are resistant to giving the federal government any authority, so there is a lot of room for discussion.</p>

<p>Should more effort been made to evacuate the ill and infirm before - definitely, although, and this is what I don’t think the people far removed from the situation understand, you would have only saved some lives (a few hundred maybe, we don’t yet know how many deaths there were) - this would still have been an epic disaster if Ray Nagin and George Bush had personally gone door to door begging people to leave.
And no, I don’t think even Geraldo has insinuated that hundreds of people are dead at the COnvention Center or on I-10. Was it stupid and unforgiveable that water wasn’t dropped in those 2 places - yes, no doubt, but we still don’t know the whole story. Were those drops not made because of communication - it was all over the TV, but could the people there get the water to the helicopters with the word to take it to the interstate? How many would have been trampled in the stampede to water in the face of what the media characterized as general lawlessness - again that is no excuse for not trying, but I don’t know if the final tally of deaths would have been much different.</p>

<p>I guess you would have to live here to understand how hard evacuation is - every time a storm comes, millions of people are in harm’s way. Many of them, like the ill and infirm nursing home residents Mini discusses, are in danger just from evacuating - it can be hard on them to be moved, medicines can be forgotten in the general chaos, etc. Even though a Cat 5 is coming, it is hard to move bedridden patients - there is no where for them to go - that’s hard for ya’ll to believe, but it it is true - there aren’t enough ambulances to move them all, not enough beds, the hopsitals can’t take them, etc. Add to that, 9 times out of 10, the storm turns and goes elsewhere, or it is less strong when it hits, very unpredictable. Preparing for the doomsday scenario of the levee breaking in NOLA or a Cat 5 over my house, every time a storm heads this way, just isn’t practical - it is practical to figure out how to best make it through those conditions afterward. It is practical to have special needs shelters and a plan to get folks out of those shelters ASAP after the storm, and into safer areas. </p>

<p>I’m sorry, the government can’t help everyone caught in the path of a 8.5 earthquake in the middle of LA - and the government can’t help all of the ten thousands of people who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave. The government could have done things differently (and I’m not just talking about the federal govenment now), and I hope for the sake of my family that lessons are learned, and put into use.</p>

<p>Also, keep in mind that if there had been a well coordinated plan to evacuate the helpless, it would have taken days, and this storm came on with much less warning than we usually have. I know Mini will pull up stuff from NOAA, but I’ve lived down here for almost 20 years now, this is one of those bad ones that flare up after getting into the Gulf - much less warning and more unpredictable.</p>

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<p>Mini and I cross-posted. I agree completely with what he is saying - that’s what I am saying as well, it was known that many don’t get out - we don’t plan to evacuate everyone here.
Some things were done ahead of time, but didn’t work as planned - FEMA had about 17 tractor trailer trucks destroyed by the storm in North Hattiesburg - they had been pre-positioned for NOLA, in retrospect these would have been better placed in Lake Charles - a lesson to be learned. I don’t think anyone was ready for the degree of destruction to the roadways and communications - more lessons, what do you do if you are down to walking and hand signals. Finally, I think there some relaxation when the levee didn’t go in the storm - the Superdome folks would have gotten tired and cranky, but they would have been OK to wait for the power to come back from the storm, if the levee hadn’t broken, no need to move them in that case. Once the levee broke, what resources were there were busy picking up people on roofs - more lessons.</p>

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<p>Cangel, I’m glad to hear some practical words of wisdom from someone who lived through Katrina.</p>

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<p>What Chocoholic said.</p>

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<p>Cangel, I agree with you. I was blown away by the extent of the devastation with so much damage to Hattiesburg. I went to USM for 2 summers. Unbelievable. I mean it takes some time to drive from Hattiesburg to NO. I also lived on the gulf coast in Brownsville for 10 years and happily only left twice with my young one to get away from storms. I did lots of boarding up in those years! I had my one year old in a car seat and couldn’t stop for 4 hours driving north. Lots of traffic, rain, night time, never been in the area before, an old car and a crying babe almost the whole way. I’ll never forget it. But I followed fellow teachers and they gave me a place to stay at a church camp in the hill country. An adventure, not a disaster…only uprooted trees on the return. But I can sympathize and know the potential power of these storms. The worst part about them is most of the time they don’t do the damage that might be possible so it give folks who live in these areas a false impression. The bad ones only come around every so often. I have also seen a bravado from some locals towards the storms (mostly young) as they discuss “hurricane parties.” I never considered myself a local and never took a chance. Interesting, last conversation I had with an old timer in Mississippi who was driving me to catch a flight in Hattiesburg was about the wrath of Camille. I bet he wasn’t caught off guard last week.</p>

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<p>Cangel:</p>

<p>We don’t disagree, and my aim was not to either point fingers or exculpate. My focus was on how hard evacuation is. You are right that there are lots of lessons to be learned.</p>

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<p>Cangel, I really appreciated your post. I have really gotten tired of hearing all of the negativity about this. It was a horrible natural disaster of epic proportions, and it is fairly ridiculous to think that everyone could have been evacuated. I live in Houston, which is also hurricane country. Much of my city (of nearly 4.5 million people) is below, or at sea level, and when the “big one” comes here, many people along the coast will tragically die. The evacuation routes are well mapped, but even on a slow weekend, traffic can be unbearable; many people will stay home just to stay off the roads. A bigger issue is that people just don’t think these storms are actually going to come. Oh, we talk about them, we (i.e. the city government and emergency response teams) do exercises to try to prepare for them, but when the storm is actually in the Gulf, nobody makes a move until it is too late. I have lived through 2 hurricanes, Alicia (a cat. 2), being the worst. I lived in FAR west Houston, 60 miles from the coast, and my parents didn’t have power for a little over 2 weeks and parts of trees through the roof. Allison, which many of you may remember because Houston was on the national news because of the widespread catastrophic flooding, had been downgraded to a tropical storm when it stalled on top of the city and rained like Biblical times, stranding people in water up to their rooftops. In these two storms, my family never considered evacuating. These storms, no matter the “category”, can be devastating, either the wind, the tidal surge, or the rain is going to get you. These storms are unpredicatable and capricious. I cannot tell you how many times we have heard the warnings that a storm is headed our way, my husband goes out and gets some plywood to cover the windows, only for the storm to turn south and hit Freeport or Corpus. It breeds complacency! I personally have learned from this tragedy that I will react more quickly when I hear a big one is headed our way. I am going to set up a “hurricane emergency kit” and not raid it when I need money to go to the movies. I am going to make sure my dad, who lives on the water in Galveston Bay, gets out, even if I have to drag him. And, I am going to run for the hills!</p>

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<p>Cangel: You have the knowledge from living near the scene and I respect what you have to say because of that.</p>

<p>One thing that I think no one wants to admit, is that any of our cities would be at risk of devestation when faced with such a destructive force of nature, as you alluded to by mentioning an LA earthquake as the scenario. It would be wonderful to believe that because the US is such a rich, powerful nation with so much techonological advances, that we would be safer from natural disasters such as these, but that is not reality.</p>

<p>We’d hope that because we are so powerful and rich as a country, that we could prevent large scale human suffering after such a catastrophe, but to me, that sounds arrogant. Like believing that because we’re Americans, we’re supposed to handle this better than any one else on the planet or this should never happen in the USA. Well, natural disasters don’t work that way. I could easily imagine my city becoming overwhelmed much the way NO has been, if it was struck by such a catastrophe.</p>

<p>One thing common Americans WILL do however (and do well), is try to rebuild and give of themselves in time, money, clothes, food, shelter etc. as best as they are able to help those suffering.</p>

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<p>Mini, your math on the school buses leaves out one parameter: number of round trips per bus. You assume that each bus loads up and leaves, never to return again. What if the plan called for getting the residents that don’t have their own transportation out of the bowl and into high school gyms, etc. within 1 -2 hours radius of NO? Assume a 4-hour round trip, starting on Saturday at 4 PM and extending to midnight Sunday evening. Now your number becomes 64,000 people completely out of NO. Then, if the local authorities had included in their plan to have food and water stocked at the Dome and the other shelters (as expected by FEMA), the ensuing chaos could have been greatly reduced.</p>

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<p>Fundingfather:</p>

<p>You are right about the math. Future disaster planning would have to encompass receiving stations 1-2 hours away as well as local stations such as the SuperDome.</p>

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<p>Thank you all and thanks to everyone who has been such a help to my neighbors.
I didn’t think we were disagreeing, Marite, I think we are making the same point. Mini and I are making some of the same points, too, our opinions on what the response to those mistakes should be, is probably different. </p>

<p>To me the biggest question is should NOLA be rebuilt, and if so, how? I read something in all this chaos about the “Key West” syndrome - rising insurance rates and new building codes force rebuilds to be very expensive housing - way out of the means of many of the evacuees. How will that affect the character of this so unique of American cities. I anticipate that, if the drinking water problem is solved, or if at least they get water to fire hoses and to flush toilets, people in less hard hit areas like the Garden District will be back within a month, at least to start pulling out sheet rock and assessing damage. I think many people will be in FEMA trailers in Metairie as soon as they can get some sort of makeshift school system going (maybe, because of practicalities, after Xmas).
One detailed report I read about the pumping, actually said the areas that may to take months to pump out are actually in Chalmette - not exactly NOLA proper. most of NOLA proper, except some parts of the hard hit 9th Ward, will be dry much sooner - not sure about Metairie, haven’t really heard, also don’t know about Slidell, it was pretty much destroyed.</p>

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<p>I too would like to thank Cangel for a wonderful, thought provoking post. As several people here and other places have pointed out, it’s all about education. Educating everyone in their own community about the disasters that can happen in the area and learning how YOU can protect yourself. Education about a disaster is not about race or social standing. The information is out there, and most of it free. </p>

<p>To be honest, one only need look at Florida for a prime example. When the shelters started filling up for Francis and Jeanne people of every race, sex and financial means showed up. They all brought what was necessary to survive to the best of their ability. You could look over and see the even the richest of ladies would be helping a family who spoke only Spanish by sharing surplus water. At the same time, the hispanic family was helping a black family by sharing food they had brought. These folks were brought together by knowing in advance how to prepare. I’ve been following reports given by a rescuer at the superdome and he states that a lot of folks showed up in New Orleans with nothing more than a half a diet coke and a new pack of Marboro’s. Did they not know what to bring? Or did they just not think that the worst could happen to them? I can’t answer, but I do know that educating people about this risks and the measures to take in a disaster such as this will enable us to never have these discussions again. If we get the education out on how to protect YOURSELF and this were to happen again, then those people who haven’t done all they could to protect themselves have no one to blame but themselves…</p>

<p>Speaking of preparations…have all of us learned to watch what is going on around us on a daily basis if we live in a disaster prone area. I wonder how many people who have continually done nothing more than gripe and moan about the situation can actually (without changing web pages and looking) tell me whats going on in the Atlantic and Gulf right now? If you can’t then perhaps a little more education on that front might be in order as well…</p>

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<p>Cangel:</p>

<p>The Drudge Report has a link to a pessimistic sounding report from the Independent. I could not link it here, but you might want to take a look and share your thoughts.</p>

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<p>It is actually nice to see these posts - which are rich with positive feedback and not blame game - I agree with much of what has been posted here and certainly do agree/hope that we have learned some lessons in this horrendous situtation.</p>